Directed by Russell Mack
Starring Edward Everett Horton, Esther Ralston, Laura La Plante
Produced by Pathé Exchange
Renowned lawyer Richard "Dickie" Smith is all over the papers for a recent high-profile acquittal he successfully tried, but back home he has nothing but problems.
His wife Madeleine and her mother believe (and rightfully so) that he is a philanderer. He is all business during the day, but once eight o'clock hits, his personality switches and he chases every skirt in sight.
This proves particularly problematic on the day he is trying out a new secretary, the beautiful Kitty "Minty" Minter. He's unimpressed with her typing and dictation skills, but once the clock chimes he's only too pleased to watch her "wiggle."
Complicating matters further, Minty's friend Diane O'Dare is looking for a divorce from her vaudevillian performer husband The Great Zero and wants to take advantage of Smith's sexual proclivities to get him to take the case.
Smith sets up a late night rendezvous with both Minty and Diane, but Dickie's mother-in-law won't let him leave the house. Fortunately, The Great Zero shows up to ask Smith's permission to impersonate the lawyer in his act. Once the actor dons some make up, his resemblance to Smith is uncanny. The doppelgänger gives the lothario the perfect means to sneak out.
Now Smith and The Great Zero have switched places, but can they carry out the ruse? And what will the impersonator do when, surprise!, Madeleine returns home early from her trip?
Lets be clear up front: Lonely Wives is not a good movie. No way, no how.
The direction takes its cue from silent films ten years older. It's a series of medium shots, filming the action from the same angles repeatedly. It's so stagey, you expect if the camera ever did pull back, you'd see footlights.
The actors don't do anything to assuage these concerns. They talk and behave as if in a theater with an audience. There are even bizarre pauses after the laugh lines. Every line sounds like it belongs in a play, not a movie.
This movie does have a little to recommend though. For one thing, this is about as pre-Code as a film can get. For those unaware, the "Code" in question is the Hays Code, adopted in 1930 but not enforced until 1934, which regulated the content of films based on moral concerns. Every other line of dialogue in Lonely Wives is a double entendre that would have definitely not made it past the censors.
Some examples (courtesy of IMDB):
Smith: [Attempting to ask her out] What have you got on tonight?
Minter: Nothing I can't get out of. Why?
or
Smith: Oh, you have a pretty mouth!
Minter: Aw, I like your moustache.
Smith: Really? Well, shall we introduce them?
So if you've heard the term pre-Code and wondered what that was about, Lonely Wives is a good primer.
The other noteworthy element if the film is technical. In several scenes, Horton plays both Dickie and The Great Zero and, through the magic of double exposure, the two appear on screen together.
The effect is seamless, so much so that I wondered at first if it was a different actor. There are movies made today using green screens that don't carry off the effect convincingly.
Unfortunately for Lonely Wives, if I'm reaching for specific snippets of dialogue and a special effect as the primary selling points of a movie, it cannot be all that great. I'm sure this would have been wonderful on a stage 80 years ago. Sadly, on the big screen, Lonely Wives is only...
*1/2 out of *****
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