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Dec 18, 2018 Web Exclusive By Stephen Danay

One aspect of the Golden Age Hollywood studio system that’s fun for modern audiences - likely more so than it was for the cast and crews of the time - is the myriad combinations of actors and actresses that resulted from stars being contracted to make anywhere up to half a dozen films a year. As enjoyable as it was for successful pairings to result in long strings of movies - think Bogart and Bacall, Hepburn and Tracy, Astaire and Rogers - it’s equally interesting to find one-off pairings between two famous stars and sample the chemistry.

Such is the case with Made for Each Other, a 1939 David O. Selznick production directed by John Cromwell. It follows the trials and tribulations of a newly-married middle class couple played by James Stewart and Carole Lombard. The film is the last of Stewart’s early leading roles; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Shop Around the Corner and The Philadelphia Story would follow over the next two years, cementing him as an Oscar-winning superstar. Lombard had received a Best Actress nomination for My Man Godfrey in 1936 and was already regarded as one of the most popular comedic actresses of the day. Her marriage to Clark Gable two months after the release of Made for Each Other made her one half of the most glamorous couple in Hollywood. Stewart’s boyish Midwestern charms and Lombard’s game zaniness had the potential for a terrific screwball lark.

Unfortunately, Made for Each Other is a misguided slog, beginning as a leaden comedy before transforming into an overcooked melodrama. The film makes an honest attempt at depicting a warts-and-all marriage, positioning itself as a realistic antidote to the then popular genre of cartoonish screwball comedies, but shoots itself in the foot at every turn. Rather than showing Stewart and Lombard’s meet-cute - something they both excelled at - we are instead treated to a scene of Stewart loudly explaining their courtship to his mostly deaf boss. The scene does allow for Stewart to indulge in his polite over-annunciation, and his boss is played by delightful character actor Charles Coburn, but it’s mostly a microcosm of how the film consistently misjudges both its comedic and dramatic scenes. The editing and staging is rudimentary and the minimal scoring gives many of the comedic scenes the dead air that is reminiscent of the first sound films from earlier in the decade. It’s so tiresome that one practically cheers when their baby develops a mortal illness, transforming the back third of the film into a melodramatic race against time in which an antidote must be flown from Colorado to New York through a snowstorm by a plucky pilot.

The only scene that feels wholly genuine is the breaking point at the top of the third act, right before the baby gets sick. Stewart and Lombard are at a crowded New Year’s Eve party, desperately attempting to feign merriment before sadly admitting to each other that their marriage is crumbling. It ends with a tracking shot of Lombard pushing tearfully through the crowd toward the camera, tears in her eyes as everyone around her laughs and cheers. It’s a moving, honest gem of a scene, hinting at the compelling drama that could have been if the filmmakers had picked a tone and stuck with it.

(www.kinolorber.com/product/made-for-each-other-restored-edition-blu-ray)