The Last of Miss Hoskins

Greer Garson was another of the stars honored in Summer Under the Stars this past August, as I mentioned back then because it finally gave me the chance to watch The Valley of Decision. Another of her movies that aired that day that I hadn't watched before was The Law and the Lady. So, I recorded it, and recently I finally got around to watching it.

The opening credits mention that it's based on the play The Last of Mrs. Cheyney by Frederick Lonsdale, a play that had already been turned into a movie twice by MGM before World War II. Five years after the war, MGM decided that a third version of it was necessary, although opening it up and changing it quite a bit, especially the names. Here, the Cheyney character is one Miss Jane Hoskins, played by Greer Garson. She's working as a maid at the turn of the century to a wealthy London lady, Sybil Minden. She's married to Lord Minden (Michael Wilding), the elder of twin brothers and the one who inherited most of the family wealth. Younger twin Nigel Duxbury is a bit of a cad, but shows up at the Minden house regularly.

That's more of a way to introduce our two leads: Nigel steals a pair of Lady Minden's earrings one evening, and Lady Minden draws an obvious, if flawed, conclusion that it was Jane, since Jane is pretty much the only one who has access to Lady Minden's jewelry box. Lady Minden calls in Scotland Yard and wants to have Jane arrested, at least until Nigel produces the earrings. It's clear that Jane can't work for Lady Minden any more, but it's Nigel who suggests that his sister-in-law may have slandered Jane, so he blackmails Lady Minden into an agreement: give Jane £200 in addition to good references.

Jane figures she's going to try to become a lady on that money, by going to America where she has a cousin, and marrying wealthy. But it doesn't quite work that way, as Nigel sort of cons her into becoming the sort of couple feigning wealth and going to the upper-class vacation places on the Continent, and coming up with schemes to separate the truly wealthy people from their money, although you have to wonder whether they're going to run into somebody they've already conned. After a while, they get all the way to San Francisco.

Here we finally get the conflict and something approaching the original play. Jane, masquerading as Lady Loverly, and Nigel meet a wealthy and thoroughly American woman Julia (Marjorie Main, who could never have played British). In addition to being wealthy, she's got jewels, and Nigel would like to steal some of them. Nigel goes to work for her, and Jane becomes friends with her. But by this time Nigel has been falling in love with Jane, and Jane's friendship with Julia makes Jane think about not stealing the jewels. Also, Jane is being wooed by one of Julia's friends, Juan (Fernando Lamas). How is the script going to resolve its conflicts and satisfy the Production Code?

The Law and the Lady is the sort of movie that, in earlier years, MGM could have done really well, especially if the production had been conceived as one of MGM's prestige movies. By this point, however, Greer Garson was getting long in the tooth, while the prestige productions tended to be the color musicals from the Freed Unit. A fair amount of the MGM gloss is still here, but you have to wonder whether the movie could have been a lot better.

Still, the production is more than competent enough, if a bit old-fashioned, and definitely worth one watch.