Easy Living (1937)

Directed by Mitchell Leisen; produced by Arthur Hornblow Jr

Fed up with her over-spending, banker J B Ball (Edward Arnold) throws his wife’s new fur coat off the roof of their New York townhouse. It lands on near-penniless Mary Smith (Jean Arthur). This random act touches off a chain of circumstances that leads to romance, mistaken identities, economic disaster and an epic food-fight.

The set-up is perfect for a classic 1930s screwball comedy; with a screenplay written by Preston Sturges, Jean Arthur for a leading lady, Ray Milland as her love-interest and Edward Arnold as a supporting player, one would think a hit was in the making. One would be wrong. Easy Living is a loud, largely unfunny movie that, despite the talent that goes into it, manages to be rather boring.

The screenplay by Sturges has its problems. Every author has his off-day, and Easy Living may have been written on Sturges’s. The man that penned The Great McGinty, Sullivan’s Travels and The Palm Beach Story certainly showed otherwise that he was a master-craftsman at comedy. The actual plot of Easy Living is a good one, if predictable from our current point in time. There are funny moments, such as when Mary, needing to salvage a few cents from a piggy-bank, puts a tiny blindfold on the piggy before smashing it.

Such scenes are forgotten, however, with the introduction of tedious characters such as Luis Alberni’s hotelier, Louis Louis, and the awkward placement of slapstick. The interjections of servants and minor characters don’t come off well, either, and Arnold’s character is rather erratically written.

The acting is not at fault. Arthur is extremely winning, as always, and Milland, a versatile actor when in his prime, is a capable partner-in-crime. Arnold provides good support, showing that, if provided with a stable character, he can play a sympathetic, if gruff, man as well as a villain.

What sinks Easy Living is, I believe, the direction. Though Leisen was behind the camera on a number of fine movies, this isn’t one of them. Perhaps screwball comedy was not his forté. Much of the dialogue is delivered with a heavy hand; there is too much shouting, too many double-takes; certainly excess is often used successfully in farce, but that genre is not as simple to perform as it may seem. The riot in an automat is amusing, but even that is a bit too extended for its best effect.

Easy Living is a misfire, though not without its graces (even if they aren’t of the ‘saving’ kind). It might have done better if the writer were also the director, as he was in his biggest hits.