A Masterpiece!

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Ann Harding is about to have ghost written her Biography Of A Bachelor Girl. She's a portrait painter, but in a part years before such a thing was an occurrence she's more of a professional celebrity. She paints famous and near famous people's portraits and gets involved with them. She's even got a ghostwriter, the iconoclastic Robert Montgomery who hates even the very idea of her. One person who is very concerned is Edward Everett Horton who knew her back when and he doesn't want Ann writing about him. He's marrying Una Merkel and her father Charles Richman is Horton's chief backer in the Red state he would be representing. Montgomery may quit the project anyway because he's getting angrier and angrier about someone he's developing feelings for.Biography Of A Bachelor Girl is something a decade later Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn might have done. Surely it would be better know if they had. But that's not taking anything away from Montgomery and Harding.In the supporting cast you'll like Edward Arnold who is a foreign born composer of uncertain nationality. Arnold he's kind of fallen for Harding himself, but he has a sort of bemused tolerance for all that's going on around him. Charles Richman is one tyrannical tyrant, thinking he has the right to tell everyone else how to live. He gets a lot of rebellion in his close circle for his trouble.Montgomery and Harding are surely not as well known to today's audience. But Biography Of A Bachelor Girl should be better known. This one's a sleeper and a keeper.

Robert Montgomery is an editor for a magazine and he has convinced the owner to finance a scheme. Montgomery wants to convince a bohemian artist (Ann Harding) to write her supposedly scandalous autobiography to boost the magazine's sales. She is unsure about this but Montgomery is able to convince her. However, another man (Edward Everett Horton) has approached Harding and wants her to keep her life story to herself. That's because many years ago, Horton has dated Harding. Nothing scandalous ever came of it (which isn't surprising since Horton is involved) but Horton is afraid if he's even mentioned that it will hurt his chances in an upcoming senate race. Then, Horton's future father-in-law, a very rich and influential man, comes to beg her to keep Horton out of the story. But what is Harding to do...she doesn't want to hurt Montgomery (especially since she's falling in love with him) but she did promise to expose her life--warts and all.Choosing Harding was a good decision as in the Pre-Code era (which just ended 1934) she was perhaps the most consistently amoral lady in films. I am NOT talking about her personal life but the characters she played--they were VERY much like the lady she played here--though who exactly she is is only implied in "Biography of a Bachelor Girl". Horton was also very good--playing his usual effete and dull lover. As for Montgomery, he was fine but it was funny that politically the guy he played was the exact opposite of him in real life. His character is a crusader and a bit of a socialist--while in real life he was a very conservative Republican.Overall, this is a pretty good but not great film. It is enjoyable but perhaps a bit overlong--as there are a few flat portions and the film could have used a bit more energy. Still, the actors fine job and the film is quite enjoyable fun.

Ann Harding plays the role of Marion Forsythe who is an artist and looks absolutely beautiful in her role. Marion wears very little makeup and at times looks likes a ghost. Robert Montgomery,(RIchard Kurt) seeks out Marion and tries to get a biography of her along with many other men who have had relationships with her in the past. Edward Everett Horton, (Leander Nolan) claims to have been romantically involved with her and Edward Arnold, (Mre. Feydak) gives a great supporting role. There is plenty of funny scenes and lots of slapstick comedy which went along with most films from 1935. This is truly a great film Classic of Ann Hareding who was a great film star along with all the other actors in this great film Classic. Enjoy.

She's nearly forgotten today, but Ann Harding was a true cinema aristocrat in the '30s, a movie star who didn't look like one (she wore practically no makeup) but was lovely all the same. She didn't act like one, either. Here, she's a free- thinking artist (referred to by other characters as "Bohemian," and it's clearly an insult) whose projected tell-all autobio is going to put an old flame's political career in jeopardy, and she's so obviously more intelligent than any of her co- players that you can't take your eyes off her. Calm, ladylike, and vaguely amused by her surroundings, she's a lot like her contemporary Irene Dunne, but less forced. The movie, from a smart S.N. Behrman stage comedy, is a civilized affair where characters bat around words like "propinquity" without flinching and the slowish pacing feels right. Perfect it's not, particularly in the male casting: Robert Montgomery, as her perpetually dissatisfied editor, doesn't stint on the character's unlikability, which leaves one rooting only halfheartedly for their romance to alight. And Edward Everett Horton, as her compromised ex-beau, isn't believable for a moment, being so obviously... Edward Everett Horton. On the other hand, Edward Arnold, the screen's best Evil Plutocrat of the '30s, is here a quiet, sympathetic spurned beau, and completely charming. It's a pleasant journey back to a time where the general public was more sophisticated, though without Ms. Harding's presence, it wouldn't add up to nearly as much.