Say "Robert Louis Stevenson" and "movies" and people recall the swashbuckler historical tales: KIDNAPPED, TREASURE ISLAND, The MASTER OF BALLENTRAE. The one exception everyone recalls is DR. JECKYLL AND MR. HYDE. But actually several other "modern" (i.e. 19th Century) stories were filmed as well. That marvelous comedy THE WRONG BOX was based on Stevenson's novel with his step-son Lloyd Osbourne. Lloyd Nolan, Ray Milland, Oscar Homolka, and Barry Fitzgerald appeared in THE EBB - TIDE (redone with Robby Coltrane in the late 1990s). There is also this film comedy, based on a set of stories from a book that was a best seller of the 1880s, but is forgotten today. The book was called THE NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS, and the stories are called THE SUICIDE CLUB ("The Young Man With the Cream Tarts", "The Doctor and the Saratoga Trunk", and "The Adventure of a Hanson Cab"). These three stories deal with this club, and how a foreign visitor (Prince Florizel of Bohemia) gets involved with uncovering this club and destroying it's leader. Florizel also appears in several of the other tales of the total collection of stories.
In keeping with the idea of a "new Arabian Nights" Florizel travels around at night-time incognito, like Haroun-al-Raschid in the original stories. He gets drawn into the club when he meets a young man selling cream tarts. Florizel soon realizes that the members of the club pay for the right to go through a nightly card game, in which one of them wins the right to kill another. It is the young man with the tarts who is the victim. The head of the club collects huge fees from the idiot members who are killing each other off. Florizel brings the club to the attention of the authorities, but as he has joined the club the head insists that he must live up to membership rules. So Florizel and the head of the club have a life and death duel in the three stories, only ending in the last story, "The Adventure of a Hanson Cab." At the end of the third story the head of the suicide club is killed in a duel. The threat to Florizel is over.
Why MGM chose this project, TROUBLE FOR TWO, as a film for Robert Montgomery, Rosalind Russell, Frank Morgan, and Reginald Owen is a mystery. The reason NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS was such an eye opener in the 1880s was that it suggested the hidden reservoirs of the odd and exotic that lay behind the facade of respectable Victorian London. It really set the stage for Stevenson's own DR. JECKYL, Bram Stoker's DRACULA, and Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (not to mention Professor Challenger). Within a year of NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS appearing in 1886, Doyle was publishing A STUDY IN SCARLET. But by the 1930s that reservoir was pretty well known, so there was no real reason to bring it back. Except it did have a period charm to it. And that may explain the use of Montgomery and Russell as the romantic leads. Except that (for Russell) there was a need for a rewrite, because her character does not figure in the original Stevenson stories.
It is an enjoyable film, which plays on the need of Florizel to occupy his time (he is supposed to be on a state visit from Bohemia to England, awaiting his return home to a royal wedding). He sees a mysterious lady (Russell) on the boat crossing the Channel, and tries to learn more about her (but she does have a habit of disappearing). Morgan, his aide-de-camp, tries to keep the curious and brave Montgomery under control, but his ideas of control are generally "ho-hum" He tries a guessing game with Montgomey to occupy their time: Morgan - "Can you guess this?: I am a well known English poet." Montgomery [Without missing a beat] - "Tennyson" Morgan - "That's right. Shall we do another?" [Montgomery looks at his aide as though he's insane.]
The villain is Reginald Owen, best recalled for his splendid Ebanezer Scrooge in the 1938 A CHRISTMANS CAROL, but capable of good and bad characters (all nicely acted). He is the villain who wants to buy Clark Gable's dog in THE CALL OF THE WILD, in order to kill the dog, and who later drowns when he and his greedy co-horts are weighted down with bags of Gable's stolen gold while toppled into an Alaskan river. He is one of Joan Crawford's gang in A WOMAN'S FACE (a kind of book keeper for the gang of blackmailers). But he also played "Uncle" Detlaff in Margaret Sullivan's THE GOOD FAIRY, determined to prevent old goat Frank Morgan from "ruining" her. And he was Sherlock Holmes once in A STUDY IN SCARLET (he also played Dr. Watson in SHERLOCK HOLMES in 1930). Here he is as villainous as in THE CALL OF THE WILD, as the head of the Club who has two ulterior motives regarding his club, one outlined in the short story, but a second one dealing with Florizel. Since he is an intellectual sort here, his head is bald - suggesting he has too many important things on his mind to need hair. Despite the obvious make-up job, he does an excellent job as someone you never trust.
