Good-bye Love (1933) Online

When the wealthy Wall Street businessman Chester Hamilton (Sidney Blackmer) is arrested for missing the payment of due alimonies to his ex-wife, he finds his butler Oswald Groggs (Charles Ruggles) in the jail arrested for the same motive. Chester gives US$ 2,500.00 to Oswald to pay his debts, but the butler gives only part of the money to his ex-wife and travels to the seashore on vacation pretending to be the wealthy "Sir" Oswald Groggs. The gold digger Phyllis Van Kamp a.k.a. Fanny Malone (Verree Teasdale) mistakenly believes he is an aristocrat British playboy and has a brief affair with him. Oswald falls in love for her and pays her expensive hotel bill and buys a valuable ring among other presents; after draining his money, Fanny leaves him. Oswald returns to Chester's home and he has a surprise when he finds that his boss has just married Fanny. He tells the truth to Chester and together with his friends and his secretary Dorothy Blaine (Phyllis Barry), they plot a scheme against Fanny to get a divorce.

In 2009, it is funny to see the moral values and clichés of 1933 in this dated but entertaining comedy. The well succeeded men are white; the servants are mostly black; the women are gold diggers or a fragile and naive secretary in love with her boss. The DVD released by Alpha Home Entertainment is not restored and has a bad quality of image and sound which associated to the absence of subtitles make difficult for a foreigner to understand part of the dialogs. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Charlie Ruggles is the whole show in this sophisticated "B" comedy about a butler who poses as his employer after getting money from him for his divorce settlement and going to a wealthy sea side resort. Gold digger Verree Teasdale sets her eyes on him leading to a wedding where everything comes to a head. It's nice to see that even the lives of the rich could be filmed on such a low budget, and this has a great cast to go with it. Ruggles is as droll as always, and Teasdale is a shear delight. Hattie McDaniel makes an early appearance as Teasdale's maid, while the brassy Mayo Methot is unforgettable. At just over an hour, this is a charming but predictable programmer that just falls short of being a memorable screwball comedy.

"Goodby Love" is a cute little B-movie from Radio Pictures. It begins with a businessman, Chester Hamilton, having problems paying his alimony--and his ex-wife has him thrown into a VERY surreal jail. I call it surreal because the place is full of men owning spousal support and they have a grand old time! Soon, Hamilton's butler, Oswald (Charlie Ruggles) is tossed into the place as well since he's having trouble paying off his own ex-wife. Hamilton gives Oswald the money he needs but Oswald is tricky---and gives his ex only enough to get her off his back. With the rest, he goes on holiday--posing as a rich guy to hook a rich wife. Unfortunately, the woman he falls for is also posing as a rich lady. At first, she is ready to marry Oswald but when Hamilton is released from prison, she chases him instead. When Oswald and Hamilton find out about this, the movie gets rather strange....see it to see what I mean.

This film is an amiable little comedy. As usual, Ruggles is enjoyable in this nice, slight role. My only complaint about the movie is that since it is a B-movie, it clocks in at only a tad over an hour. Having it be a bit longer would have made for a better film and allowed the plot to unfold slower and more deliberately. Still, it's a nice little time-passer.

By the way, Hamilton's first wife is played by Mayo Methot--a woman who was, for a while, married to Humphrey Bogart. Together, she and her hubby were nicknamed 'the battling Bogarts' because their relationship was so tumultuous.

The title tells all, but it's still something of a shock to find a pre-code comedy movie made by a top Hollywood company like RKO, treading both so lightly but also so heavily on such controversial topics as the impermanence of marriage, the blatant misuse of courts and legal procedures, the willingness of cops to use jails to enforce crooked alimony payments, the stupidity of clean-cut clergymen and the way alimony-minded gold-diggers can use the courts and legal procedures to enforce crooked payments. And would you believe, all this amusing but highly controversial pointing of the finger is available on DVD in an excellent print (not a mark on it) in the "Family Fun DVD Collection." There's superb acting from the entire cast, particularly Charlie Ruggles who manages to reign-in his usual blustering mannerisms and double talk. Director H. Bruce Humberstone moves it all along at a smart pace and does a superb job not only with his players but with all aspects of this somewhat startling yet fast-moving production. Full marks to Verree Teasdale, Sidney Blackmer, Phyllis Barry and Hattie McDaniel in an uncredited role as Edna, the maid.

Like his boss, butler Charles "Charlie" Ruggles (as Oswald Groggs) is jailed for missing alimony payments. "It's like paying for a dead horse," he feels. Unfortunately for the delinquent men, ex-wives have to eat in order to remain overweight and lazy for their lovers. After washing floors, Mr. Ruggles is freed, by wealthy Sidney Blackmer (as Chester Hamilton), who encourages his servant to take a vacation. Ruggles checks into a resort hotel where, posing as a rich African game hunter, he attracts a lot of feminine attention. Gold-digger Verree Teasdale (as Fanny Malone) takes advantage of both men. Cheap and offensive, at best.

** Good-Bye Love (11/10/33) H. Bruce Humberstone ~ Charles Ruggles, Verree Teasdale, Sidney Blackmer, Phyllis Barry