My Life with Caroline (1941) User Reviews (20)

A George Burns Moment

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 4 August 2011]

My Life With Caroline had as its origins a play called The Parisian Life by Louis Verneuil and Georges Barr which did not do well on Broadway in its American debut. Still Ronald Colman and producer partner William Hawks saw something in it to make it the second of a two picture deal with RKO. The other film was Lucky Partners.

Colman was not happy with either film though he felt My Life With Caroline decidedly worse. If ever a film called for the Lubitsch touch My Life With Caroline is it. In his hands rather than Lewis Milestone's the film might have made it as a comedy.

The Citadel Film Series book The Films Of Ronald Colman says that leading lady Anna Lee acts a whole lot like Gracie Allen. If so than Colman has a George Burns moment at the beginning of the film. Gilbert Roland fresh from the Pampas has flipped for Lee and wants to take her back to Argentina, husband or not. Then Colman arrives on the scene and like Burns did regularly on his television show, Colman proceeds to break the fourth wall and tell Roland will not be the first or last to fall for wife Caroline, the girl just can't help it and Colman can't help but to put up with it. And as illustration Colman tells us about her last little flirtation with Reginald Gardiner and how that all ended up.

The debonair Ronald Colman is up to the task of carrying My Life With Caroline and he does bear the burden admirably. The problem is comedy should not be a burden.

Colman one of my favorites, but...

[vincentlynch-moonoi · 7/10 · 4 August 2011]

Sometime ago I gave this film a rather negative review and a rating of "6", and I indicated it pained me to do so because Ronald Colman is one of my very favorite actors. I just finished watching it again, and I've changed my mind a bit, and I'm upgrading my rating to a "7".

I'm not sure than anyone other than Colman (and perhaps Cary Grant) could have made this film, because it took a rather urbane persona to make it work. But, Colman turns on that suave charm for which he was so famous. And that voice! It's the best thing about the film.

I guess the main problem I had with this film is Colman's costar -- Anna Lee. Her acting is "okay", but...well, let's put it this way...I'm not surprised she ended up playing in a soap opera on daytime television many years later. The bigger question here is, why would Colman's character (the husband) be attracted to and want to keep such a ditz as his wife? I can't imagine.

Charles Winninger, as the father, is quite good here, although he had better screen roles. I have to admit that one actor I don't usually care for -- Reginald Garidner -- does rather nicely here.

The first half of the film is better. The second half gets to be too much of a talky-parlour comedy. It just sort of goes flat, and seems rather smug as it does so.

As much a Colman fan as I am, this film of his isn't on my DVD shelf. It's sufficient to watch it on rare occasions on TCM.

This film is salvaged strictly because of Colman's effortless and wonderful performance

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 19 April 2007]

With a few exceptions (such as THE STORY OF MANKIND), Ronald Colman could have appeared in almost any film and made it worth watching. His smooth and apparently effortless performances made many mediocre films (such as this one) well worth seeing. As usual, he's THE reason to see this movie.

MY LIFE WITH CAROLINE has a pretty shallow and impossible to believe plot. His wife is an apparently brainless idiot (Anna Lee) and falls in love at the drop of a hat with other men who pay attention to her. He husband, Colman, is either completely cold and indifferent to her (leaving her alone for months at a time) or he is an ardent manipulator and suitor--a strange combination to say the least. None of this really makes sense and the characters seem....dumb. However, even though the plot is mindless, if you suspend belief you CAN find a fun and enjoyable film underneath it all. But, if you want your films to make sense or have some semblance of realism, then this one is best skipped.

Despite faults, well worth seeing!

[JohnHowardReid · 7/10 · 12 May 2018]

This film is a re-make of Le Train pour Venise (1938), directed by André Berthomieu, starring playwright Louis Verneuil himself in the Colman part, and Huguette Duflos as Caroline.

COMMENT: As a generalization, much as I enjoy his thrillers, Lewis Milestone has never impressed me as a skillful, let alone a masterful, comedy director.

