The Love Trap (1929)

William Wyler's third feature after graduating from his apprenticeship in Universal's two- and five-reel Westerns starts out as a sparkling romantic comedy; had it stayed that way, it might deserve discussion as one of the better sophisticated comedies of the late silent period. But the sound juggernaut started with Al Jolson's boastful "You ain't heard nothin' yet," delivered two years earlier in The Jazz Singer, was forcing a dramatic shift in audience tastes, and studios added talking sequences to films already in production or recently released. Just over midway through the slim 72-minute running time, Universal's sound revolution dampens The Love Trap's sparkle by amping up the melodrama when it turns up the volume. What started out as a very good film ends up fair-to-middling because the actors aren't up to delivering dialogue that in turn doesn't measure up.

Star Laura La Plante and her husband, director William Seiter, had final approval on choice of director for this film, so they screened Wyler's previous film, the comedy The Shakedown; Wyler snuck into the projection booth and guffawed loudly during every joke, hoping that La Plante and Seiter would be convinced that everyday people like projectionists thought he was a comedic genius. It must have worked. La Plante plays Evelyn, a chorus girl whose dancing is so out of step that her stage director uses her as an example of what not to do before asking that she perform "Shuffle Off to Buffalo," adding that she shouldn't stop until she gets there. She dabbles innocently in the escort-for-hire racket at a swank party, but the devious and amorous attentions of one Guy Emory (Robert Ellis) have her running out wearing little more than a wrap.

The screenplay pokes fun at mawkish "You must pay the rent! I cannot pay the rent!" melodrama when she ends up evicted, sitting in her settee on the curbside as rain pours down. But every cloud carries a silver lining, and this time it's in the form of the wealthy and handsome Peter Harrington (Neil Hamilton), who takes pity on her, marshalling dozens of cabs to save her drenched furniture and manufacturing every excuse to remain in her company, even to the point of driving all night, ending up in the middle of nowhere, fighting off the furious cabdrivers, and eventually marrying her. Then comes trouble in the form of Peter's disapproving mother and sister (Clarissa Selwynne and Rita La Roy), who can't believe Peter would marry some tart from Squeedunk, Illinois. Things get worse when Judge Harrington (Norman Trevor) arrives; the Judge, Peter's uncle and head of the family, was at the aforementioned party and saw enough to get the wrong idea about Evelyn.

Then the talking starts.

As is often the case, the stereotypical image of early-talkie actors crowded around the microphone hidden in a flower pot and delivering their lines to a motionless camera (as parodied in Singin' in the Rain) proves to be inaccurate. There isn't a marked difference in cinematographer Gilbert Warrenton's camera's fluidity, and some of the most dramatic shot setups come during the talking sequences. No, the real problem (which Singin' in the Rain did get right) is that the actors, who were fine, even wonderful in the silent half of the film, aren't up to the challenges of sound. At the top (or bottom, depending on how you look at it) of this list is Laura La Plante, whose line readings are cackle-inducingly awful at times. She talks so slowly, and emphasizes so carefully, that it's as if she's reading from cue cards—and maybe she is, since she's not used to having to memorize dialogue. It doesn't help that she seems to dramatically increase the amount of mad gesturing and arm-waving that people tend to associate with silent acting (but which is notably absent from the first, silent half of this film). At one point, Judge Harrington tells her, "You're quite an actress," but he's responding to the wrong scenes; her best scenes are long gone by this point. More correct is her husband, who tells her just before the final fadeout that she's a terrible actress, and sadly he's not far off. The other actors, who are more or less adequate once they have to start talking, are strangled by the increasing melodrama of the screenplay, which abandons for too long the lighthearted tone of the first half. It recovers somewhat by the end, but La Plante's obvious performance and the sorry dialogue have damaged the film too much by this point to save it.

The last scene of the film looks good on paper: Evelyn tries to change the Judge's mind, and when that fails, decides to take him down with her. Had it stuck to silence (a misnomer, of course: there's a rich and witty score by Joseph Cherniavsky that all but disappears when the talking starts, a victim of early sound recording limitations), it might well have been hilarious; La Plante's increasingly fervent gesticulations would have argued against the self-seriousness of the dialogue, and La Plante, from all appearances a fine comedienne, would have been free to sell the comedy without having to worry about her lines. I think her performance has a lot to do with Wyler's lack of experience with directing dialogue: I haven't seen all of his films, but I can't remember any really bad performances in them—"90-Take Willy" wouldn't allow such a thing.

[A note of caution on using biographies for research: Jan Herman, author of A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood's Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler, thinks Peter is a taxi driver, and that Judge Harrington "finally realizes she's not so bad after all" (p. 87). Apparently he didn't see the film.]