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Pretty Good

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This is a pleasant little comedy but a minor work coming as it does from Noel Coward. Perhaps his name on the script was part of Norma's decision to participate in this instead of the other films offered that she rejected to do this one. It certainly has an estimable cast: Melvyn Douglas an expert as this sort of fluffy comedy, Gail Patrick and Lee Bowman both able performers and a handful, Connie Gilchrist, Marjorie Main, Norma Varden, Alan Mowbray, Florence Bates etc., of the best character actors MGM had under contract. The main problem with this and perhaps part of the reason it tanked on initial release is that even all dressed up in fancy 40's fashions this is a relic of the sort of drawing room confections that were popular a decade earlier and had fallen out of favor by the war years. Unfortunately without Irving Thalberg's strong guiding hand to pick the right properties for her Norma's script sense failed her. She had done well with her previous film "Escape" but would blunder again with her follow up to this her last film "Her Cardboard Lover". Still taken as is without all the back story an enjoyable trifle but unmemorable.

Why this film is so maligned I will never figure out. The script is witty. Leonard's direction sparkles and the acting by the charismatic Norma Shearer and Melvyn Douglas is a delight. Certainly it is MGM glossy fluff but it is so entertaining. Something about a penniless princess and the playboy she falls in love with. However it does not matter with these two stars at their peak. Norma is beautiful in her second to last film. I wonder if this film really flopped since box-office numbers are not available. Now Norma's last film "Her Cardboard Lover" is terrible but this charmer does not deserve such a hideous reputation. The forgotten Gail Patrick is also a delight as Norma's competition for Douglas.

There isn't much to say about WE WERE DANCING except that it was the second of Norma Shearer's career blunders in 1942 which she should not have taken and instead chosen the better roles of Charlotte Vale in NOW VOYAGER or the title role in MRS MINIVER which would have suited her fine, allowing her to wield her own mannered style of dramatic emotion with ease and would have quite definitely secured her Oscar pull. Based, albeit loosely, on two Noel Coward plays, this is the story of Vicki Wilmoriska who falls into romance with Nicki Prax, but events conspire against them. She catches Nicki with former squeeze Linda Wayne (the always aloof Gail Patrick), and decides to go into the arms of Hubert Taylor, but just as she is ready to marry Hubert, guess who pops back into her life?Such is the stuff of this by-the-numbers fluff that holds little water or interest in a time when war dramas were the norm and eccentric socialites were dead and buried as Hollywood was concerned. Norma and the cast seem like they belong in the early 30s, not its time, and no one rises above this bad material, effectively teetering Norma's career right over the edge of the abyss, to which she would fall come the release of her next movie HER CARDBOARD LOVER. It just shows what happens when an actress refuses to age gracefully and begin to play parts more appropriate her age (she was forty). She refused to play a mother (odd, considering she played one in THE WOMEN) and was reputedly disinterested in acting altogether, which is probably why she decided to make this forgettable film, but then again, other actresses have ended their careers in worse films than this. Only for die-hard fans of her filmography, and part of a retrospective shown on August 25 on TCM as its salute to her body of work.

In 1936, MGM Producer, Irving Thalberg died, leaving his widow, Norma Shearer, to pick her own scripts. An example of Miss Shearer's lack of good judgment is her appearance in this dud that she chose to do rather than play Kay Miniver in "Mrs. Miniver," which won Greer Garson an Academy Award. Based on Noel Coward's "Tonight at 8:30," critics called this comedy as sparking as "flat champagne." Norma Shearer made only one more film after this and retired from the screen at age 40.