Admittedly, in this entry he is served neither by a particularly witty nor effervescent screenplay, nor a halfway plausible performance by Hollywood debut-making Anna Lee.

Nonetheless, it's impossible to keep an inventive film-maker down. Despite the movie's dull patches, it still emerges as reasonably worthwhile entertainment, thanks to a number of ingenious Milestone appetizers, including post-synching dialogue with Colman's narration, Our Town-reminiscent comment into the camera, the Remisoff (the film's art director) in-joke, and the fish-kissing finale.

Another asset is the picture's expensive forties-studio look, complete with strikingly large sets and glossy photography.

cute comedy that could have been better

[blanche-2 · 4 August 2011]

Ronald Colman tells the audience about "My Life with Caroline" in this very light 1941 comedy that also stars Anna Lee and Reginald Gardner. The lovely Lee plays Caroline, the dizzy wife of Antony Mason (Colman). Apparently when Antony is away on business, Caroline becomes lonely, takes up with someone else, and plans to leave Antony, which she doesn't. The film starts with the very handsome Gilbert Roland planning to take Caroline as his bride and bring her back to Argentina. Caroline's father (Charles Winninger) reminds Roland that Caroline's husband might have something to say.

Turns out, Antony is already on the scene and, facing the camera, tells us about an early incident, this time involving Caroline and Reginald Gardner, and the subtle ways in which Antony managed to put a spanner in the works.

Very nice comedy with potential for more laughs in the hands of another director. Lewis Milestone directed, and this wasn't really his métier. It was great to see beautiful Anna Lee as a young woman - I knew her basically as Lila Quartermaine in General Hospital as an elderly woman. Colman is wonderful, and Gardner is appropriately pompous.

Good cast, but it needed a different kind of touch.

Lost in Translation

[ilprofessore-1 · 6/10 · 17 December 2020]

Ronald Coleman's company, which produced this film for RKO, chose playwright John Van Druten to adapt a 1935 French farce by Henri Verneuill to film. Although on the surface, Colman would appear to be perfectly cast--suave, urbane, witty, charming-- something essential is missing. There is no sex in this sex comedy. Unlike the French, these sophisticated Americans don't seem to go the bed with one another, or even think about it. Instead, they take naps and drink a lot. Lubitsch, had he directed, might have found a way to add the missing attraction and tension, but the film's director, Lewis Milestone, excellent craftsman as he was, avoids it all together. Given the censorship restrictions of the time, perhaps this was an impossible project to begin with, untranslatable. There are some worthwhile moments, however, in this 1941 pre-Pearl Harbor glossy studio-bound film. Reginald Denny, for one, is far less cloying than usual, and has some wonderful moments with Colman. The rest of the cast, particularly Anna Lee, is first-rate.

Tedious and painful...

[AlsExGal · 5/10 · 19 August 2023]

... but I have started watching it about half a dozen times when it shows up on Turner Classic Movies, and this time I was determined to watch it to the end.

Caroline Mason (Anna Lee) is the wife of a successful publisher, Anthony Mason (Ronald Colman) whose work keeps him in New York. With lots of free time on her hands Caroline holidays in Idaho and Florida, and whenever she vacations, she seems to wind up in emotional affairs with men who have plenty of time on their hands to romance her, usually because they are independently wealthy, and the source of their wealth does not require their skill or attention. And both she and the other man in each case seem to be convinced they should be married.

Anthony shows up and, discovering these emotional affairs, is not angry or jealous. Instead, oddly enough, he is amused. He then goes about interfering with the affair in such a way that he hopes brings Caroline back to him, or at least keeps her with him. He loses or destroys notes she has written him asking for a divorce because both she and the other man are too cowardly to face him on it, he asks Caroline's pastor to call on her to ping her conscience, and he pops up or disrupts the would be couple's attempts at rendezvous. The question is why? Why does he want to act as roadrunner to her Wile E. Coyote? Just let this vacant woman go! In the words of Danny DeVito in War of the Roses - "There are other houses, there are other women!"

