No Time for Love

Many years back, TCM ran the movie No Time for Love. I watched it, but a search of the blog claims I never did a post on it. Anyhow, a few years back I bought a box set of Claudette Colbert movies, and No Time for Love was on it. I remembered the plot, although not the title; now that I've watched it again recently, it's a good time to do a post on it.

Colbert plays Katherine Grant, a photographer who works for one of those Life-type magazines: human interest photojournalism and the like. She's a very good photographer, if unorthodox in her shot and framing selections, and that quality is why her publisher Fulton (Paul McGrath) has kept her around and fallen in love with her to the point that they're thinking of getting married.

Katherine's next assignment is to go underground, where a tunnel is being built and photograph the blue-collar men making that tunnel. It's difficult work, as the tunnelers have to go through a compression chamber on the way in and out to help keep mud from seeping in to the works while they're underway. (Washington Roebling, who designed the Brooklyn Bridge, got a serious case of the bends when an emergency forced him to leave one of these chambers early.) Anyhow, these men, led by Jim Ryan (Fred MacMurray), are the sort of rough-and-tumble men you'd expect at a worksite like this.

Indeed, their manners seem quite coarse to Katherine, who eventually tells Jim she's got a bedroom chair with more character than him. But when their work hard, play hard attitude results in letting off some steam with fisticuffs. Katherine takes a picture of it, thinking it would be a visually arresting addition to the magazine story. Jim objects, since getting in a fight like this will likely get him suspended from his job.

Katherine agrees not to publish it, but she doesn't destroy the negatives, and somehow a copy of the photo makes its way to the editors, who understandably like it and publish it not realizing the consequences. Poor Jim gets suspended, and Katherine feels bad about it, even though the two supposedly don't like each other.

I say supposedly, because Katherine is clearly taken by Jim's masculinity, as we see in what is probably the movie's highlight, a ridiculous dream sequence in which Katherine imagines Jim as some sort of superhero. She's falling in love with Jim but doesn't want to admit it. To try to disabuse herself of the notion, she decides to hire Jim as an assistant, telling herself that she's doing him a favor by giving him a job during his suspension.

It's fairly predictable where No Time for Love is going to end up, but it's certainly a well-enough made movie from all involved. It's only programmer length at about 83 minutes, so it doesn't overstay its welcome. But Colbert and MacMurray are appealin together, while the supporting cast does OK, including Ilka Chase as Colbert's sister and June Havoc as a chorus girl who seems more like the social class of person the MacMurray character would be interested in.

I'm glad that a movie like No Time for Love wound up on a box set. It's definitely a nice little romantic comedy.