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Absolutely Fantastic

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Sherry Warren (Robert Montgomery) has never been one for marriage or dating only one woman. His reputation is well known, but his charm brings women flocking to him. One such woman is Marcia Townsend (Joan Crawford), a beautiful socialite who keeps company with Sherry knowing full-well the kind of man he is. But she can't help but love him. Finally, their relationship culminates into marriage, and the two prepare to live happily ever after. That is, until Sherry steals his best friend's girl (Gail Patrick), a showgirl in the city. When Marcia finds out, she is disappointed and heartbroken, but her retaliation isn't divorce. Instead, she throws a party for Sherry with some of the ladies of his past and their scorned husbands (Franchot Tone).Filled with witty dialog and talented stars, No More Ladies is a purely entertaining film. It perfectly represents the class and mischief that blended so well during the 1930s. This film managed to get past the censors with topics like adultery and scenes like that of Crawford in her underwear. However, the wealthy characters exude sophistication, so their naughtiness is easily forgiven. After all, "Since when has a lady in bed been an object of repugnance?"

Though the careers of Robert Montgomery, Joan Crawford, and her husband at the time, Franchot Tone's respective careers were not hurt by films like No More Ladies, this was the kind of stuff all three of these players were looking to get out of.There was a truism at MGM back in its heyday. For films where the men wear tuxedos you first get Robert Montgomery. If he turns it down get Franchot Tone. If it's bad enough for Tone to turn it down God help him, Robert Young is stuck with it. So knowing the pecking order and knowing the billing, you can guess who Crawford winds up with.Robert Montgomery plays another of those irrepressible womanizing playboys who's sowed enough wild oats to qualify for a farm subsidy. He's decided to settle down with society girl Joan Crawford who has certain ideas about infidelity and how wrong it is. Montgomery behaves at first, but when he uses their perpetually inebriated friend Charlie Ruggles as an alibi that doesn't hold up, Crawford decides on some revenge with Franchot Tone.No More Ladies is harmless enough and when Edna May Oliver as Joan's grandmother is on the screen, always entertaining. But it was the stuff that MGM was grinding out in its dream factory. It was a case of Montgomery and Tone look great in tuxedos so cast them as urban playboys.Well, both of them did look great, Louis B. Mayer wasn't wrong about that.

Broadway must have had dozens of these drawing room comedies featuring rich, well-dressed people speaking snappily to one another. I say "must have" because Hollywood seems to have adapted all of them. "No More Ladies" is yet another one, and for my money, it's pretty routine. Joan Crawford is a rich girl in love with a cad, played by Robert Montgomery. They marry and he's still a cad. In fact, instead of going to their country house one weekend, he delays his trip and has a dalliance with a woman named Therese. He admits this when he finally shows up in the country. He has little choice when he learns that his alibi, Charlie Ruggles, is actually at the country home. In retaliation, Crawford invites an old beau and a couple of ex-girlfriends to a huge party.The dialogue is witty, the clothes are glamorous, the apartment and house are sumptuous, and the performances are very good. Montgomery was always perfect in these roles, and Crawford is attractive and spars with Montgomery well. Edna Mae Oliver is superb as always. Charles Ruggles plays a somewhat annoying drunk. Gail Patrick, who became Gail Patrick Jackson and produced "Perry Mason," having married Erle Stanley Gardner's agent, does very well as the pretty other woman.This is one of those films where one asks, so why wasn't I crazy about it? The only reason is that there was a sameness about it and nothing really to differentiate it - including the cast - from all the other light, romantic comedies. It's no wonder that Robert Montgomery fought so hard to make "Night Must Fall." He was incredibly bored with these roles. It's understandable.

For sporadic moments of amusement "No More Ladies" is perfectly satisfactory. It has the MGM lusciousness and gleam that the other studios envied. Note the great looking costumes on Joan Crawford, Joan Fontaine, and Gail Patrick wear. The sophistication is showed by the ho-ho-ho jokes that are dropped by the likes of Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Franchot Tone, and Edna Mae Oliver. This is the type of film that has the hero with a name like "Sherry". People go to night clubs, and to fancy restaurants, and take drives in Central Park at night (it is, after all, the 1930s).The film is a bore - it occasionally amuses because of the cast, but the dialog is brittle for the sake of brittle. It is Noel Coward's world but not the real wit he brought - Coward's best plays show a streak of harshness and mutual malevolence mixed with affection in his couples like Amanda and Elyot in "Private Lives". They also tend to be smarter than the characters here.Also the characters are not all that amusing nowadays. Montgomery's cousin is Charlie Ruggles, who is constantly drunk. Ruggles is a favorite comedian to me, but here he was dull. Reginald Denny is around as a British version of Ralph Bellamy - an available alter-suitor to Montgomery for Crawford, and while Denny is elegant (in a skittish sort of way) he is not at all as amusing as Ralph Bellamy was in "His Girl Friday" or The Awful Truth".After watching this film I stopped to consider the three leads. Montgomery was typecast for most of the 1930s (except for an occasional film like "The Big House") as a happy, amoral socialite. Nobody really played the upper-crust cad as well as he did, but he got bored by it, and fought for meatier parts - and after his brilliant Danny in "Night Must Fall" he got them. Crawford reveled in parts like the hard-working lower class girl fighting her way to happiness, but she did many "socialite" parts as well. Along came "The Women", and she played a villainous social climber. After that came the really hard-boiled darker parts of the 1940s and 1950s like "Mildred Pierce" and "A Woman's Face" and "Flamingo Road". Tone, in 1935, would start having roles like Bryam in "Mutiny On The Bounty" - like Montgomery he would play his wealthy cads, but he would be able to step into nastier, meatier roles like "The Phantom Lady" and "The Man On The Eiffel Tower". When one talks to their fans about the great work of these three actors, it is the films where they played characters with demons after them that are recalled. Few really recall a piece of meaningless cotton candy like "No More Ladies" regarding any of them.