Her Cardboard Lover Reviews

An ancient and overused farcical comedy, this story is handled with as much aplomb as can be expected from Shearer, Taylor, and Sanders, and even with Cukor as director it still falls apart quickly. Shearer is a young, not-too-gay divorcee whose ex-husband is now her ambiguous playboy suitor, Sanders. Shearer hires down-and-out gambler Taylor to pretend to be her gigolo in order to draw Sanders to her, but Taylor falls in love with Shearer and the two wind up together after some confused situations. There's not much to it all, even though this chestnut had been filmed as a silent with Marion Davies in 1928. Jeanne Eagels and later Tallulah Bankhead starred successfully in stage versions and Buster Keaton borrowed the thin plot for his 1932 comedy film THE PASSIONATE PLUMBER. This was Shearer's last film, the end of a six-picture contract she signed with the one and only studio she ever worked for after the death of her husband, one-time MGM mogul Irving Thalberg. She herself picked this moldering story out of the MGM vaults for reasons only Shearer would know. It was a sad swan song to an otherwise illustrious career.