God's Gift to Women (1931) User Reviews

Minor flick with a sexy Louise Brooks and a decent catfight

[BoYutz · 6/10 · 28 October 1999]

Plot? Who cares about the plot? Something about a guy with several attractive girlfriends, including the incendiary Louise Brooks and the magnetic Joan Blondell. We should all have this problem. ;>

The main action involves the classic situation of juggling three women in different bedrooms. We've all seen this a million times and always wished the juggling act would fail, the women would encounter each other, and a catfight would ensue. Guess what? This time it happens! It may not be a classic catfight, but the brawl between Louise, Joan and another attractive brunette is worth the price of admission.

This movie will appeal mainly to fans of Louise Brooks. Her part is relatively small and she appears sans her famous Dutch-bob hair helmet, thus revealing a rather high forehead. You will still be in love with her, guaranteed. The real irony here is that several other actresses appear with the hairstyle she made not only famous, but possibly immortal. The Louise Legion will also be interested in her voice acting. Her voice is fine, but the role gives her no real opportunity to display her ability. As we all know, things never really got better on that front, either.

So don't expect much out of this, just kick back and enjoy one of the great beauties of film history, the incredible Louise Brooks.

The last of Frank Fay's Warner Brothers films

[AlsExGal · 5/10 · 27 January 2010]

Frank Fay was recruited from Broadway by Warner Brothers to be built up into one of their early talkie stars, starting with his emcee role on "Show of Shows" in 1929. Most people really hate the job he does there, but you have to understand that Fay is kidding the audience in that film and in every film he does from that point on for Warners. The problem is, the audience didn't understand this and just found Fay annoying. Two years later he was out of a job as his wife Barbara Stanwyck's star continued to rise.

I actually like most of Fay's other films because I can see what he is trying to do with the roles, although I think Warner Brothers did him wrong and set him up to fail by trying to make him out to be irresistible to women in several of his roles. In Matrimonial Bed this wasn't too distracting, but here it is just annoying. Surrounded by beautiful women - including Joan Blondell and Louise Brooks, Fay - as Toto, the Romeo of Paris - becomes enamored of Diane Churchill (Laura La Plante) after just a brief meeting and a single dance. Even more annoying, Diane falls for Toto, although she admits to her father she doesn't understand the attraction - that definitely gives her something in common with the audience.

There are many good comic bits and wise cracks in the film, but it just doesn't hold together well at all. The catfight towards the end is well known as the best thing about the film, with all of Toto's women showing up at once to nurse him back to health after they hear he is ill.

The sad thing is, you can tell Fay knows he is finished in films at this point. He looks thin and gaunt here compared to Matrimonial Bed made just a year earlier. The story is he began to drink heavily when he realized he wasn't going over with audiences, and his wife's success in Hollywood just made matters worse. It is rumored that "A Star is Born" was based on the Fay/Stanwyck marriage, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is true.

This one lacks any kind of coherence. Look at it as one long vaudeville act and you'll likely come away more satisfied.

Look fast for Louise Brooks

[ecjones1951 · 5/10 · 2 July 2006]

"God's Gift to Women" is nowhere near a star turn for Louise Brooks. The movie belongs to Frank Fay, who was a popular Broadway star of light comedies at the time, and the first husband of Barbara Stanwyck. Casting the effeminate Fay as a Casanova was a stretch, but his delivery is quite funny in places. The plot line is pretty predictable stuff, but there's a sweet little twist in the final scenes.

Laura La Plante, a tall, rangy Missouri beauty, has the female lead. She successfully made the transfer from silents to talkies. La Plante is charming, and she is photographed to best advantage.

Tenth billing. This is what Hollywood did with Louise Brooks in the early 30s, even after she had made "Pandora's Box" and "Diary of a Lost Girl," the two German films which assured her immortality. But very few Americans had seen those movies at all in 1931, and those who had saw only heavily censored versions.

