Evelyn Prentice follows that time-honored tradition of having a comedy team appear in a dramatic vehicle where the most drama you get is in just how bad they are when they are trying to be deadly serious (see also Tracy and Hepburn in Keeper of the Flame). This domestic/courtroom melodrama is certainly deadly in every aspect of its execution right down to the irritating little kid that gets trotted out whenever they want to make some point about how much the dad is neglecting his family or how mommy should own up to killing the guy she started running around with just because dad was neglecting the family. William Powell and Myrna Loy, arguably the best duo of the sophisticated comedies of the nineteen thirties (Libeled Lady, Double Wedding, The Thin Man series) look entirely disinterested in every thing that transpires here as they sluggishly shamble somnambulantly through their roles as John and Evelyn Prentice, a well heeled couple that encounters problems once they start to drift apart.

John is the best dang defense lawyer in all of whatever town this takes place in. He works all hours of the day in an effort to get the likes of Rosalind Russell off a manslaughter rap. Evelyn is his devoted (at least initially) wife whose whole life is getting all ruined just because John is out busting his ass trying to make a decent living so that her lazy ass can sit around all day gabbing with co-star Una Merkle about mixed drinks and no-talent poets. So just how is his absence from home screwing things up? Well, see, Evelyn had this cocktail party planned and John could only stay a few minutes because he had to go and meet some doctors that were going to provide some bombshell testimony about the big Rosalind Russell manslaughter case. I can see her point and I’m sure that Rosalind would have if she had known what was happening. I mean, who would you want defending your life? Some guy who’s going to work late on the eve of your trial pounding the pavement and digging up exculpatory evidence or a down to earth family man that is too stupid to weasel his way out of a boring cocktail party, let alone convince twelve people that you didn’t run some fool over in the street?

John, being the slimiest, I mean best, defense attorney to ever sport one of those sissy pencil thin mustaches that only Powell and Clark Gable could carry off (and Clark could only pull it off because his breath was so damn bad no one paid any attention to the fuzz above that gaping hell hole), manages to sell the jury on some cock and bull story about how this guy that Rosalind ran down had some pre-existing medical condition that made the fact that he had Model T tread marks on his head all his fault. Once the trial is finished, John is rushing off to Boston to meet some Senator about something (I’m guessing sex scandal, but that’s probably a gimme, huh?) and guess who he runs into on this train? Rosalind Russell! There’s a hug and that’s all we see. I think I was supposed to assume that they were having an affair, but in a nod to one of this movie’s great failures, this plot point was underdeveloped and I wasn’t quite sure what they did.

You’ll notice this sort of thing throughout the movie – this half-baked way everything is developed. It’s like a sketch of a story. Certainly a lot of that could be chalked up to the film’s quite abbreviated 78 minute long running time, but even there the director is so inept that this seems to just crawl (well, more like flop around like some dying goldfish on the floor who can’t even be bothered to gasp enthusiastically anymore). Right from the beginning, scenes begin and end with this feeling that you missed something. His opening case sort of comes and goes and chiefly serves to introduce us to Rosalind’s character and John’s workaholic nature, but I’m not sure if we ever were introduced to Rosalind’s character. I think she just was sort of there, had a few lines and the next thing I know she might be having an affair with John.

As far as John goes, I guess I was supposed to be invested in him because I didn’t want William Powell cheating on Myrna Loy, not whether these Prentice zombies were going to live happily ever after. John is presented as nothing more than some guy that ignores his family. Has that always been a problem? If so, why is it just beginning to bother Evelyn? They have a kid old enough to be in school, after all. And who cares about either one of them if the biggest crisis in their life is that he can’t stay very long at a cocktail party? Wasn’t there a depression on in the thirties?

Proving the old adage that the only slime a woman finds attractive is the slime she isn’t currently married to, Evelyn starts having an affair with a smooth operator named Larry Kennard. Sacrificing another opportunity for dramatic conflict or something resembling interest, this guy is instantly unlikable and the only people who can’t see that are Evelyn and her buddy Una. He rolls up on Evelyn at a restaurant pretending that he met her before somewhere, but he may as well have been wearing a shirt that said “gold digger” on the front and “blackmailer” on the back.

