Repent at Leisure

Thanks largely to the insouciant script by Jerome Cady, the well-done comic direction by Frank Woodruff (who'd scored at the same studio a year before with the similarly themed "Cross-Country Romance") and the charm of Wendy Barrie in the female lead, this is a better-than-average "B" with some genuinely imaginative moments. It's basically an "It Happened One Night" knockoff, but with variations that give it a unique appeal. Kent Taylor's queeny performance as the young store clerk obsessed with "success" books (including those Harold Lloyd/Clark Kent glasses!) is a bit odd but has its own charm; George Barbier is for once subtle and genuinely moving as Barrie's father (a department-store owner who helps his daughter escape a mismatched marriage to a stuck-up fortune-hunting prince, well played by Rafael Storm), the plot has some quite unexpected twists (courtesy of writers who obviously didn't take this assignment overly seriously), and only the racist so-called "comedy" of Fred "Snowflake" Toones mars it.