Depression-era audiences evidently relished the foibles and follies of the idle rich as an escape from cold reality in the 1930's. However, the nonsense on display in "Love Before Breakfast" may have made a poor, but rational, daily existence preferable. Wacky Carole Lombard is engaged to Cesar Romero, but Romero's boss, Preston Foster, is after Lombard, while Foster's lady friend, a countess played by Betty Lawford, pursues Romero. Foster has unlimited funds and power to pursue his romantic interest, and he gets Romero out of the way by transferring him to Japan aboard a ship with the countess.
If viewers can overlook her character's behavior, Carole Lombard as Kay Colby is a delight to watch; her delivery is always spot on, and she manages to rise above the wreckage with her reputation intact. The rest of the cast, however, sink into silliness. Preston Foster as Scott Miller, the manipulative business tycoon, is passably handsome and passably competent in a role that begs for the self-confident swagger of a Clark Gable. A young Cesar Romero is wasted in a nothing role as Bill Wadsworth, Colby's supposed fiancé, whose name seems to mask an obvious Latin heritage. A passel of scene-stealing Pekinese dogs, an embarrassing stereotyped Japanese maid, and dated cringe-worthy lines like "I'm free, white, and twenty-one" pull the film further under. Richard Carle as Brinkerhoff, a geriatric bachelor who claims to know women, and Janet Beecher as Colby's mother, who claims with a straight face that she's "free, white, and in her early 40's," pile dated gender comments on the already antique premise that women are to be ruthlessly pursued by domineering men. At least seven writers labored to adapt the short story, Spinster Dinner, by Faith Baldwin, and the result provides a clear example of too many typewriters spoil the screenplay. Despite a writing assist by Preston Sturges, Lombard is the sole reason to seek out this silly screwball-comedy wannabe,"Love Before Breakfast."
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