The Perfect Snob (1941) User Reviews (5)

Social climbing

[jotix100 · 7/10 · 25 June 2009]

Martha Mason, the mother of Chris Mason, a young college graduate, wants the best for her daughter. Martha is a woman who is dazzled for the kind of life she can't have. That's why she decides to interest her daughter in an aging society bore, Freddy Browning, thinking he will be her girl's ticket for the high life. Like all ambitious mothers, she has invented a fictitious persona for herself and her husband Edgar, a veterinarian, who she passes to Freddy as a psychiatrist!

Edgar follows his family into Honolulu, at the spurt of the moment. He wants to engage a young man, Mike Lord, whom he meets one day at a pier, to impersonate a rich playboy and steal Chris away from Freddy. Little does Edgar know that Mike Lord is in reality a rich man with extensive holdings in the islands. Thus the fun and games begin.

"The Perfect Snob" is a delightful Twentieth Century 1941 film, directed by Ray McCarey, with good pacing. The cast is the main excuse to see the picture. Charles Ruggles and Charlotte Greenwood, were an inspired choice to play the older Masons. Lynn Bari and Cornel Wilde, are Chris and Mike, destined to love one another. Anthony Quinn has a small role as Mike's friend. Allan Mowbray is seen as the befuddled Freddy.

Watch it next time it shows on cable.

A fun film...but why would he want to marry THIS woman?

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 22 November 2023]

Dr. Mason (Charlie Ruggles) is a down to earth guy who loves dogs. His wife, Martha (Charlotte Greenwood) and daughter, Chris (Lynn Bari), on the other hand are snobs. They think Chris' path to happiness is marrying some rich guy and she soon becomes engages with a very old stick-in-the-mud (Alan Mowbray). Dr. Mason is not surprisingly upset and soon hires what he thinks is a gigolo (Cornel Wilde) to sweep Chris off her feet...and destroy her marriage plans to the rich sap. But what happens next is a bit of a surprise!

While I liked Wilde's character, I had a hard time believing a nice guy like him falling for Chris...a woman who is pretty awful considering her values. This is a bit of a weakness with the plot, as a snob doesn't make the best love interest in a movie. Fortunately, through the course of the story, Chris does seem to grow a bit and wasn't completely awful! Well worth seeing...mostly because the acting is so very good.

Nobody's Perfect

[boblipton · 6/10 · 5 December 2023]

Lynn Bari graduates from a fancy girl's school, and mother Charlotte Greenwood takes her on a vacation to Hawaii, despite father Charlies Ruggles' objections. Ruggles is a successful veterinarian, but Miss Greenwood is somewhat ashamed of that, telling everyone he is a brain specialist. Ruggles shrugs and goes back to work, only to discover Miss Bari has gotten engaged to Alan Mowbray. Considering him unsuitable, he offers beach comber Cornell Wilde a hundred bucks to steal her away, unaware he is actually fabulously wealthy.

The excellent farceurs are joined by Anthony Quinn Chester Clute, and an incoherent LeRoy Mason under the direction of Ray McCarey. McCarey may not have been the genius his brother Leo occasionally was, but he knew how to run a B comedy, and there are plenty of smiles here. If Miss Bari seems a bit mature looking, it should be remembered she was only 22 when this was made, about to be dubbed "the woo-woo girl" by discerning publicists. She retired about 1969 and died 20 years later, a month shy of her 70th birthday.

The unperfect snob

[AAdaSC · 5/10 · 12 June 2011]

Charles Ruggles (Dr Mason) is a vet whose passion for dogs is a bit weird. He fills his house with recovering animals and they find themselves into the marital bed that he shares with his wife Charlotte Greenwood (Martha). Not surprisingly, Greenwood finds this a nuisance. Which it is. She takes her daughter Lynn Bari (Chris) on a trip to Honolulu so that she can marry her off to a wealthy man and set her up for life. Ruggles has plans that are outside this snobbery and joins them where he hires Cornel Wilde (Mike) to pose as a playboy to sabotage Greenwood's plans. However, Wilde is also a wealthy playboy after all.......

The film has some occasionally funny moments, mostly provided by Cornel Wilde as he wrecks the chances of Bari's potential suitor Alan Mowbray (Freddie). Charlotte Greenwood is also occasionally funny but the film is ultimately let down by Lynn Bari. She has no redeeming features - she's just awful throughout making it impossible to sympathize for her or support her in any of her decisions. The ending where she suddenly falls for Wilde comes like a bolt out of heaven. Where on earth did that come from? She can't stand him throughout the film. There has never been any dialogue between these 2 characters to indicate she has any romantic feelings towards him. There is also an awkwardly contrived plot involving Wilde and Anthony Quinn (Moreno) as they chase after the affections of Bari. It's made into a further nonsense by Bari herself who is so completely undesirable. She's not good looking and she has a nasty personality. No-one would bother. If the truth be told, the film ain't that good.

If he'd be the only one wearing the pants in the family, his life wouldn't be spent with the dogs!

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 26 September 2018]

With an uppity, social climbing wife (Charlotte Greenwood) and a spoiled, selfish daughter (Lynn Bari), veterinarian Charlie Ruggles prefers to spend time with his patients over his family. Purposely forgetting about daughter Bari's graduation from finishing school, Ruggles is nagged by Greenwood into dropping his pooch patient and rushing home, actually arriving while she's still telling him off on the phone. Without Ruggles' knowledge, Greenwood and Bari then take off for Hawaii where Bari is preparing to marry the much older stuffed shirt (Alan Mowbray), part of Greenwood's scheme to get them into high society. But Ruggles finds out, shows up out of the blue to Greenwood's annoyance, and schemes to break up the ill-suited engagement with the help of local hunk Cornel Wilde who makes his living breaking up such ill-suited arrangements and is thus quite well off himself. Greenwood is aghast by all this and hires Wilde's pal Anthony Quinn to do the same exact thing, putting husband and wife against each other with sometimes amusing results that help Ruggles grow a backbone.

This innocuous "B" comedy suffers from having an extremely unlikable young heroine (Bari) who is written to be completely self involved and obnoxious. Greenwood at least is funny in her outlandish actions and you expect her to get her comeuppance, which she does several times. But Bari isn't playing a character you root for, and in a mosquito slapping sequence (with Bari and Wilde taking turns hitting the other when a bug lands on their face), it is Bari you want to get the big wallop, not Wilde. There are some underlying hints that Wilde is enjoying this taming of the shrew game, and that once he gets Bari where he wants her, he'll be taking her down a notch in his effort to make her a better person, if that is possible. Quinn gets some very funny moments too. Ultimately, though, it is the fault of the script in its characterization of a "heroine" you are supposed to like (but can't) that makes it a complete disappointment.