Very little has changed in Hollywood in the past nearly 80 years. Consider Adrien Brody, whose Oscar netted him Diet Coke commercials, and Halle Berry, whose Golden Boy landed her roles in screen gems such as "Gothika" and "Catwoman." Hollywood punished Louise Brooks for being an independent thinker. Yet she makes the most of her 4-5 minutes' screen time in "God's Gift to Women." As always, you simply can't take your eyes off her.

Brooks and Blondell steal show!

[tashman · 30 January 2002]

Of the six or so films Frank Fay made under his early-talkie Warner contract, half wasted time presenting him as some sort of great lover. Battling this concept takes effort and a lapse in sense, not only by the audience, but by the casts of these pictures. This is especially true of THE MATRIMONIAL BED, is less a problem in BRIGHT LIGHTS, but might have reached the ludicrous in GOD'S GIFT TO WOMEN if not for the sensational women involved. Cast as a descendant of Don Juan (annoyingly called "Toto"), it is a testament to the female talent that there is still a lot of fun to be had despite the fact that Frank Fay seldom shut's his mouth. Though the script hardly gives anyone a chance, Fay's incessant chattering "style" is only matched once, when the savvy Joan Blondell fairly bursts into the man's boudoir -- a brief example of sophisticated bedroom farce. This sequence is followed by another gem, a most unexpected three-way battle over Fay; a sexy brawl taking place atop his bed involving ALL QUIET/WESTERN FRONT'S buxom Yola D'Avril, Miss Blondell, and the legendary and stunningly gorgeous Louise Brooks. Yes, Louise was thrown to the dogs in talking pictures, but here is one time (albeit sans bangs) where she looked and sounded sensational for the few moments we were allowed to see her. Nice moments, too, by perfectly capable, delightful silent players: SUNRISE vamp Margaret Livingston, who turns up to give leading lady Laura La Plante a rough moment. La Plante is lovely, and fully up to the challenge of sound comedy. Though hams abound, Alan Mowbray (as the butler), Tyrell Davis (managing to out-fey even Frank Fay), and the fabulous if underused Charles Winninger manage quite effectively. Merely in it for Louise Brooks (and I can't say as I blame you)? Advance to the bedroom romp, but watch the women cavort throughout the opening nightclub sequence -- there are enough glimpses to satisfy. Watch for the beautiful twins from Universal's KING OF JAZZ, the "Sisters G," both of whom are coiffed in what seems to be Louise Brooks' old hairstyle.

Watch for Brooks and Blondell

[gbill-74877 · 5/10 · 16 March 2021]

Frank Fay is horribly miscast in this film, which is about a lothario who falls in love with a sweet young woman (Laura LaPlante). He has absolutely zero screen presence, so making him a descendant of Don Juan who is "god's gift to women" is laughable, and he exacerbates things with a dopey performance, slurred lines, and mispronunciations of names like Monet, Rodin, and Paleozoic. (And I say this not biased over the person he was in real life, the reading of which made me feel bad for Barbara Stanwyck). The film alludes to adultery with several married women carrying on flings with his character without being weirdly punished or judged, nice fodder for a pre-Code film, but it doesn't do nearly enough with this.

To be honest, it's only watchable for the brief appearances of Louise Brooks and Joan Blondell, who liven things up considerably just after the 40 minute mark. You see, Fay's character has been told he must avoid women because of a heart condition, and that if he wants to live, he "must follow the tranquil existence of an oyster." Blondell shows up in a tight dress to nurse him back to health. As she's changing into something more comfortable in the next room (cut to a long shot of her in long black lingerie), Louise Brooks shows up to do the same (and yes, cut, to her flaunting her legs while changing). Blondell climbs on top of him to get him to stay down in a bed a couple of times, a third girlfriend (Yola d'Avril) enters, and eventually the three women get into a giant catfight on the bed, legs a-flailing. It's damn silly but of course the best part of the film - and I say that with no offense to LaPlante, who looks cute in her smart haircut and does what she can opposite Fay, who's a limp noodle.

