Tonight's Movie: Dulcy (1940)

S. Sylvan Simon may not be a familiar name to some film fans, but he directed a number of entertaining, well-paced MGM B movies of the late '30s and early '40s, such as SPRING MADNESS (1938), DANCING CO-ED (1939), WASHINGTON MELODRAMA (1941), and GRAND CENTRAL MURDER (1942).

I was thus looking forward to the Simon-directed DULCY (1940), but it proved to be 73 very long minutes, despite an excellent cast headed by Ann Sothern. The director and actors are hampered by a lame script which has endless scenes of people acting silly, while the story, such as it is, plods along without going much of anywhere.

Dulcy (Sothern) is a wealthy, easily distracted scatterbrain who has energy to spare but is lacking in brains and tact. Dulcy whirls around in her own orbit, blissfully unaware of what's going on around her or the feelings of others. She exasperates her brother William (Dan Dailey, billed here as Dan Dailey Jr.), her chauffeur (David Oliver), her brother's future father-in-law Roger (Roland Young), and everyone else. Dulcy's intentions are good so she just assumes everything will turn out fine, and this being an MGM movie, it usually does in the end.

By chance Dulcy meets Gordon Daly (Ian Hunter), who is adopting a little Chinese orphan boy (Donald Huie), and immediately attaches herself to the pair. (One of the film's stranger moments is when Gordon picks up his newly arrived son at the pier and treats him as an inanimate package, taking the boy by the hand to take him home, without even attempting to say hello and get to know the child first.) Father and son are both attracted to Dulcy's warm heart -- certainly not her intelligence -- and Dulcy becomes the little boy's "godmother."

Everyone in the cast ends up at Dulcy's weekend home on the shores of Lake Arrowhead -- or perhaps it's Big Bear Lake. (The film mixes location shooting with process photography for these scenes.) William's fiancee (Lynne Carver), future mother-in-law (Billie Burke), and a crazy man (Reginald Gardiner) are also part of the house party. Among other things, Dulcy hopes Roger (Young) will buy an engine designed by Gordon (Hunter), but that seems increasingly unlikely as Dulcy alienates Roger at every turn.

The filmmakers seemed to be aiming for Dulcy to be an endearing airhead such as Carole Lombard's Irene in MY MAN GODFREY (1936), but it just doesn't work, especially as the script -- based on a play by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly -- is otherwise disjointed and uninteresting. Fortunately those involved in making the film usually turned in much more enjoyable work!

Frequent costars Roland Young and Billie Burke played husband and wife once more in this film. Besides DULCY and their teaming in the three-film TOPPER series, Young and Burke's films together included THE YOUNG IN HEART (1938), IRENE (1940), and THEY ALL KISSED THE BRIDE (1942).

The cast also includes Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, Hans Conreid, Mary Treen, and Robert Middlemass.

This film has not been released on video or DVD. It's shown on Turner Classic Movies which has the trailer here. A note of trivia is that young Dan Dailey's name is misspelled Daily in the trailer.