And that's where this movie breaks down. I don't believe any of the characters. Colman is charming as always, and that makes it doubly hard to figure out why he hangs on to the childlike, impulsive, and emotionally unfaithful Caroline. There are three characters that make this even a 5/10 - Colman of course, a butler who is a curious cross between Peter Lorre and Lurch from the Adams family, and a dog that continually bites and chases Caroline's father who aids and abets his daughter's affairs. Good for the dog!

A missed opportunity but Colman delights

[jcravens42 · 7/10 · 4 January 2023]

I laughed out loud, I rewound scenes to watch them again, I was delighted! I've never seen Ronald Colman be just flat out hilarious. HIs delivery is delightful and not to be missed ("not you, not you, not you..."). He charms a dog! He makes the movie worth watching. But, then again, I'd watch him be witty with the bulldog in the film for an hour. Some of the supporting cast, like the butler, are fun too. The weaknesses of the movie almost derail it entirely: we never really know why he loves Caroline so much. Anna Lee mostly mugs for the camera rather than being intriguing. The script never reveals why he's so entranced with her. Another problem with the movie: Charles Winninger is so disturbingly miscast as Caroline's father. What a missed opportunity this movie is. A lot more people would know Ronald Colman's name now had it been as good as it should have been.

Lifeless

[st-shot · 5/10 · 31 August 2011]

Abysmal Anna Lee and charmless Ronald Colman fail to summon enough vitality to get this sour screwball going from the outset in this laxly directed effort by Lewis Milestone. Lee is wide eyed gullible most of the way while Colman a smug understanding bore in this comedy romance that has neither.

Constantly on the road successful businessman Anthony Mason (Colman) has a wife with a wandering eye (Lee). Prone to falling in love while hubby is away a tolerant Mason employs an understanding that usually brings her back to earth and restores the marriage. This time it is a Latin lover but the nonchalant Mason seems far from threatened.

The limited Lee brings nothing but wide eyed confusion to the inane role of Caroline who seems to have the emotional maturity of a twelve year old. She seems committed to only her romantic delusions and completely out of touch with her fellow characters. Colman for his part looks distracted and uninvolved, his interplay with Lee patronizing more than intimate. The supporting cast offers none with a smarmy Reggie Gardner and a wheezing Charles Winninger unable to bring sly humor to surly character.

Why Not 'Introducing Ronald Colman' While You're At It?

[boblipton · 7/10 · 16 August 2023]

Ronald Colman is a rich guy married to Anna Lee (who gets an 'introducing' credit after more than two dozen movie roles, including several leads). She has fallen in love with Gilbert Roland, and wants to marry him, which doesn't upset Colman at all, as he tells the tale of her having done the same thing with Reginald Gardiner a year earlier.

It's another movie that Colman starred in that was derived from a French one, and as usual, he does a fine job of it. I must object to anyone drawing any sort of equivalence between Roland and Gardiner; in the flashback, the latter threatens to kill himself if Miss Lee does not leave with him, and I was reminded of the line about Calvin Coolidge, and how they would tell the difference. Charles Winninger is wasted in the role of Miss Lee's father who is feuding with a bulldog. Mostly, though, director Lewis Milestone does not seem to be terribly interested in the goings-on; the pacing is far too leisurely, the comic interruptions lack snap, and everyone is far too polite. It is rote comedy.

And yet, I enjoyed this movie immensely. Despite the endless fascination of all the men with Miss Lee's nitwit, you have Ronald Colman pulled from the melancholy he exuded in all his movie roles of the 1930s. It's such a pleasure to see him having a good time, I am willing to forgive any weakness in the vehicle. I guess that's why he was a star.

