Sometimes, a movie gets made where you think it's going to be in one genre, but winds up being something else. Another example of this that I recently watched off my DVR was The First Hundred Years. (That, in and of itself, is a rather odd title for the movie since it doesn't seem to have anything to do with 100 years of, well, whatever.)
Robert Mongtomery plays David Conway. As the movie opens, he shows up at the New York office of theatrical agent Harry Borden (Warren William). He's looking for his wife Lynn (Virginia Bruce), who is not an actress but Harry's second-in-command, and good at what she does. In fact, she's been doing it long enough that she started under her maiden name and still uses that professionally. Not only that, but she makes enough money that the couple can afford a ridiculous Manhattan apartment and fine cars and dresses and whatnot.
This kind of bothers David, who has long felt that he's not paying his fair share into the relationship. He's a nautical engineer, designing yachts. However, the good shipbuilding jobs are not in New York. He's here to tell Lynn he's got a promotion lined up that is going to bring in more money -- $15K a year, which is more than Cary Grant's Mr. Blandings reveals his salary to be a decade later in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House -- but that the job requires working out of New Bedford, MA. This presents an obvious problem for the late 1930s when the best technology could do was the telephone and there was no good way for couples to have a good relationship working this far apart.
Deep down inside, the two still love each other, but just don't know how to work through the issue, since Lynn still wants to work. Understandable by 2026 standards, although in the late 1930s this would have been seen as a bit scandalous. Further complicating matters is that Lynn, being good at what she does, is prized by Borden. She also signed a five-year contract to work with him just six months earlier, and getting out of that might be problematic. Borden certainly doesn't want her to get out of it, instead actively interfering with the help of his lawyer Walker (Alan Dinehart).
The differences between husband and wife are irreconcilable enough that the two separate, with Borden really intimating that the couple should divorce. Indeed, each of the spouses is seen with another person out to dinner at the same club, with all of them (including Binnie Barnes as David's companion Claudia) going to the other man's apartment for coffee and a nightcap. Lynn is torn between what to do with her husband, and what Borden wants her to do.
And then Lynn's uncle Dawson (Harry Davenport) shows up in New York from where he's going to be leaving on a round-the-world cruise. He doesn't know yet about the marital difficulties, so Lynn and David play at still being happy together. Dawson is no dummy and realizes something is up, and he tries to get everybody to see sense, while Borden is still trying to keep Lynn professionally. (As far as I could tell, he had no romantic designs on Lynn.) This being a 1930s movie, there is a happy ending in a way that would have made sense to 1930s audiences but may annoy audiences of today.
The bigger problem I had with The First Hundred Years wasn't the ending, but the fact that it's taking itself much too seriously. It's trying to be a drama, but the material just doesn't work, and you expect comedy to break out, especially with a lead like Robert Montgomery. Think something like The Awful Truth the previous year, which was about divorce but was nothing but comedy at heart. Montgomery was certainly capable of serious drama, but this script doesn't help him. So overall, The First Hundred Years is more of a historical curiosity that we should look at as a product of what values people in the late 1930s had.
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