While Blondell was just about to go on a tear in the early 1930's, the film was made at a sad point in Brooks' career. As Kenneth Tynan described it in "Lulu in Hollywood," in 1930 Brooks had gone back to Hollywood, but when she met with Columbia executive Harry Cohn, each time he appeared naked from the waist up. He writes, "Always a plain speaker, he left her in no doubt that good parts would come her way if she responded to his advances. She rebuffed them, and the proffered contract was withdrawn." If you look at the steep dropoff in Brooks' filmography, with this dog of a film one of only three she made in 1931 (and one of the other two a short), it's clear why she went back to New York and almost completely dropped out of the business. Enjoy seeing her here, in a talkie - and notice that while some of the other women in the cast have the hairstyle she made famous, she sports a different look. Otherwise, if you're not a fan of Brooks or Blondell, this is one to skip.

God's Gift To Barbara Stanwyck?

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 25 July 2020]

This rather silly comedy is one of the few screen appearances of Frank Fay who was a major star on stage and in vaudeville in the teens and twenties. He had recently married Barbara Stanwyck and was on the decline as she was rising.

Fay is an American playboy in Paris who is a legendary womanizer and the casting was impeccable. Fay however says visiting American Laura LaPlante is the real deal, but her father Charles Winninger puts hm to the test.

Joan Blondell is in the cast asone of Fay's conquests and she scores in her small role. Big things were in store for her no doubt.

Like Wallace Beery, Fay was one of those few peformers of whom no one had a good word to say. God's Gift To Women remains a curioudity to those interested in rescuing Frank Fay from obscurity.

Well the genre says comedy. I guess I should have expected industrialized campiness.

[Dominic_25_ · 3/10 · 17 February 2023]

Not very enjoyable. At least it's 70 minutes and not entirely unbearable.

Apparently Michael Curtis had already perfected the Classical Hollywood style because the film starts off with the prototypical setup. Then we get a story about a womanizer actually trying to settle down with a woman but nothing about this guy is interesting and the comedy isn't funny enough to warrant me sitting through nonsense and absurdity. Him getting a made up disease so they can go into more comedic gags doesn't work well when the comedy isn't very good. And it's all just to trick this moron into committing to the daughter.

Mostly notable because of the director. I watched a couple of his earlier films from when he was in Vienna but found it too difficult to track down anything in the 9 years between those films and this one. Not even the one where he literally tried to drown his cast of extras.

Curtis definitely improved his manufactured vibes for the films but the substance is completely barren. A big nothing of a movie.

No, he isn't, but he ain't bad

[marcslope · 6/10 · 2 June 2015]

Having read the 700-page biography of Barbara Stanwyck, which only goes up to 1941, I'm not inclined toward sympathy for her first husband Frank Fay, who stars in this Warners bedroom farce. He was arrogant and possibly abusive, and you can see his career in free- fall here. But he's not bad. As an irresistible Don Juan in Paris, which is itself a bit of a stretch, he has a good way with a comic line and is expert at physical comedy. You don't know why Laura La Plante, Joan Blondell, and Louise Brooks, among others, are all fighting over him, but director Michael Curtiz sustains the action nicely, and the Deco costumes and sets are a treat. There's also the nice additional pleasure of a "Show Boat" connection: Leading lady La Plante, who's charming, had recently been Magnolia in the first film version, and Charles Winninger, the stage Captain Andy who repeated his role in the 1936 version, is her dad. He's quite different here, and good.

Overall an okay film

[Louise-14 · 3/10 · 13 May 1999]

I initially began watching this film with the preconceived notion that Louise Brooks had more of a major role. In which she had just a minor one. And so I was disappointed because of it. After having owned this video I can say that I have only seen it once, and that I remain neutral on the movie itself aside from the Louise Brooks issue. I have seen better old films though it did have it's more comical points that I did enjoy.