Not that great

[jewelch · 5/10 · 21 November 2020]

Not that great but worth watching, James Welch Henderson, Arkansas 11/2020

Ronald Coleman

[garyneese-1 · 8/10 · 18 April 2007]

The wonderfully urbane Ronald Coleman is show-cased here as in few other of his films. He is literally in every scene and this comical movie remains fresh because of him, not in spite of him. He is handsome, witty and very clever here as he remains a step ahead of his wandering, lovely wife--played perfectly by Anna Lee. The movie is based on a french play and brings all the best qualities of that farce. Most of the supporting cast is well known, at least by face if not name...and are absolutely perfect for this very funny film. The fantastic Mr. Coleman is a combination of Sean Connery and Clark Gable as he stays a step ahead of the other characters. His multi-talents can be further appreciated in the classic "Lost Horizon" which every film buff must see.

my life with caroline

[mossgrymk · 4/10 · 13 July 2022]

Bad dialogue comes in many forms...pretentious, preachy, melodramatic, cliche, overly expositional, to name just a few...but perhaps the most dispiriting is movie or stage writing which aims at Noel Coward but falls considerably short, say half ass Philip Barry. Such is the fate of scenarist John Van Druten in this wan, arid comedy. As for Anna Lee, who I'm happy to report went on to better things under the tutelage of John Ford and Joseph L Mankewiecz she is, in this, her first film, considerably in over her pretty head essaying a role that in an ideal world would have gone to Jean Arthur. With a screenplay by Anita Loos. And direction by George Cukor. Colman I wouldn't mess with.

A sophisticated block of melting ice.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 3 March 2024]

It's not the cast, but the script and direction, a comedy about two rather disagreeable people with no chemistry in a marriage that barely exists, her attempt to get out of it and his attempt to prevent it from ending, mainly for the matter of his pride. When the audience first meets the beautiful but empty headed Anna Lee, she's flirting with social climbing Gilbert Roland, and her father (Charles Winninger) informs him that she's not free to accept his proposal. Out of the blue, her estranged husband (Ronald Colman) shows up, his reasons for wanting a reconciliation not quite believable.

Certainly Colman and Lee are attractive people, but she's written as a ninny and he's a boring snob. This isn't the dashing Colman of Shangri La or 1780's London or the suave Raffles, closer to Herbert Marshall or Ian Hunter in his staid behaviors. Lee, a British leading lady for nearly a decade, has always been likeable (loveable as matriarch Lila Quartermain on "General Hospital"), but she's not very fleshed out thanks to the weak script so it's difficult to care what happens to either of these characters.

This leads the better material to the supporting players although Winninger and Roland could play their rolescin their sleep. Reginald Gardiner plays even more of a pretentious snob than Colman, but it's funny watching him stick his foot in it every time he speaks. Kay Leslie walks off with the film as the Eve Arden like best friend, her acerbic delivery an absolute delight. Director Lewis Milestone and the one note script are the biggest issues. The art direction is sublime though, very glamorous and art decco.

Colman and...

[OldieMovieFan · 5/10 · 18 September 2022]

This one is a real disappointment after the masterpiece of romantic comedy that Colman produced the year before with Ginger Rogers.

It isn't fair to compare Lee in her first performance with one of the greatest actresses in all of film history; but can we replace her in this movie with one of her contemporaries and get a better result?

Lombard - no. Her last great performance was in 1936, years in the past.

Hepburn - this would have been yet another of her endless waves of flops even if somebody could possibly have persuaded Colman to work with her.

Dunne - too prim and proper to carry this one, even though she was always a terrific screen force.

Faye, Grable, Ball.... no, no, no. Well, maybe Lucy.

Joan Bennett - sure thing she'd be great.

Connie Bennett - maybe.

Miriam Hopkins - this role would have been perfect for her.

Arthur - of course she would have been amazing.

Rogers - of course she would have been amazing.

It takes a special talent to be able to carry this one off. Colman is superb. Sadly, even with a fine debut, Lee leaves us cool.

