Fashions of 1934

My posts here have been a bit more about more recent movies for a little while now, which is mostly because I've been seeing some of the more recent stuff that I have on my DVR showing up on one movie channel or another, leading me to want to do a post on it. Something rather older that I had on my DVR that got a Warner Archive release is Fashions of 1934. As always, I made a point of sitting down to watch it and do a post on here.

William Powell, nearing the end of his time at Warner Bros. before going to MGM to make The Thin Man, plays Sherwood Nash. As the film opens, Sherwood is one of those 1930s stockbrokers that were common in movies of the day, the sort who thinks he's got a deal for you but is really just trying to pull the wool over your eyes. He doesn't have a deal, however, as his phones are being repossessed, forcing Sherwood and his partner Snap (Frank McHugh) to go into another line of business.

Fortunately for them, they run into Lynn Mason (Bette Davis, stuck in a platinum blonde wig for the first time in her career). She's a fashion sketch artist, one who clearly has a lot of talent, but unfortunately doesn't have a job. International copyright protections weren't quite as well honored as they are nowadays, so Sherwood comes up with the idea of getting the designs for high fashion straight from Paris, before the people who actually paid big bucks for the right to use them in the US can get them. Obviously, when the knockoffs show up on the market, the legitimate licensees are pissed off.

Sherwood is forced to decamp to Paris along with Snap and Lynn, with a plan to institute some scheme or another to get them involved in the world of high fashion, but the big idea only hits them when they pass one of those street vendors selling vintage books. One of them has historical drawings, and Lynn, having an eye for drawings since she's a sketch artist herself, realizes that it's drawings like this that have been the inspiration for Paris designer Oscar Baroque (Reginald Owen).

Lynn starts creating such imitation drawings herself, but complicating matters by stamping the established designers' names on such images. Sherwood discovers that Baroque's girlfriend, the Grand Duchess Alix (Verree Teasdale), is an impostor, and somebody he new back in Hoboken in the 1930s. Sherwood uses this first to get Baroque to make the designs for a fashion revue, and then to get out of trouble once Baroque discovers that Lynn has been forging his signature.

Fashions of 1934 came across to me as much the sort of movie William Powell was making a lot of during his time at Warner Bros.: Powell as the suave man who may not be quite so honest, getting himself into a range of situations that may not be quite so legal. (I doubt it was deliberate that Powell switched studios just as the Production Code was going into strict enforcement, but it does seem like a very lucky move on his part.) This time, however, the Powell story has a bit of a musical grafted on it, at least in the form of a big production number choreographed by Busby Berkeley. It's an interesting pairing that doesn't quite always mesh.

I also felt like it was easy to see why Powell might want more of a challenge than being typecast at Warner Bros. Also, you can see from roles like this why Bette Davis would go on to stand up to the studio and flee to London. There's a fair bit here to like, but also a fair bit that feels like it's running out of steam. Still, despite the flaws, Fashions of 1934 is definitely worth a watch.