Falling star

[MikeMagi · 6/10 · 23 March 2012]

During the 1920s, Frank Fay was the highest paid performer in vaudeville, the comedian from whom Jack Benny candidly admitted he lifted his on-stage style. By 1931 when "God's Gift to Women" was released, he had married Barbara Stanwyck and groomed her for stardom while his own career was rapidly declining. An arrogant drunk with a flair for alienating his fellow performers, Fay's downfall didn't get much sympathy though it purportedly inspired the movie, "A Star is Born." For more than a decade, he was the classic example of a "used-to-was" until the producers of the Broadway play, "Harvey," tapped him to play Elwood P. Dowd. It was among the most memorable stage performances I've ever seen, a classic of fey (sic) whimsy and superb comedy timing. Jimmy Stewart in the screen version, couldn't come close. Suddenly, a far less arrogant Frank Fay was enjoying the accolades that had eluded him since the late 1920s. Watch "God's Gift to Women," a stiff, stilted early pre-code romantic romp and you'll see both why Fay's career went downhill and conversely why he had the ideal vaguely befuddled style to play a man with a six foot tall rabbit as a pal.

Frank Fay fails to impress!

[JohnHowardReid · 8/10 · 7 January 2018]

Frank Fay is in much better form than his rather poor Show of Shows showing in Michael Curtiz's God's Gift to Women (1931).

True, the director is obviously battling to keep the loquacious Fay the center of attention when he is so obviously outclassed not only by the women of the title (led by the lovely Laura La Plante, assisted by - in order of importance - Joan Blondell, Yola d'Avril, Margaret Livingston and Louise Brooks) but by most of the men (Alan Mowbray, Charles Winninger, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Billy House and even Charles Judels)!

One wonders why the studio persevered with Fay, when he was obviously so heavily outclassed by just about everyone else on the lot!

(Available on a nice public domain DVD)

Lesson to guys....DON'T do what Frank Fay does in this film!

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 17 August 2020]

"God's Gift to Women" is a film starring two folks whose careers were on the decline back in 1931. Laura La Plante was a very popular and talented silent film star, though through the course of the talkies, she appeared in fewer and fewer productions. Frank Fay, who would soon marry Barbara Stanwyck, would also go through a long decline...mostly because according to every source I've checked, was a nasty and unlikable drunk and folks just got sick of him until, long after this, he became sober. So, if you don't recognize the pair, this is not at all surprising.

The story is set in Paris, which is odd since none of the principal actors have a French accent. Toto Duryea (Fay) is a well-known playboy and he casts his eyes on Diane (La Plante). She refuses to have anything to do with him, so he does what is common in older films....he won't take no for an answer and keeps badgering her*. And, as is common in these older films, she eventually succumbs to his charms and sex appeal. But as she cannot trust this cad, she concocts a strange plan...and a funny one at that.

Casting Fay in the role of an irresistible playboy did seem odd as I watched the film. While he was glib and could be charming, I couldn't help but think how ordinary he looked...and he sounded about as French as Keye Luke! I am not trying to be sexist here, but shouldn't a sexy playboy be much better looking--such as a Maurice Chevalier or Charles Boyer type? He would have been fine in many other roles but this one just didn't seem suited to him.

So is it any good? Yes. Despite the miscasting of Fay and a predictable plot twist, it's rather enjoyable and funny. Not a great or must-see film...but an enjoyable one.



By the way, although La Plante and Fay's careers would soon fade considerably, far worse off was Louise Brooks who appears in a few tiny scenes here an there...a huge fall from grace considering she'd starred in a few very important silents, such as "Grand Prize", "Pandora's Box" and "Diary of a Lost Girl". She only made a few films after this one...including a couple B-westerns!

*Guys take note. When a woman says no, try focusing on ANOTHER DIFFERENT woman. No DOES mean no!

Joan Blondell and Louise Brooks sprinkled in a pre-Code Michael Curtiz comedy?

