Somebody or other's past

With TCM showing only movies from Warner Bros. and its subsidiaries this month, that meant that the beginning of the month included several lesser-known movies. Now, I've been blogging long enough that I've actually done posts on most of those movies, but one I hadn't done was My Past. With that in mind, I sat down to watch it and do a post on it here.

Nominally, the character who is supposed to have a past is Doree Macy, played by Bebe Daniels. She's a Broadway actress, in an era when the trope was that a lot of young ladies in that profession were looking to snag a rich husband. She's still not married, although she's had a well-to-do -- and single -- businessman named John Thornley (Lewis Stone) eying her and even inviting her on to his yacht, in a group of both his and her friends. However, she doesn't particularly love Thornley. Not that she's got anything against him; he's a nice enough older man, but she just doesn't love him.

One of Thornley's friends is actually his co-worker, Bob Byrne (Ben Lyon). One day after getting off Thornley's yacht, she steps into Byrne's limo instead of Thornley's, and the two share a ride together. These two immediately fall in love. There's a problem, however, with is that Bob is married. His wife Consuela is off in Paris, and with the two spouses traveling separately, the assumption is that the marriage is on the rocks and the right think to do would be to get a divorce, especially if Consuela falls in love with somebody in Paris.

Doree's best friend Marion (Joan Blondell) that however nice a guy like Bob is, he's never really going to get that divorce once Consuela comes back. And what if Consuela isn't willing to grant Bob a divorce anyway? There wouldn't me as much of a movie is Doree listened to Marion's advice, so she keeps seeing Bob even though it's obvious Consuela is eventually going to return from Paris.

Sure enough, Consuela comes back, and earlier than expected, which forces Bob to break things off suddenly. He's not necessarily happy about it, but there are appearances to be kept up. Worse, Bob realizes he should have been more faithful to Consuela and decides that he's not going to talk about divorce after all.

With this in mind, Doree decides to settle for Thornley. But there's a catch in that Thornley has figured out that Doree doesn't really love him. Worse, he's learned over the course of her relationship with Bob that he no longer loves Doree either. They could be platonic friends even in spite of the age difference, but a marriage is going to be a disaster.

My Past is the sort of movie that probably appealed to a certain demographic back when it was released in 1931. Ninety-plus years on, however, the movie comes across as dated, both in terms of the storyline and in terms of the acting. This isn't to say that the movie is bad; instead, it's more that it's another of those movies that is going to be hard for people not really into old movies to get into. If you were trying to introduce such a person to pre-Code dramas, there are a lot more interesting movies out there to do it with.