BEAUTY AND THE BOSS

US, 1932, 90 minutes, Black and white.
Marian Marsh, Warren William, David Manners, Charles Butterworth, Frederick Kerr, Mary Doran.
Directed by Roy Del Ruth.

Beauty and the Boss is one of those brisk pre-Code comedies, full of quick and witty exchanges, a touch loose in its presentation of morality.

The film was police based on a play by Ladislaus Foder, a prolific writer from Hungary who wrote stories screenplays in Germany and in Hollywood until the 1970s. His play was called The Church Mouse.

Warren William was popular at Warner Brothers at this time and is here cast as a Hungarian Baron, a banker, who is brisk and efficient in office hours, somewhat easily distracted by attractive secretaries and he then fires them to make them available after hours. David Manners is his brother.

After a trip to New York, with his trusty assistant Ludwig (Charles Butterworth), who thinks that planes will not supersede the horse and buggy and who writes all his instructions on his sleeve, the Baron has an encounter with his secretary, Mary Doran, and fires her. In the meantime, Ludwig is eating his meal and sees a waif, hungry, looking at the window, Marian Marsh. While she is poor and unemployed, “Church Mouse”, she takes the initiative of approaching the Baron and asking him for a job, quickly demonstrating her skills as a stenographer, answering his phone, managing his timetable – and he is immediately attracted, giving her the job, giving her anything she wants.

Also in the cast is an old Baron with a roving eye (Frederick Kerr).

While the new secretary has to ward off many phone calls from the baron’s nanny women associates, she encounters the former secretary and gets a few hints, transforming herself with the touch of the vamp, with the touch of seduction, which brings in not only the repartee but some innuendo and romance.

Not a film to stay in the memory – but engaging in a kind of touch-in-cheek way.