I TAKE THIS WOMAN is a 1931 Paramount film starring Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard. This is a Lombard title I finally caught up with a week or so ago. It was made very early in Carole's tenure with Paramount, and despite the star duo that appears in it, is very lackluster and predictable.
Carole Lombard plays Kay Dowling, the spoiled daughter of a rich New York family. To avoid being caught up in a newspaper scandal, Kay is sent to a ranch in Wyoming that her family owns. While there Kay alternately annoys and attracts ranch hand Tom McNair (Gary Cooper). Tom and Kay do wind up seriously falling for each other, and over the objections of the young woman's father, the duo get married. Tom has plans to work a small ranch of his very own, but the ultra-modern Kay can't hack it as a plain prairie wife. Kay moves back to New York, but Tom leaves the ranch and goes after her. Need I tell you the two finally wind up together for good??
I TAKE THIS WOMAN is competently made, but everything that happens in the movie a viewer can see coming a mile away. The mismatched couple who act as if they can't stand one another, but really are in love, the rich girl having to deal with ordinary hard work for the first time in her life, the mismatched couple running away from each other while at the same time chasing each other, etc. The ending in particular is served up on a plate (when you find out that Tom is now a rodeo rider, and Kay goes to see him perform, you just know what incident will repair their relationship). If this movie had been written and directed better if might have been more entertaining, but it feels by the numbers.
What makes the film watchable at all is the star quality of Cooper and Lombard (and this was a few years before their respective big-screen personas had been fully formed). Ironically Cooper and Lombard have better chemistry together here than they would a couple years later when they starred in 1934's NOW AND FOREVER. The best sequence in I TAKE THIS WOMAN has the duo spending a poignant Christmas in their simple ranch shack while a winter storm howls outside. The story needed more scenes like this, but instead there's too many contrived ideas to bring them apart.
Lombard deserves special mention for what she does with the character of Kay Dowling. Kay is really a pain in the neck, a woman who doesn't know what she wants, but Carole is able to avoid having her appear totally unsympathetic due to her natural personality. Lombard also is able to make the viewer believe that a regular low-key practical guy like Tom wouldn't just give up on such a woman.
The direction of I TAKE THIS WOMAN is credited to Marion Gering and montage specialist Slavko Vorkapich. I don't know how this combination worked together (or even if they did), but the movie does have a montage sequence, even though it's nothing special.
Kino Lorber has been releasing a number of Carole Lombard films on Blu-ray recently, and I'm surprised they haven't gotten around to I TAKE THIS WOMAN, due to the pairing of Lombard and Gary Cooper. If Kino (or anyone else) does put it out on home video in the future, they'd better add some extras, because the movie itself just isn't notable enough.
*There's a 1940 film made at MGM also called I TAKE THIS WOMAN, but other than the title, it has nothing to do with the 1931 movie, and it isn't very good either.
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