As oily and distasteful as this Kennard fellow is, he is by far the coolest guy in the film. Once he gets done meeting Evelyn for the first time (and telling her that he’s working on some play with some other guy), we see him back his place and he’s a low class guy with a low class gal and some low class friends, but not only does he have his whiskey ordered in and delivered to him at his hovel, he makes his girlfriend pay for it! Where’s the 78 minute movie about this dude? He tells his friend that he’s trying to hook up with this rich woman so that she’ll come across with some money so they can put on a play. His girlfriend gets mad and asks why he doesn’t try to hook up with a guy and Larry says he was just saying that stuff about the woman to be a big shot with his friend. I hear you buddy. How many times have I bragged about all the rich dames I’m banging just to try and raise money to put on my musical version of Barnaby Jones? So she tells him that if he ever thinks about leaving her she’ll shoot him and frame up some broad to take the fall. Maybe she doesn’t say those exact words, but you can practically read it in her vacant, vaguely conscious stare. (Was everyone in this movie on barbiturates?)

It isn’t long before Evelyn gets a watch in the mail that was left in her husband’s train car that has an inscription along the lines of “John – thanks for treating me like the dirty nasty wench I am – Rosalind. P.S. Have you seen my panties?” It may have been slightly different than that, but the message got through to Evelyn that maybe John was still engaged in some ongoing discovery with his client even though the case was over. Evelyn decides to kill time in between bouts of hating her husband by seeing this Larry fellow once or twice (I could have sworn she was sitting on his lap at the very beginning of one scene) and writing him letters that were worded in such a way that they could suggest a deeper relationship than they really had. (I wasn’t really sure whether these two ever had a relationship that went beyond first or second base or whatever giving a lap dance is.)

John gets tipped off by Una that Evelyn found the watch and John goes into full blown defense attorney spin mode by instantly proclaiming that it was planted to make him look like a guy who neglected his family to hump tramps instead of the guy who neglected his family to work late that he is. A six month vacation to Europe is quickly arranged for the Prentice family, but then Larry calls up trying to blackmail Evelyn with the three letters she sent him. That’s how dated this movie is. Can imagine anyone today being blackmailed about anything based on three letters? Shoot, we’ve had a president commit sodomy with a cigar and they couldn’t get a dime out of that guy! Well, somehow or other Larry ends up getting himself shot and since we saw Evelyn pointing a gun at him we can only assume that somehow or other Larry’s girlfriend really did the shooting and that ironies of ironies, it will be John representing her.

Thus the completely unbelievable finale is set up that has John calling his own client to the stand, obviously without consulting her ahead of time, in an effort to unmask her as the real killer. This, after his own wife has taken the stand and admitted to killing Larry. Did I mention that even though John knew this would exonerate his client, that he was objecting to the testimony? What would his grounds be? And how in the world could the judge overrule the prosecutor’s motion to dismiss the charge against Larry’s girlfriend once he heard Evelyn confess?

Well, it turns out the joke was on me regarding that, because wouldn’t you know it, but once John gets done cross examining his own wife and then cross examines his own client he establishes that his wife was in fact innocent and that his client was guilty. Good thing the prosecutor didn’t get his way, huh? But then, just to show you what a great legal mind John has, he turns it up a notch in his closing (you better believe that there was no mistrial in this train wreck of procedural and ethical lapses) and argues that his client, who he just established lied all along about her role in things is not guilty, because Larry deserved it! Somehow, he shoehorns in a self-defense claim and demands that the jury find Larry guilty by finding his client not guilty!

I suppose that this funhouse mirror version of criminal law has to be seen to be adequately appreciated and I can’t really think of any other reason you should go looking for this movie. It’s really a painful experience watching Powell and Loy slogging through this thing barely cracking a smile or a quip for the duration. It just didn’t seem natural and the fact that they only appeared in something like three dramas together versus about ten comedies should clue you in that this one was truly a crime against nature and the legal profession.

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