Touches You

A Major Disappointment

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

"Man Wanted" struck me as a curious movie to have been made in 1932. I agree with most who didn't see it as a battle of the sexes film. But it carries a couple of messages that I don't think would appeal to people of the time. Those are about the wealthy and powerful living high on the hog and caring nothing for the everyman and woman – to the point of dumping on them. Kay Francis plays Lois Ames, the managing editor of some sort of magazine. We never know what type of magazine it is, but it seems to be a style, fashion, glamour or other sort of publication. Another reviewer noted that there probably never was such a lavish editorial office as shown in this picture.In an opening scene, Lois fires her secretary, a faithful employee who has been with the firm for some time. But, she has worked overtime four straight nights and says she can't work again this night. So, she gets the boot. After we're introduced to Tom Sherman (played by David Manners) as a sporting goods salesman, we see him getting hired by Lois as her new secretary. From here on, the film is a reversal of the Hollywood fluff so common for decades. In those, the female secretaries often pursued their bosses. But, here we have a young male secretary who soon lusts for his gorgeous female employer. This happens while he is engaged to Ruth Holman, played by Una Merkel. So little is believable about this that it makes for a very weak plot. Besides the lavish editorial offices, the Francis character doesn't seem real as a managing editor. Her scenes of dictation all have to do with business matters, not editorial content of the magazine. In real life, business managers handle the technical side of the business, and editors handle the product. But we don't see anything of Francis dealing with articles, photos, artwork and magazine design. Yet she is presented as a workaholic in this film. For an idea of how a real managing editor might work, see the 1941 movie, "Two-Faced Woman." In that film, Melvyn Douglas plays a managing editor who can't tear himself away from his job to spend time with his new wife, played by Greta Garbo. And, we see him going over feature articles, cover designs and layouts – the real stuff of a managing editor. This movie was made during the heart of the Great Depression. Audiences going to see it in 1932 would hardly believe a magazine of any type flourishing as portrayed here. And, Lois doesn't have to work because she's married to a rich man, Fred Ames (played by Kenneth Thomson), who also doesn't seem to have been hurt any by the depression. The couple seem to have attitudes that support free love, so long as one is discreet about it – at least on the surface. They can be amorous with each other, or with someone else. Although Lois is not portrayed as playing around on her husband, we see glints of her interest in her young male secretary. Husband Freddie, on the other hand, clearly has the reputation of a carouser. I suspect that this picture of a rich couple living such a lifestyle of infidelity and disregard for other people wasn't appealing to those who were living through the hard times of the depression. After condoning her husband's wandering for some time, Lois decides to divorce him. Tommy, is about to leave, dejected, when she tells him she is now free. We know what that means. So, Tommy jilts his fiancé for the boss. What a happy ending for depression-era audiences, huh? Now, another working everyman – in this case, woman, gets dumped. I think Warner Brothers goofed promoting this movie as a comedy. I see nothing humorous in the film today. The five stars I give it are for very good performances by two actors. Manners played Tommy Sherman superbly, and Thomson was excellent as Freddie Ames.

Provocative little Warners B that seems to enjoy playing with sexual mores, and presenting an unusually strong leading-lady character. That's Kay Francis, stalking around in high fashion and playing a driven magazine-editor lady, much like Liza Elliott in "Lady in the Dark." She hires a lowly but ambitious (and Harvard grad) David Manners as secretary, cueing the male-secretary jokes, and he's too much of a gentleman to admit to her or himself that he's falling in love with her. Which is a disaster, because, with plot knots that could never survive the Production Code, she's married to rich-but-worthless Kenneth Thomson, and he's engaged to demanding-and-annoying Una Merkel. The script merrily untangles the knots by making little to no judgment on Thomson's philandering, and suggesting that out-of-wedlock relations are just fine, as long as they result in divorce and marriage to the right partner. Manners is, as always, gentlemanly and photogenic (and Gregg Toland's photography makes the most of both the leading players), and the story has a nice feminist bent to it--it never castigates Francis for wandering far afield of expected feminine subservience, though it does eventually suggest that she and Manners will exist as equals, not dominating-woman-passive-man. It's pleasant, swift-moving pre-Code, capably directed by William Dieterle and very nice to look at.

This isn't as blatantly sexist as 1933's "Female" in which Ruth Chatterton sexually harassed her male secretaries. This boss, Kay Francis, is much more subtle, hiring David Manners as her secretary after firing too busy to work overtime Elizabeth Patterson. It's not going to take her bookkeepers long to figure out what's going on, especially if they see him with his nagging gal pal Una Merkel, a dame whom Groucho Marx would describe as being vaccinated with a phonograph needle. Even though this was made before the production code came in, this is not as shocking or even as exciting as other pre-code films.Francis is an able comedian, Manners a handsome but dull (perhaps uninterested?) romantic lead. It's basically a ploy between Francis and her married in name only hubby Kenneth Thomason to find out after living their own lives how they truly feel about each other. In fact, it is set up that they are more friends, so when she romances Manners on the sly, it is the medication for her to find out how she really feels about her husband.Andy Devine offers lots of earthy comedy as Manner's pal, which gives Merkel a ploy at the end when it becomes clear that she and Manners have no future together. It is also extremely short, which gives it no real time to establish either character or a definitive plot. Without Francis and Devine, this would have been a total disappointment.

Man Wanted (1932) ** (out of 4) Workaholic editor Lois Ames (Kay Francis) grows tired of women secretaries complaining so she hires an ambitious young man (David Manners). Soon the two are working long hours together and they start to fall for one another but the only problem is that she's married and he has a fiancé (Una Merkel). MAN WANTED is yet another "B" programmer from Warner that certainly has a few pre-code elements but in the end the product just seems rushed and nothing really comes together. I think the biggest problem is that the screenplay just doesn't have enough fre sh or original ideas to carry out even the short 62-minute running time. With such a short time you really shouldn't be looking at your clock at the half hour mark and it's even worse when the next thirty-minutes just drag along. The film has a pretty simple set-up because you know Francis' husband is going to be a no-good party animal and of course she's going to be attracted to Manners because he's hard working like she is. That's fine. What doesn't work is that we have to sit through forty-minutes worth of back and forth where neither character knows what they want yet it's obvious to the viewer. I think Francis was always good at playing these strong women and that continues here. She's certainly believable in the part and when she's going overboard trying to keep her busy schedule going it makes you feel she's being real. Manners is also pretty good in his part, although the screenplay certainly doesn't make it a very glamorous part. Merkel is quite annoying with a high-pitched voice but that's what the character called for. Andy Devine plays that type of character that only he could. Universal horror fans will be happy to see Edward Van Sloan in a quick scene and yes he gets to appear with Manners. MAN WANTED has a couple good ideas but in the end there's just not enough here worth watching so this is clearly just for fans of the actors.