Casanova not of color

Gary Cooper was pretty good at comedy, as can be seen in movies like Ball of Fire. But like many other actors, there are movies where his comedy doesn't quite work. In Cooper's case, that movie is Casanova Brown.

Cooper plays the title character (nicknamed Cass), a professor of English who, at the start of the movie is returning home to his small town in Illinois from New York City after having done research for a book on his namesake, the famous lover. However, he's apparently returning home an unhappy man.

Some time later, he's about to get engaged to Madge Ferris (Anita Louise), the daughter in a family where the wealth apparently goes from one daughter to the next, as she and her mom have control of the family wealth, much to the chagrin of Madge's father (Frank Morgan), who has been trying to get money out of them to no avail other than a small weekly allowance. Cass claims to have no need of the money and can support Madge on his professor's salary.

But something comes up. Mr. Ferris is at Cass' house shortly before the weding, and when Cass' mail is delivered, Ferris looks through the mail for Cass should there be anything important. Of course there is; a cryptic message from a maternity hospital up in Chicago, telling him he really needs to get his ass up there and see one of the doctors. Cass says at first that it's probably some sort of bizarre advertising campaign to intimidate people into contributing, before eventually he tells the true story.

Back in New York, he made the acquaintance of one Isabel Drury (Teresa Wright), also the daughter of wealthy parents, and fell in love with her. The two get married right away, somethinmg Isabel's astrology-believing mother (Patricia Collinge) thinks is a disaster. Worse for Cass, Isabel's mom hates smokers, and Cass smokes. He decides to hide his cigarette, and when he does it, the foreshadowing is pretty obvious. The cigarette butt in his pocket is going to ignite to comedic effect. Except that in this case the cigarette butt burns the entire house down, leading the Drurys to get Isabel to annul the marriage.

No wonder Cass was unhappy when he returned home. But apparently Cass and Isabel were married long enough for them to have sex, and just that one time having sex would have been enough for Isabel to get knocked up in a way that the Production Code would approve of. But why would Cass be getting a letter from a maternity hospital in Chicago, when the Drurys are from New York? In any case, Cass is going to have to go up to Chicago to resolve the situation before he can get married to Madge.

What Cass finds is that, indeed, Isabel had a baby; her rationale in having it in Chicago is that it was much more likely Cass would come up to deal with the situation. The hospital wants Cass' medical information as a formailty in putting the baby up for adoption. When Cass finds that out, he's horrified: this is our baby, Isabel, not just yours.

In order to keep the baby from being adopted, what does Cass do? Why, kidnap the baby and take it to a hotel, something that I thought would have violated the Production Code and required Cass to spend time in jail, even if he is the little girl's father. But he insists on being a good father, even though this being a movie from the mid-1940s, a single man knows nothing about parenthood.

It's an interesting premise, and one that's based on a play from 15 years earlier that had already been turned into a movie. But in Casanova Brown, the premise winds up falling flat. I think that's because I found the film rather uneven in tone. There's a fairly slow and long buildup to Cass kidnapping the baby, and then the movie becomes much wackier, giving the hotel maid (Mary Treen) and bellhop (Emory Parnell) who help Cass take care of the baby no realistic character motivations for why they'd help Cass in a scheme that at first glance looks criminal.

Gary Cooper does about as well with the material as one could hope for, not being helped that his character too turns on a dime. Teresa Wright is underused, and Patricia Collinge is just irritating. It all adds up to a movie that in my mind is a bit of a misfire. Casanova Brown really needed somebody like Preston Sturges to make the material work. But, as always, you should probably watch and judge for yourself.