utgard14
Spoiled rich girl Olivia de Havilland fills up her car at a gas station where aspiring architect Dick Powell works. She doesn't have any cash to pay for the gas so Powell makes her work off the debt. She sets about trying to get even with Powell by leading him on and tricking him into pitching his dream idea for a chain of auto courts to her father and his friend, who she knows will never give Powell's idea a fair shot. Things change when she inevitably develops feeling for him.Mean-spirited at times but mostly funny screwball comedy. The leads are great. Also, love seeing Bonita Granville, Penny Singleton, and Allen Jenkins. Helps if you haven't seen other, better screwball comedies from the period. If you have, this will definitely have an air of familiarity about it. Still, it's a good one. Powell sings a couple of songs, including "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" and a jarringly out-of-place blackface number. There's one ridiculous part where, as part of a gag by de Havilland's father, Powell is tricked into opening a door that leads onto a ledge several stories up. It's implied this trick has been used before on others. I'm sure we're not supposed to look into this too closely but that part kind of bothered me since Powell very easily could have fallen to his death. Some gag.
MartinHafer
When this film begins, you find that Olivia DeHavilland plays a thoroughly obnoxious spoiled brat--too spoiled to be a likable character, as I think they should have toned down her character a bit. Anyway, she stops at a gas station and fills up but has no money. No matter in her mind, as she instructs the attendant (Dick Powell) to 'just charge it'. However, the company does not allow charges and Powell cannot just trust her for the amount, as it will come out of his paycheck should she not return to pay him later. On top of that, she behaves with such a strong sense of entitlement, it's not surprising he won't let her go until she works off her debt! Eventually, Olivia works off the debt and returns to her rich father (Charles Winninger) and insists that Daddy have Powell fired. Instead, Winninger and Olivia eventually decide to spend much of the film toying with Powell and behaving like total jerks in the process. I really think they should have made this family a bit kookier and a lot less mean-spirited and selfish--as it handicapped the film significantly. On the plus side, Powell is excellent--with a few nice songs (I usually hate songs) and seemingly effortless acting. He was at his best here--and DeHavilland, who is usually one of my very favorites, is in a film that is simply beneath her extraordinary talents. No wonder she eventually sued Warner Brothers to get out of her contract!!! The bottom line is that the film has lots of nice moments and is likable at times. But, with such annoying characters to undo the plot, it fails where it SHOULD have been a winner. A simple re-write would have done a world of good with this film.By the way, while I liked Powell in the film, I was shocked to see him do a number in black-face. Uggh!!! The pain!Also, get a load of James Finlayson playing a bit part. It's nice to see him in a role outside of his usual Laurel & Hardy appearances.
lugonian
HARD TO GET (Warner Brothers, 1938), directed by Ray Enright, is another one of many formula fluff comedies capitalizing on the current trend of spoiled rich girl and the common working man. Not quite Frank Capra material, but something along that line.The spoiled heiress in question is Margaret "Maggie" Richards (Olivia De Havilland), who happens to be young, pretty and bored. She has a sophisticated mother, Henrietta (Isabel Jeans); a business-tycoon father, Ben (Charles Winninger), who spends most of his time doing physical fitness by wrestling with his valet (Melville Cooper) behind office doors and at home; and a bratty kid sister, Connie (Bonita Granville). Because she doesn't want to go to New Port with her family, Maggie storms out of the mansion and takes the convertible. Running low on gasoline, she stops at the Federal Oil and Gas Company, a gas-station motel, to fuel up, where she is served its owner, Bill Davis (Dick Powell), and his partner, Roscoe (Allen Jenkins). Because Maggie accidentally left her purse at home and is unable to pay the $3.48 gas debt, she tells Bill to charge it. Because she's a total stranger, and been duped before, Bill puts this snooty customer to work cleaning out cabins and making the beds. Although Maggie tries sneaking away several times, Bill outsmarts her. After doing her chores, Maggie, resenting Bill's actions, returns home demanding her father to have the gas station attendant fired. Old Man Richards surprises his daughter by agreeing with the young man's actions, and that she is now a young woman who should now look out for herself. This she does, by plotting a vicious scheme getting even with Bill. Returning to the gas station the following morning, she pretends to be sorry, and sweet talks him into taking her out to a dinner date. During those few hours with him, Maggie learns Bill to be an ambitious architect having designed an auto court for a proposed chain of them across the country. What he badly lacks is money and a financier to back him. Maggie suggests Ben Richards (not telling him that he's her father but that of being his maid), and gives him the secret password, "Spouter," so to get past the secretary. Each time Bill goes to the office, he gets thrown out, physically. In spite of everything, Bill is not discouraged, going through extremes (disguising himself as a cleaning lady) to have one of these financial backers examine his blueprints. Once he learns Maggie has played him for a practical joke, he gives up. It's now up to Maggie to amend her ways, and when she does, Bill is gone and nowhere to be found.Occasionally labeled a musical, HARD TO GET is actually a straight comedy with three (really two) songs inserted, crooned by Dick Powell only so briefly. The first, "There'a a Sunny Side to Every Situation" is heard only through a few verses by Powell minus any underscoring. The second tune , "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby," crooning to De Havilland on a canoe ride in Central Park, is a song standard composed by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer. What fitting lyrics to proclaim De Havilland's beauty. The third and final is an old one, "Sonny Boy" originally introduced by Al Jolson in THE SINGING FOOL (1928). While Jolson sang it for sentiment, Powell (disguised in black-face passing as a member of a band) sings it for laughs. His rendition almost sounds like Jolson himself, performing it to a point where the guests look on confusingly.HARD TO GET may not as famous as the other "screwball" comedies from that era, but it does have some bright moments. Penny Singleton as Hattie, a daffy maid, gets one during an amusing dinner sequence. Switching roles with Maggie, pretending to be the débutante, Singleton displays her ability in comic timing where she becomes responsible for making the proposed dinner party a near disaster. Following the dinner, Powell quips, "That dame... she should be parked on Edgar Bergen's other knee." Although some portions of HARD TO GET might be a trifle slow, it's redeemed by a construction site sequence where Old Man Richards and his valet find the only way to get to speak to Davis, working 40 flights up, is by hanging onto a steal beam lifted over the city streets. While this is obviously done with rear projection screen, it get by realistically.As with most comedies during this period, HARD TO GET gets great support by familiar character actors ranging from Grady Sutton, Granville Bates, Nella Walker and Vera Lewis to Arthur Housman doing one of his many drunk interpretations. Charles Winninger, a Hollywood reliable, gives one of his many business tycoons and lovable father-type performances that has made his famous. Melville Cooper provides some really droll comedy relief with his constant quipping of "Amazing!" HARD TO GET is further evidence of the Warner Brothers musical with lavish dance numbers by Busby Berkeley and Warren and Dubin tunes becoming a thing of the past. Powell continues to sing a song or two, but by 1938 was concentrated more as a light comedy actor in routine assignments. De Havilland, best known for her numerous adventure films opposite Errol Flynn, would appear in more comedies of this sort, but like Powell, she proved her ability in assuming dramatic roles in the changing times of the 1940s.The 80 minute presentation of HARD TO GET can be seen whenever presented on Turner Classic Movies. Amazing! (**1/2)
