This 1933 film was based on the 1932 Noël Coward play, which was deemed too shocking to put on in England. Apparently he wrote the play because of a promise he made two friends of his (the married couple Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontann) who were Americans he met in his first trip to New York in 1921 when all three were penniless. They made a pact that when Coward was successful he would write a play as a starring vehicle for all three. And this is it, only in the film version we have Fredric March (Tom Chambers), Gary Cooper (George Curtis) and Miriam Hopkins (Gilda (with a soft "G") Farrell). In this telling, the men are best buddies, Americans living in France, who meet fellow American Gilda when she gets in their train carriage while they are snoozing. She sketches them and when they wake up she is asleep, with her feet on the seat between them, and they find the sketches. (She's a commercial artist and they are accompanied by sketches of Napoleon in long underwear for a campaign.) There follows a several-minutes-long conversation in French, with no subtitles, which even in 1933 must have been unusual for a major Hollywood film, until she says "nuts" and the men realize they're all American. George is an artist whose picture (of Lady Godiver riding a bicycle) she has seen in a gallery (and, immediately undermining his initial smugness, hated), while Tom is a struggling playwright.
Very quickly, both men are smitten with Gilda and independently pursuing her. This both alarms and annoys Max Plunkett (played by the seemingly-ubiquitous-in-films-of-this-era Edward Everett Horton),
her boss in advertising and her "friend" of several years ("Ah," says Tom when Plunkett is confronting him, "so you never got to first base" - surely the first instance of somebody being accused of being "friendzoned"). Plunkett seems to know about both of them and visits them independently to warn them off, and in so doing uses a phrase (something to do with virtue and three square meals a day) so ridiculous that Tom puts it in his play, which inadvertently reveals to George (when Tom reads him the latest draft) that Plunkett has also confronted Tom. Our heroes agree to forget Gilda, but instead she decides to move in with them and take them on as projects. She will be their harshest critic, and there will be "no sex" (only kisses on the forehead allowed)
but both of them will be driven to greatness. And so it transpires. Gilda gives Tom a bit of a leg up by taking his play "Good Night Bassington" to a booker in London and insisting that it was just the sort of play women would like. The booker takes it on and thus Tom is summoned to London to help get the play up and running. This disturbs the equilibrium of their little non-lovenest, and lickety split George and Gilda have dropped the "no sex" rule (this is not made explicit but it's pretty damn heavily hinted at,
which is one of the many reasons (the whole menage a trois thing chief among them) that this film ran afoul of the Hayes code). Tom is dictating a jaunty letter about his progress in London to them when he receives word of their decision, and sadly scraps his banter-filled missive for a simple "Good luck". Bassington proves a massive success, and one night he spots Plunkett in the audience, who tells him that George is now a successful artist, albeit one whose income derives from painting portraits of rich capitalist pigs like him. This motivates Tom to return to Paris, where he finds George absent (off on a commission in Venice) and he and Gilda quickly fall into each other's arms, and he is next seen joining her at breakfast in the clothes he wore the day before. George returns unexpectedly (the rich lady didn't like him painting her double chin accurately) and an ugly scene breaks out which leads Gilda to leave both of them, because she knows when she's with one she is always missing the other. Worse yet, she goes off and marries Plunkett! The last act of the film is her miserable life of luxury back in the States with Plunkett and how the boys come to extricate her.
The film ends (spoiler) with them all going off together, renewing their vows of "no sex" - hardly likely, given Gilda's apparent complete lack of resolve.
Apprently Ben Hecht considerably re-wrote Coward's play, making our heroes more goofballs and less the suave sophisticates of the originals, and I can't help but think it's better for it. A very enjoyable Lubitsch number, with Miriam Hopkins perhaps the standout, sexy and saucy but also silly.
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