HER CARDBOARD LOVER
US, 1942 86 minutes, Black-and-white.
Norma Shearer, Robert Taylor, George Sanders, Frank Mc Hugh, Elizabeth Patterson, Chill Wills.
Directed by George Cukor.
This was Norma Shearer's last film. She had appeared in some silent films, moved into sound films winning one of the early Oscars for The Divorcee (1930). During the 1930s, she had a very successful career with Romeo and Juliet, David Copperfield and The Women. She was also married to the MGM whizzkid, Irving Thalberg.
This is a very slight comedy, based on a European play with various writers working on it including P.G.Wodehouse. It is very much a film of its times – or a descendant of the 1930s screwball comedies.
Robert Taylor, in something of a romantic comic role, not always his forte, portrays a songwriter (in partnership with Frank Mc Hugh) who becomes infatuated on first sight with a socialite, played by Shearer. He follows her around a casino, eventually getting the courage to speak to her but is rebuked. When he owes her money for having intervened absentmindedly at the gambling table, she employs him to pay off the debt to keep her from a foolish relationship with a cad and bounder, played with his usual suave style by George Sanders. Elizabeth Patterson plays her maid who is not a friend of Sanders.
A great deal of the film shows all the means that Taylor goes to to stop Shearer from communicating with Sanders, even pretending to be her cardboard lover – which leads to some histrionics on her part as she continually is infatuated with the fickle Sanders, and Taylor taking seriously all the means to control her – which includes getting dressed in her pyjamas to make suggestive insinuations for Sanders.
Eventually, there are some fights, presence in court presided over by Chill Wills, and a final realisation about whom she is in love with!
The film was directed by George Cukor, already a significant presence in Hollywood with Little Women, films with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, The Philadelphia Story – and was to continue his career into the 60s with many significant films, winning an Oscar for My Fair Lady.
Film buffs who enjoye the golden years of Hollywood and those interested in the careers of the stars will find the film interesting and entertaining. For more modern taste, it seems completely unrealistic, sometimes over the top, contrived romance.
