Casanova Brown (1944) – full review!

One of the rare remakes that’s better than the original (though I don’t really know since I’ve not seen Little Accident (1930) nor Little Accident (1939)); surely the cast alone makes this version superior (though the original original did feature Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Anita Page Zasu Pitts and Roscoe Karns among others)? Plus this one did receive Academy Award nominations for its B&W Art Direction-Interior Decoration Sound and Score. Directed by Sam Wood (For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)) this Gary Cooper comedy re-paired the actor with Teresa Wright (The Pride of the Yankees (1942) also directed by Wood) and was produced by its screenwriter Nunnally Johnson (Holy Matrimony (1943)). The source material was a play by Floyd Dell and renowned character actor Thomas Mitchell.

Coop plays the title role referred to as ‘Cass’ Brown throughout a man that learns on the eve of his nuptials (to Anita Louise’s character) that his first wife Isobel (Wright) has just given birth to their daughter! Her parents had his marriage to their daughter annulled almost immediately after her mom (Patricia Collinge) discovered through astrology that Cass was a “disaster waiting to happen” shortly before he’d accidentally burned down their $750000 home with a cigarette that refused to be put out. Cass’s new father-in-law to be is played by Frank Morgan a kept man who resents his wife (Isobel Elsom) putting him on an ever decreasing allowance that advises Cass not to marry his daughter. Edmund Breon plays Isobel’s father and Jill Esmond plays the maternity hospital’s doctor. She learns that Isobel had informed Cass of their baby daughter in order to bring about his return which it does and that she’d never intended to give the child up for adoption. But before Cass learns this he kidnaps his own daughter and manages to care for her in a hotel with the help of a maid (Mary Treen) and the bell captain (Emory Parnell). The fish-out-of-water new-dad-with-baby scenes are cute but overlong a quest for the perfect baby formula. More hijinks occurs when his fiancée Morgan Isobel and her father descend upon the hotel where they learn that Cass is willing to marry the maid in order to keep (and legitimize) his daughter. But an ending that includes Cass and Isobel coming together is a foregone conclusion.

Halliwell Hobbes Irving Bacon Robert Emmett Keane Byron Foulger (uncredited) and Grady Sutton (also uncredited) are among those who also appeared in this first International Pictures production a company established by Cooper (and others) before it merged with Universal two years (and nine movies) later.

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