Hard to Get ** (1938, Dick Powell, Olivia de Havilland, Charles Winninger) – Classic Movie Review 10,194

Director Ray Enright’s 1938 screwball romantic comedy Hard to Get stars Dick Powell, who gets one hit song (‘You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby’) to croon as Bill Davis, an architect working as a gas station attendant at a petrol station. He feels the rough edge of spoiled young heiress Maggie Richards (Olivia de Havilland)’s tongue after he won’t give her credit and forces her to make beds and clean rooms to work her bill off. Of course then they fall in love.

Powell and de Havilland are pleasing company, and form a good, lively team, while also helping out a bumpy tale are Charles Winninger and Isabel Jeans as Maggie’s parents, New York oil magnate Ben Richards and his wife Mrs Richards, Bonita Granville as their youngest daughter Connie, Melville Cooper as Winninger’s valet Case, Thurston Hall as Winninger’s banker business associate Atwater, Penny Singleton (who later played Blondie) as the maid Hattie, Grady Sutton as Maggie’s suitor Stanley Potter and Allen Jenkins as Powell’s dim helper Roscoe.

Pleasant though it all is, and often quite funny, it is hard to get very enthusiastic, though. It is lightweight material for the serious-minded Olivia de Havilland, but she does it well. Also on the plus side, the film moves fast and it runs only 82 minutes.

‘Sonny Boy’ (sung by Dick Powell, impersonating Al Jolson in blackface) and ‘There’s a Sunny Side to Every Situation’ (sung a cappella by Dick Powell) are other songs on parade.

Also in the cast are John Ridgely, Granville Bates, Jack Mower, Irving Bacon, Sidney Bracey, Nat Carr, Chester Clute, Jimmy Conlin, Edgar Dearing, John Harron, Ben Hendricks Jr, Arthur Hoyt, Paul Panzer, Herbert Rawlinson, Dick Rush, Cliff Saum, Nella Walker, Rosella Towns, George Kirby and Lottie Williams.

It is written by Jerry Wald, Maurice Leo and Richard Macaulay, from a screen story by Wally Kline and Joseph Schrank, based on the 1932 story Stuffed Shirt by Stephen Morehouse Avery in Hearst’s International-Cosmopolitan.

RIP Olivia de Havilland, who died on 26 July 2020, aged 104.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,194

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