British writer Somerset Maugham is one who seems to have had a surprising amount of his work turned into movies, at least when it comes to contemporary writers. A movie that I recorded because it sounded mildly interesting and I'm always up for an early talkie, but that I didn't realize was based on a Maugham play until seeing the opening credits, was Strictly Unconventional.
Tyrell Davis plays Arnold Champion-Cheney, a man who 40 years later might have been up for Monthy Python's "Upper Class Twit of the Year" sketch: living in a large manor house and insisting that everything be just so, as an opening scene with an antique chair he just bought shows. God forget anyone ever get even a speck of dust on it, much less sit on it. So of course everybody else wants to sit there not realizing it's an expensive antique. The scene doesn't have much to do with the main plot other than characterization to show what kind of man Arnold is and why his wife Elizabeth (Catherine Dale Owen) acts the way she does.
We first meet Elizabeth while she's going horseback riding. But she's not riding with Arnold; instead she's accompanied by a visitor from Canada, Ted (Paul Cavanaugh). In the original play, Ted went off to Malaya to run a plantation, but here he's Canadian. He's not well to do like Arnold, but he's handsome, virile, and most definitely not a twit. So it's easy to see why Catherine would be attracted to him. So much so that she's thinking of leading Arnold for Ted, although the question of whether Arnold would grant a divorce is an open one.
Arnold is also dismayed by the news that his mom is back in the UK. Three decades earlier, Mom, Lady Catherine (Alison Skipworth) walked out on Dad, Clive (Lewis Stone), to get married to someone she considered no so much a stick in the mud in the form of Lord Porteus (Ernest Torrence). They've traveled the world for the past 30 years, but now that they're back in the UK, Elizabeth wants to see them, to the point that Elizabeth has invited them to the big party that's going to be held in that manor house. It's also at that party that Elizabeth plans to run off with Ted at the end of the night.
But then Elizabeth meets Lady Catherine, who is no longer glamorous at all, and Lord Porteous who is even less so. Lady Catherine was shunned by polite society for pretty much abandoning her husband, and she certainly hasn't aged gracefully, trying to fight it every step of the way and losing that fight badly. She's a sign to poor Elizabeth of what Elizabeth faces for the rest of her life if she runs off with Ted. SO what will Elizabeth do?
Strictly Unconventional is another one of those movies from the very early days of sound when the studios were buying up the rights to short-run plays, especially plays set among the upper social classes. It's an interesting enough idea, although as the movie adapts it it's an idea that fees like it doesn't have enough meat on its bones. It runs under an hour (although it was edited down from 72 minutes after its original release) but even then there's that very slow opening scene with Arnold as well as a bridge-playing scene that typifies how Hollywood portrayed the upper classes in a way that doesn't necessarily make for successful entertainment.
While I certainly didn't hate Strictly Unconventional, it's also definitely not something that would come to mind when it comes to recommending any genre to people. There are better upper-class stories; better play adaptations; and better Somerset Maugham adaptations out there.
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