Film review: The Talk of the Town (1942)

Another Jean Arthur film, not to be confused with The Whole Town's Talking, which was the Edward G. Robinson one we just watched.  Neither of them are very informatively named, actually.  This one would be better named Menage a Trois, and is decidedly forward-looking (if it cops out a bit at the end).  Cary Grant plays the (strangely named) Leopold Dilg, who is a rabble-rouser in small town Lochester, who gets accused of setting a fire that burns down the local mill that he worked in, a fire that ended up so burning up the foreman that all that can be found of him is a small athletics medal.  He is, of course, innocent, but the owner of the mill is the local Big Man who owns everything, including the police and the judge of his case, so he sees the writing on the wall and makes a break for it.  While escaping, he badly sprains his ankle and seeks refuge in the boarding house that Jean Arthur is getting ready to rent out.  She's a teacher at the local school, the same one they were both kids together at.  She is familiar with the charges against him and is none too pleased to see him, but hides him in the attic.  Aggravatingly, the person she was to rent the house to, Michael Lightcap, the dean of a law school looking for a peaceful place to write a book, shows up a day early, in a rainstorm.  This is Ronald "Prisoner of Zenda" Colman, who was 50 at the time but plays someone who turns 40 in the course of the film.  So you guessed it, Jean Arthur is torn between two English actors playing Americans.  At first it seems obvious that she will fall for Grant (I mean, it's Cary Grant) but he is sardonic and distant, and while Colman starts out as a stuffed shirt, he melts considerably.  Terrified that Lightcap will find Dilg, Arthur arranges to stay overnight (borrowing Lightcap's pajamas),

and Lightcap assumes that it is her adenoids that are responsible for Dilg's titanic snores.  The next day a flood of people show up to disturb Lightcap's peace, including an old friend of his who happens also to be Dilg's lawyer (who is also convinced of Dilg's innocence).  Arthur tells him that Dilg is hiding in the attic and he persuades her (a) that it's the safest place for him, and (b) that she must find an excuse to stick around, so Arthur persuades Lightcap to hire her as combined cook/stenographer.  It is while she is filling the latter role that Dilg is so annoyed by what Lightcap is saying (he can hear it because he's snuck down to the kitchen, being starving) that he comes out to argue with him.  Arthur quickly claims that he is the gardener, Joseph, and it isn't long before the three of them are a cozy little unit, Lightcap professing his enormous affection for "Joseph" even more than for Jean Arthur's "Miss Shelley".  But things get complicated when Dilg's picture is plastered all over the papers.  Watch for an uncredited Lloyd Bridges as a local newspaperman, and the genie from The Thief of Bagdad as Lightcap's late-arriving valet, Tilney.  Subplots involve borscht with an egg in it, Lightcap's being offered a seat on the Supreme Court(!) and Lightcap pretending to woo the foreman's "grieving" girlfriend.  Which one of Grant or Colman will Arthur end up with?  You won't know until the very last seconds, I promise.

It's a bit over-long, and Grant has surprisingly little to do, but Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman are charming and there are some great supporting characters.