Anything with Colman in it is automatically worth watching; this is one of his weakest movies.

Get in the spirit and enjoy!

[ThousandsOfFilms · 8/10 · 29 July 2017]

I thought that the posted average rating was somewhat low for this film so I reviewed the reviews. This is one of those films where many love it and many pan it. Anna Lee is great in her admittedly light role yet she's picked on presumably because one has not liked the film and Anna was not a well known star like Colman - she was well cast and did the role as it should be played. Almost all reviewers acknowledged that Colman was great. One critic complained that he could not see Colman's character falling in love with Lee's character - fair enough observation but irrelevant for a comedy - think of George Burns and Gracie (airhead) Allen - those inconsistencies are the comic devices that almost all comedies rely on. I thought it was very amusing except for the ending. For some reason, the writers thought they had to end with a plot twist that added no comedy whatsoever (any laugh after the twist was independent of the twist) and quite confusing. Perhaps the unfortunate choice of twist for the last few minutes of the film threw others off as well and one's impression of a film is often disproportionately affected by the ending. It was an entertaining 1930s-1940s-ish comedic farce, but if you don't like that style, you may not like it.

Simply delightful

[klg19 · 9/10 · 22 March 2005]

This almost unknown gem was based on a French farce--which shows, and I mean that as a compliment.

Caroline (Lee) is being courted by a wealthy Argentinian (Roland), who asks her father for her hand in marriage. But Caroline is already married to Anthony (Colman), who has just arrived by plane and launches immediately into an audience-directed reminiscence about the last time Caroline decided she was in love with someone else: a dilettante-ish sculptor (Gardiner). The film plays out the story of Anthony's strategy in uncoupling Caroline from her sculptor, and how that experience aids him with her Argentinian.

It is perfectly cast: Ronald Colman is at his most sophisticated and charming, Reginald Gardiner is at his most priggish, Gilbert Roland is at his most exotic, and Anna Lee is just deliciously whimsical. The film is wonderfully directed by Lewis Milestone (who also produced); the whole production feels like a labor of love. There are wonderful touches, such as Colman breaking frame and addressing the camera, and exceptional use of a sliding bar-cabinet door. It is a sin that it hasn't been released on DVD--this is the kind of film that can singlehandedly awaken interest in classic film.

Hysterically Funny!

[just_tere · 10/10 · 11 October 2001]

This is absolutely my all time favorite movie. I saw it first on AMC, and taped it the next time it was on. I watch it at least 2x a year.

Anna Lee is just perfect in this role. Watch her roll her own cigarettes! Ronald Colman is dreamy and his dry humor is just over the top. Caroline's father is rather droll -- we don't HAVE fathers like this anymore. The end of the movie, when Caroline has not yet decided not to leave drags a bit, and is a bit forced for these days (we just don't understand train travel!) but is funny nonetheless. I know this has only been given a 6.5 star rating, but this is a 10 star movie in MY book!

A superior drawing room comedy.

[guydesapio · 10/10 · 2 January 2020]

I had been led to believe for years that this was an inferior movie. It is a lesson to not take seriously reviews, professional or otherwise. This movie sparkles with glamour and wit. An all-star cast headed by the ever-charming Ronald Colman with strong performances by Anna Lee, Reginald Gardiner, Charles Winninger, and Gilbert Roland. The type of movie I'd like to see at least once a year.

A Classic

[Pinky-4 · 9/10 · 23 August 2004]

This is truly one from the "Golden Age" of Hollywood, the kind they do not make anymore. It is an unique, fun movie that keeps you guessing what is going to happen next.

All the actors are perfectly cast and they are all great supporting actors. This is the first movie I saw with Ronald Colman in it and I have been a fan of his ever since. Reginald Gardiner has always been a favorite supporting actor of mine and adds a certain quality to every movie he is in. While he played a different kind of character here, he still added something to the movie that another actor cast in this character would not have added.