True Confession (1937)

True Confession
Directed by Wesley Ruggles
Written by Claude Binyon from the play “Mon crime” by Louis Verneuil and Georges Berr
1937/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing

This is a pleasant enough light comedy.

Opposites attract.  Lawyer Kenneth Bartlett (Fred MacMurray) is so honest that he refuses to defend the guilty.  Naturally his law practice is going nowhere.  His wife Helen (Carole Lombard) is a novelist and comes up with the most outlandish woppers on a moment’s notice to get out of a jam.  She secretly accepts a job as a private secretary to help out with the finances but discovers the boss is looking for more than she bargained for.  After a struggle she flees his flat, leaving her purse and coat.  When she goes back to retrieve them, he has been murdered.  She tries to explain to Kenneth that she didn’t murder the man but he doesn’t believe her.  She then allows him to defend her under a plea of self-defense.  With Una Merkel as Helen’s best friend and John Barrymore as a self-styled “criminologist”.

All the actors except Lombard and Barrymore are OK in this. Lombard is better than OK and Barrymore once again demonstrated that he was coasting on fumes by the mid-30’s. The material is light and breezy but it didn’t make me laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejbaFzaLmnM

Clip – typewriter scene