She's a starving artist in a fetching studio-bound Paris, entrapped for soliciting (Implausibility #1) and bailed out by John Halliday, who sees something.unique in her and offers to set her up as a countess, a disguise nobody bothers to look into (Implausibility #2). In that guise she meets a smitten Ricardo Cortez, who falls instantly in love with her and demands that they get married (Implausibility #3), taking her best pal (a fun Kitty Kelly), who's been posing as her maid, along on the honeymoon (Implausibility #4). Cortez, who's at his most boisterous and leading-man-handsome here, is a gambler and horse aficionado, which leads to Mary innocently feeding info to Halliday that ruins Cortez, who instantly turns on her and throws her out (Implausibility #5), until she engineers a way of turning around her innocent mistake. It's not, in short, credible, but the two stars are photogenic, and Astor already owns the screen, offering a layered performance of a not very layered character. The horse racing sequences are exciting, and the horse Cortez bets it all on is a real beauty; the scene between him and the horse is truly touching. I'd expected this to be Warners, but it's RKO, and it's a good-looking, lively early talkie. With many implausibilities.
Review of Men of Chance
