Three Cornered Moon

Some months back, I bought a box set of Claudette Colbert movies. Recently, I got around to watching one of the movies, Three Cornered Moon.

The movie starts off with one of those montages introducing the cast by face, informing us that this movie deals mostly with the Rumplegar family, who live in a big house in Brooklyn. Matriarch Nellie (Mary Boland) is a bit ditzy, having trouble with the family maid Jenny (Lyda Roberti) who surprisingly still doesn't know much English despite having been working for the family for years. She also seems to be a few cents short on the grocery bill, and can't get her self-absorbed children to come up with the spare change.

Those children include Kenneth (Wallace Ford), a paralegal who is studying for the bar exam; Douglas (William Bakewell), who wants to become a stage actor; college student Eddie (Tom Brown); and daughter Elizabeth (Claudette Colbert). She's got a boyfriend in struggling author Ronald (Hardie Albright); indeed, when Ronald can't pay his rent, she goes over and settles the account before bringing him home to live in one of the spare bedrooms. Along they way they stop at the clinic of Dr. Alan Stevens (Richard Arlen), whom you feel might have tried pursuing Elizabeth himself if it weren't for the fact that she already has a boyfriend.

As you can also see from Elizabeth's paying off her boyfriend's debts, the rest of the family is slightly extravagant. To be fair, that's because Dad died and left the family with a substantial sum of money. But there's a depression on, and Mom made the mistake of investing in a shady mine on margin (the "Three Cornered Moon" of the title). The brokers are looking to call in their investment, and Mom doesn't have the money. In effect, the family is flat broke, except what Kenneth has from his job, which isn't much, although if he can pass the bar exam that will bring in a bit more money.

To be fair to the family, however, like Joan Crawford in Dance, Fools, Dance, the siblings actually try to go out and get jobs to bring in more money, while Dr. Stevens offers to rent a room since he needs a place to live anyway. Eddie even gets two jobs which runs him ragged, while Elizabeth, who obviously hasn't worked a day in her life, also goes out to find work that she's not quite suited to. The only people who can't be bothered to help are the romantic interests; not just Ronald, but also Kitty (Joan Marsh), grasping girlfriend of William's.

Because of the sort of movie that Three Cornered Moon is, you have to expect that it has a happy, or at least a hopeful, ending, which we do get to after a fashion. This is Paramount, and not one of those Warner Bros. social commentary movies, after all.

The DVD box describes Three Cornered Moon as one of the first screwball comedies, and it's easy to see why somebody might describe the movie that way. There's a wealthy (or formerly wealthy) family, with a ditzy mom and children who seem to live on air, mixed with a few nutty romantic entanglements. But the movie is just as much a drama as it is a comedy, and often a fairly dark one at that. (As an example, Elizabeth's boss clearly expects sexual favors from her in order to keep her job.) It's a mix that doesn't always work, as it took me a long time to warm up the the characters. But in the end it's an interesting if imperfect movie.

I don't think I'd pay a standalone DVD price for Three Cornered Moon, but I'm glad I was able to get it in a box set.