DESIGN FOR SCANDAL

US, 1941, 84 minutes, Black and white.
Rosalind Russell, Walter Pidgeon, Edward Arnold, Lee Bowman.
Directed by Norman Taurog.

Design For Scandal is yet another comic battle of the sexes from the M.G.M. studios in the '40s. It was in the tradition of the screwball comedies so popular in the '30s. Rosalind Russell was one of the best exponents of this kind of comedy. Here she does well - is a well-educated stern and just judge. She becomes the victim of a newspaper tycoon played with comic relish by Edward Arnold in some kind of parody of his frequent villainous roles of the time, and by Walter Pidgeon as a Clark Gable type carefree journalist. The film is the romantic hostility between the two principals. It is the usual battle of the sexes - one-upmanship, witty lines, romance coming upon the two almost unawares. There is a final mock courtroom sequence to resolve the problem.

It is all conventional material, though done with the M.G.M. gloss of the time. The direction is by Norman Taurog, a director prolific in his films from the '30s to the '60s. He made many comedies and dramas at M.G.M. at the tine and was to direct many of the Jerry Lewis and Elvis Presley films. While Rosalind Russell is expert at this kind if film, it is an unusual role for Walter Pidgeon, a generally serious actor, but he carries this off with some aplomb. The usual questions about the American way of life, the interrelationship of men and women and the jokes at the expense of the American Establishment - the courts, newspaper tycoons, gold-diggers, divorce. Entertaining fluff.