[jimjo1216 · 14 November 2012]

I thought this film was much better than its IMDb rating (4.9/10 at the time). It's an obscure early talkie, but it's mildly amusing and, at only 72 minutes, no great waste of time.

For movie buffs, the draw of this film is its cast and crew. It's one of Joan Blondell's early films and it's a rare opportunity to see iconic silent screen star Louise Brooks in a talkie. It's also one of the few films of popular vaudeville comedian Frank Fay. Familiar character actors like Alan Mowbray and Charles Winninger have supporting roles, and the whole thing is directed by the great Michael Curtiz (CASABLANCA).

GOD'S GIFT TO WOMEN (1931) is a comedy about romance. Frank Fay plays a modern-day Don Juan, a notorious Parisian playboy and ladies' man who is smitten with an American tourist. His high-living social crowd and various paramours complicate his efforts to win over the girl (and her father) and become a one-woman man. His situation gets tougher when he is diagnosed with an aneurysm that threatens his life if he is overly excited (i.e., "no more girls"). Would he go for that last kiss if he knew it would mean instant death?

Frank Fay gives a solid comedic performance, with his sort of off-the-cuff wit. He nimbly toes the line of pre-Code profanity, several times saying "Go to --" before abruptly switching gears. He's particularly funny once he learns he's a dying man. There's a fun scene where he quibbles with an undertaker about his funeral arrangements.

Laura La Plante is a nice-looking girl, but she just doesn't have "it" and she makes for a rather dull leading lady. Luckily she disappears for much of the second half of the film, allowing Curtiz to showcase Joan Blondell, Louise Brooks, and Yola d'Avril buzzing around Fay's bedroom in various states of dress (as they all come to nurse Fay back to health).

Joan Blondell is a favorite of mine and she sparkles in her secondary role, jumping on top of Frank Fay (who must avoid women, lest his aorta burst) when she finds him an uncooperative patient. Louise Brooks's name is almost lost in the middle of the cast list and she doesn't have a very big part, but she makes an impression in that bedroom farce scene with her alluring attire and screen presence.

The ultimate romantic gesture

[gridoon2024 · 6/10 · 6 March 2023]

Fluffy, not very funny bedroom farce which does, however, contain a poetic romantic message: a woman's kiss IS worth dying for. Frank Fay is miscast in the lead, and there are too many cartoonish (and as the film is set in Paris, most of them overtly French-accented as well) supporting characters; Louise Brooks, in one of her first true speaking roles (she was dubbed in the earlier "Prix De Beautè") makes only a cameo appearance. On the other hand, Laura La Plante is charming, spirited and slinky; perhaps if she had gotten the part of Nora Charles in the "Thin Man" series, which she came close to getting, her sound-era career would have taken off. **1/2 out of 4.

bedroom farce, strained to shreds

[mukava991 · 28 May 2015]

In this painfully drawn out bedroom farce, set in Paris, Frank Fay is miscast as the titular love object, a descendant of Don Juan, who is smitten with a young American in Paris (Laura LaPlante) but in order to win her must extricate himself from the tangled web of his long- term intrigues with a virtual harem of lovers (played by Joan Blondell, Margaret Livingston, a sadly underused Louise Brooks and others).

The set up is amusing and deftly staged by Michael Curtiz, but once the direction of the plot becomes clear it bogs down in long, boring and insultingly stupid gag sequences, one upon another, involving Fay's diagnosis with a potentially fatal illness; eventually the viewer can only long for this character's demise.

The fine lineup of female supporting players is wasted as are Charles Winninger as LaPlante's suspicious and protective father and Alan Mowbray as (what else?) the butler. Tyrrell Davis gets to wrap the whole thing up with a decadent chuckle, foreshadowing his even more unusual closing moment in "Our Betters" two years later.

Frank Fay's trademark casual banter works against him here because it only adds to the already sluggish pace.