Hands Across the Table (1935)
Hands Across the Table on the IMDb
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Universal - The Franchise Collection - Carole Lombard: The Glamour Collection.
Carole Lombard, Fred MacMurray, Ralph Bellamy, Astrid Allwyn, Ruth Donnelly,
Marie Prevost. Directed by Mitchell Leisen.
Released at the same time as similar collections honoring Mae West and Marlene Dietrich, I picked this up dirt cheap on sale with pretty low expectations. 6 movies on 2 discs with no extra features sounds like one of those value packs where you get what you pay for. Well, you do in one regard, but by the same token I enjoyed Hands Across the Table quite a bit and the quality of the disc was a lot better than what I had been expecting. The two discs in this collection do use both sides of each disc to hold the six movies, which does make me want to cross my fingers when pondering the lifespan of my collection, but hey, how often am I really going to watch each of these anyway?
Well, I will watch Hands Across the Table again, because I did enjoy it quite a bit. It was one of the four films in this set that I'd never seen before and while it was definitely a good choice to start with it makes me wonder if any of the other Lombard movies here can measure up to it. I've always been a fan of Lombard, her looks, her raw humor and enormous personality, even her acting, but I've always found her to be much larger than her movies with the exception of To Be Or Not To Be. While on this topic I enjoy My Man Godfrey quite a bit too, and while William Powell is one of my favorites it's Lombard's frantic performance that stands out in my mind much more than Godfrey as a whole. By far, I usually prefer the out and out screwball flicks to romantic comedies such as this, but I must say these 81 minutes already rewarded me in full with change back for the $16.00 or so I spent on this (and I've got another 5 movies to watch!).
Lombard as Regi Allen is a gold-digging manicurist with too big a heart to dig too far. MacMurray as Theodore Drew III is presumably a rich boy but his family's fortunes have turned in the aftermath of the depression. Finally Bellamy as Allen Macklyn is a wheel-chair bound tycoon whose bank account is the real deal. This triangle is handled nicely in that Regi is never really interested in super-wealthy Allen as anything more than a friend--though he certainly is. MacMurray's Ted seems to be perfect for her until she finds out that he is actually flat broke and engaged to socialite Vivian Snowden (Astrid Allwyn) in his own gold-digging scheme. When Ted ends up staying on the couch at Regi's the two agree that they're both heels but stand by their hopes of marrying for money, despite growing closer to each other with each passing day.
There are a few laugh-out loud scenes in Hands Across the Table, the best of which being Lombard hiding in the bedroom while MacMurray answers her door to blow off her date, played by MacMurray's future My Three Sons co-star, Uncle Charley himself, William Demarest. Beyond the fun of knowing these two will forever be associated with one another for a television pairing thirty years away, it is actually a very funny scene, albeit involving some "spousal abuse" and threats of gunplay. Well, actually it's pretty funny because of those elements. The other scene, which I actually found hilarious was when MacMurray calls his fiancé from Lombard's apartment pretending he's in Bermuda on the vacation that she sent him on, while Lombard constantly interrupts the call playing the part of a busybody operator. Classic! The two actors are having so much fun with the scene that you can't help finding it very funny yourself.
This movie is seventy years old, so I do want to warn you to be prepared for some mocking Asian accents and while very brief perhaps the most insulting portrayal of a black man that I've seen in any movie.
That said, I had fun with it, enjoyed the story, kept my eyes stuck on Lombard as usual and even enjoyed MacMurray which can be hard to do in a lot of his other work. I don't like repeating myself, but it seems fitting to once again say Hands Across the Table was worth the price of this collection even if I never watched any of the other movies in the set -- you want bonus features, think of those five other movies as your bonus!
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