Over the Moon

Merle Oberon was TCM's Star of the Month some time back, which gave me the opportunity to record a couple of movies that I hadn't seen before. One of them was Over the Moon, an early Technicolor movie out of Britain.

Oberon stars as Jane Benson, a young woman living in Yorkshire at a time when Yorkshire was a bit of a backwater. She's helping take care of a rich distant relative since she doesn't have all that much money of her own. She's got a local doctor, Freddie Jarvis (Rex Harrison), interested in her to the point that he's about to sell his local practice for £5,000 in part so he can pay for a honeymoon in Monte Carlo before trying to get a practice in London after the wedding.

And then the relative dies. He had owned coal mines and, unbenknownst to anybody, bequeaths his entire estate to Jane, a sum of £18 million, which was vast for about 1938 when the movie started production. (Despite the political situation in Europe at the time, especially considering the movie didn't get released in the UK until after World War II started, there's no mention of politics in the movie.) This new-found wealth causes problems. Jane has never had any wealth, and would like to live a little, if not a lot. After all, being worth eight figures in 1938 pounds sterling is nothing to sneeze at. But Freddie is displeased with it, because he's got the good sense to realize that this sudden wealth is going to cause issues in their relationship.

Meanwhile, a couple of grifters show up in Yorkshire claiming to be distant relatives of Jane's from London. They claim they're going to look out for her interests, but it should be clear to any normal human being that these are not people to be trusted. But they plan to take Jane down to Monte Carlo in search of that wealthy husband and have just the man for her. As for Freddie, he goes off to Switzerland to work at one of those alpine private clinics for the wealthy that were a thing in the pre-war years. He becomes quite the hit with the ladies, although he's oblivious to the extent to which they moon over him.

When Jane gets to Monte Carlo, she has not two, but three men pursuing her. Two of them are the con-artist partners of the women claiming they're trying to "help" Jane, while the third is man with a phony name (Robert Douglas) who is in fact the son of one of Britain's wealthiest men and worth even more than Jane. He knows that wealth brings as many problems as it solves and is there to warn her. Surprisingly, nobody recognizes him as the son of an extremely wealthy man.