Brief Moment ** (1933, Carole Lombard, Gene Raymond, Donald Cook, Monroe Owsley, Arthur Hohl) –  Classic Movie Review 6760

Director David Burton’s 1933 American pre-Code drama film Brief Moment stars Carole Lombard and Gene Raymond, and is based on the play by S N Behrman. The Depression Era story has a heavily laid-on moral about using your gifts and abilities, whether or not you have money, but it is fascinating as a museum piece.

As a serious drama, it has not dated as well as most of Lombard’s movies and it doesn’t give her the usual room to shine and sparkle. And the men folk are rather dull, some boring, though the male-male relationship of the hero and his best friend is interesting, with its gay subtext.

Lombard stars as worldly nightclub singer Abby Fane, who gets her rich, dissolute slacker playboy Rodney Deane (Gene Raymond) to work for his father Mr William Deane (Reginald Mason). But Abby leaves Rodney when she finds he is back spending his days at the racetrack. Then Rodney changes his name and gets a real job and Abby’s boss reunites  the couple. The two other key actors are Donald Cook, who plays Rodney’s brother Franklin, and Monroe Owsley, who plays Raymond’s best friend Harold Sigrift, both of the characters party-going spend-thrifts.

The stars are Carole Lombard as Abby Fane, Gene Raymond as Rodney Deane and Donald Cook as Franklin Deane, with Monroe Owsley, Arthur Hohl, Irene Ware, Theresa Maxwell Conover, Reginald Mason, Jameson Thomas, Florence Britton, Herbert Evans and Edward LeSaint.

It runs 71 minutes, is released by Columbia Pictures, is written by Edith Fitzgerald and Brian Marlow, and shot in black and white by Ted Tetzlaff, with Art Direction by Stephen Goosson,

Gene Raymond was married to Jeannette MacDonald from 16 June 1937 – 14 January 1965 (her death). They made one movie together: Smilin’ Through (1941).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6760

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