Ruth Chatterton had some really odd roles over at Paramount. This is a pretty conventional precode tale full of conventional precode tropes, but Ruth Chatterton is the whole show.
Attorney Neil Dunlap (Clive Brook) is dumped by his wife for a wealthy man. He's in a hotel drinking to forget when he sees Pansy Gray (Ruth Chatterton) playing a ukulele and singing in the building across from him. Neil's companion asks Pansy and her companion to come over and join them. They do. A drunken Neil proposes to and marries Pansy that night. A slightly more sober Neil discovers what he did the next morning AND that it made all of the papers. He is going to have the marriage annulled, but an acquaintance, Gustave (Paul Lukas) tells Neil that he respects him for this unconventional act and convinces him to give the marriage a try. Neil thinks he is giving Pansy a chance to "make good".
Well, at home back in Wilmington,DE (Wilmington??? I have to give the film points for an unconventional setting) Pansy has to deal with winning everybody over, including the servants, who are ready to walk out rather than work for her. Her new husband is polite to her, even sobers up with her help, but he is just being "nice". He does not love her. And then something happens that makes him pour out all of his doubts about her character to her. How does this work out? Watch and find out.
Chatterton's Pansy is honest and she knows how to roll with the punches life throws her, but she doesn't quite know how to deal with all of these snobs in her husband's world, especially when she is not clear on who are and are not her friends, because if she is not accustomed to kindness from people, up to now at least she could count on authenticity.
The print I saw had the title "Anybody's Woman" blacked out and a new title "The Better Wife" printed over it. Maybe an artifact of the production code era? By the way, that title is NOT referring to Pansy. This film gets good performances out of all of the main players - Brook, Chatterton, and Lukas. It has very intelligent dialog, and except for the fact that the film could not seem to change scenes without intertitles, it really is quite modern in its viewpoint. And who would ever think that an electric room fan could become a plot device in a romantic moment?
