Another of the movies that I recorded off of TCM because it sounded interesting was the 1936 Robert Montgomery vehicle Piccadilly Jim. Having watched it, now I can do a review on it for you.
Montgomery plays the title character, James Crocker Jr. He's an American-born artist living in London and making a living as a cartoonist doing caricatures for the London newspapers. He's apparently able to make a pretty darn good living at it, too, since he's got a butler in Bayliss (Eric Blore), and is also able to support his father, James Sr. (Frank Morgan). Dad is an actor, or was an actor at some point in the past; he doesn't seem to have worked in quite some time and everybody calls him a ham.
However, Dad has met a nice American woman, Eugenia Willis (Billie Burke), a widow traveling with her sister Nesta Pett (Cora Witherspoon) and Nesta's husband Herbert (Grant Mitchell). Dad has fallen in love with Eugenia, but unsurprisingly Nesta has the good sense to wonder if the elder Crocker isn't the sort of smooth operator looking for a mark to marry and live off the wife's money. (Haven't the Petts heard of a pre-nup?) Dad tells them his son is a successful artist, so the Petts would like to meet him which will also serve as a way to judge whether Dad is in fact suitable for Eugenia.
Meanwhile, Jim Jr. goes out for a night on the town, which I'd guess would also serve as one of the ways he finds inspiration for the people he wants to caricature. But this time, while out, he meets a lovely young woman named Ann (Madge Evans). He falls in love with her, but she's not so quick to return the feelings. That's because there are several things he doesn't know about Ann, with the first of them bein that she is in fact engaged to another man, Lord Priory (Ralph Forbes). Jim Jr. keeps pursuing Ann, into the next day, with the result that he winds up tipsy at his meeting with the Petts, and they rightly reject the Crockers. This especially after finding out that young Jim is just a sketch artist.
The Petts go off to the Riviera, and this is the other thing we learn about Ann. She's actually the niece of Nesta and Eugenia, but Jim Jr. still doesn't know this. He, having been rebuffed by the Petts, decides to create a new comic strip lampooning the sort of rich Americans abroad that the Petts are, and this cartoon, From Rags to Riches, becomes a huge hit. Eventually, the Petts return from the Continent, and find that they're the butt of all jokes since everybody in London recognizes them as the source material for the comic strip. However, they -- and most importantly Ann -- are unaware of who the real artist behind the strip is.
Piccadilly Jim is based on a story by P.G. Wodehouse that was written 20 years before this movie adaptation. In fact, this isn't the first adaptation, as there was a silent version. There has since been, about 20 years ago, another adaptation of the material. The 1936 version of Piccadilly Jim works well, but it feels closer a lot like a programmer in tone. MGM had Robert Montgomery available, and had the rights to the story (they had planned to turn the material into a musical), and so they put two and two together.
Robert Montgomery is every bit the professional here, as is the rest of the cast. They all put in solid performances that make for a film that works, although at the end of the movie's running time it's not something that's spectacularly memorable. But when the studios were churning out as many movies as they were, "workmanlike" was part of the point. And even workmanlike work from the big studios made for a reasonably good movie.
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