I mentioned last month when Kay Francis was TCM's Star of the Month that at some point in the past, possibly even before I started this blog, I had seen the movie Living on Velvet that was airing as part of the tribute, but that I had never blogged about it. So I made it a point to record that movie, and then sit down to watch it and do a post on it here.
Kay Francis gets top billing, but the real lead here is played by George Brent, whose role at Warner Bros. was to make his female leads look good, first Kay Francis, and then by the late 1930s Bette Davis. Brent plays Terry Parker, a professional airplaine pilot back in the days when the profession was rather more dangerous than it is now. Indeed, Terry is at the controls of his plane in the opening scene when it crashes, killing his parents and sister but not him, since otherwise he couldn't really be the lead in the movie. Terry then goes overseas to fly as we learn from a series of newspaper articles, first to the Far East and then Venezuela where he keeps getting in trouble because of hs desire to live the sort of life he wants to.
After a year of this, he's returned home to New York where he flies in an air show, in a plane that's owned by his friend "Gibraltar" (Warren William). Gibraltar is one of those gentlemen pilots, one of those idle rich who has his own plane more to impress the society types than to be truly adventurous. Gibraltar invites Terry to one of those society parties of the sort we saw at the beginning of One More Tomorrow, this one hosted by Amy Prentiss (Kay Francis) and her aunt Martha.
Amy and Terry meet, and she's taken by him, not minding that he was a pilot even if he doesn't want his past reputation to precede him. She's so taken by him that she leaves the party to go out for a night on the town. This, even though she's supposed to be Gibraltar's girlfriend. It only takes that one night for Amy and Terry to realize they want to marry each other, and Gibraltar is even generous enough to let the couple live in his house out on Long Island for a ridiculously low rent even by 1930s standards.
Of course, part of the implied agreement of living out on Long Island is that Terry will settle down and get the sort of job where people commute to and from Manhattan by train and play bridge on the way in and out since they all take the same train in and out every day. Terry has never even played bridge, and still has dreams of going back to being a pilot, even though he doesn't have the money for a plane and there's no way he can support Amy on that sort of income.
Amy, wackily enough, continues to support her husband despite her desire for him to get a more regular job. It's only when he sells some stock and uses the proceeds to try to start that airline business rather than renovating the house and saving for a rainy day that she finally thinks of leaving him. But you just know that the first time there's an emergency, she's going to go running right back to him....
Living on Velvet was released in 1935, and feels like the sort of movie that Warner Bros. would try to force upon Kay Francis to try to get her to ask out of her contract since they knew they were soon to have a new queen of the lot in the form of Bette Davis. Kay, unlike Bette or Olivia de Havilland, didn't rebel much, so she got stuck in some lesser movies, as well as this one with ridiculous character motivations.
However, there are definitely things worth watching in Living on Velvet. Kay Francis was known as a clotheshorse, and at the final party, she's wearing a dress that's extremely backless. It's possibly even more backless than the one that Jean Harlow wore in Dinner at Eight where she tells the joke about not being able to expose her skin, only to turn around and show that backless dress. The other highlight is when Kay and George Brent have that night on the town. Kay recites the "30 days hath September" poem, and when she gets to April, George's character notices the speech impediment and comments on it. The fact that Kay Francis would be willing to do such a scene is a bit surprising.
Living on Velvet is a typical lower-tier programmer from the era. It's certainly not terrible, but there's not all that much special about it.
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