The Girl Downstairs

A pleasant enough ironing movie, this is quite annoying the more you concentrate on it. The plot is as flimsy as it is ridiculous, seeming more appropriate to a second-rate operetta, with lots of grimacing and winking. Why would Franchot Tone (looking quite dishy in chauffeur's uniform) need to court a scullery maid in order to see his girlfriend, the daughter of the house, whose father disapproves of him? This enormous mansion certainly has a telephone. And there is nothing to stop the daughter from going to Tone's house or to bars and cafes he frequents. Then there is the rather unpleasant moral aspect--his pretense of courtship is very caddish behaviour. The social aspect (a sophisticated playboy in love with a girl who cannot read and has never made a phone call?) is as absurd as the maid's appearance--folk-dance costumes and pigtails that turn up the end (how? why?) like a clodhopper in a cartoon (but lots of fashionable makeup). The plot is so simple that, when it has clearly come to an end, it has to be extended by a pointless and unfunny chase sequence to eke out the movie. It is also very pleasant to see Walter Connolly, the funniest exasperated man in pictures. But it is frustrating to see Reginald Gardner, Robert Coote, and Franklin Pangborn in roles that are too brief and ill written to exploit their talent.