Morgan is his typical loyal, decent, and befuddled character. His best moment is when he threatens Owen and his gang, in order for Montgomery to get away, with an object in a bag - supposedly an explosive. It turns out to be a plum pudding that is dripping brandy very liberally down his sleeve.
It is a good, amusing film. Not as funny as THE WRONG BOX, but quite good as a product of the MGM assembly line. If it shows up on the Turner Network again try to catch it.
In keeping with the idea of a "new Arabian Nights" Florizel travels around at night-time incognito, like Haroun-al-Raschid in the original stories. He gets drawn into the club when he meets a young man selling cream tarts. Florizel soon realizes that the members of the club pay for the right to go through a nightly card game, in which one of them wins the right to kill another. It is the young man with the tarts who is the victim. The head of the club collects huge fees from the idiot members who are killing each other off. Florizel brings the club to the attention of the authorities, but as he has joined the club the head insists that he must live up to membership rules. So Florizel and the head of the club have a life and death duel in the three stories, only ending in the last story, "The Adventure of a Hanson Cab." At the end of the third story the head of the suicide club is killed in a duel. The threat to Florizel is over.
Why MGM chose this project, TROUBLE FOR TWO, as a film for Robert Montgomery, Rosalind Russell, Frank Morgan, and Reginald Owen is a mystery. The reason NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS was such an eye opener in the 1880s was that it suggested the hidden reservoirs of the odd and exotic that lay behind the facade of respectable Victorian London. It really set the stage for Stevenson's own DR. JECKYL, Bram Stoker's DRACULA, and Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (not to mention Professor Challenger). Within a year of NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS appearing in 1886, Doyle was publishing A STUDY IN SCARLET. But by the 1930s that reservoir was pretty well known, so there was no real reason to bring it back. Except it did have a period charm to it. And that may explain the use of Montgomery and Russell as the romantic leads. Except that (for Russell) there was a need for a rewrite, because her character does not figure in the original Stevenson stories.
It is an enjoyable film, which plays on the need of Florizel to occupy his time (he is supposed to be on a state visit from Bohemia to England, awaiting his return home to a royal wedding). He sees a mysterious lady (Russell) on the boat crossing the Channel, and tries to learn more about her (but she does have a habit of disappearing). Morgan, his aide-de-camp, tries to keep the curious and brave Montgomery under control, but his ideas of control are generally "ho-hum" He tries a guessing game with Montgomey to occupy their time: Morgan - "Can you guess this?: I am a well known English poet." Montgomery [Without missing a beat] - "Tennyson" Morgan - "That's right. Shall we do another?" [Montgomery looks at his aide as though he's insane.]
The villain is Reginald Owen, best recalled for his splendid Ebanezer Scrooge in the 1938 A CHRISTMANS CAROL, but capable of good and bad characters (all nicely acted). He is the villain who wants to buy Clark Gable's dog in THE CALL OF THE WILD, in order to kill the dog, and who later drowns when he and his greedy co-horts are weighted down with bags of Gable's stolen gold while toppled into an Alaskan river. He is one of Joan Crawford's gang in A WOMAN'S FACE (a kind of book keeper for the gang of blackmailers). But he also played "Uncle" Detlaff in Margaret Sullivan's THE GOOD FAIRY, determined to prevent old goat Frank Morgan from "ruining" her. And he was Sherlock Holmes once in A STUDY IN SCARLET (he also played Dr. Watson in SHERLOCK HOLMES in 1930). Here he is as villainous as in THE CALL OF THE WILD, as the head of the Club who has two ulterior motives regarding his club, one outlined in the short story, but a second one dealing with Florizel. Since he is an intellectual sort here, his head is bald - suggesting he has too many important things on his mind to need hair. Despite the obvious make-up job, he does an excellent job as someone you never trust.
Morgan is his typical loyal, decent, and befuddled character. His best moment is when he threatens Owen and his gang, in order for Montgomery to get away, with an object in a bag - supposedly an explosive. It turns out to be a plum pudding that is dripping brandy very liberally down his sleeve.
It is a good, amusing film. Not as funny as THE WRONG BOX, but quite good as a product of the MGM assembly line. If it shows up on the Turner Network again try to catch it.