Director: Alfred Santell
Barbara Stanwyck considered Breakfast for Two a holiday after her taxing, Oscar-winning performance in Stella Dallas, which should just about tell one what to expect of this screwball outing. It’s lightweight and by the numbers, with the forgettable material elevated slightly by a game supporting cast including ever-reliable talents such as Eric Blore, Glenda Farrell, and Donald Meek. As with Female, in which Ruth Chatterton played the owner of a car company, Stanwyck’s heiress is often derided for trying to “wear the pants”, with her masculine qualities serving as a trait that the film seeks to correct. While one can’t hold contemporary gender standards to films of the past, it detracts from the screwball dynamic for the screenplay to treat her so dismissively while Herbert Marshall is wrought as little more than an innocent, put-upon man (his being a playboy is hardly a topic of criticism in the picture). The running gag involving a frequently interrupted wedding generates laughs due to Meek’s hilariously exasperated performance, and it culminates in an interesting way at a train station. Once the two lovers are stripped of all identifications of their wealth and are thrust out into the lower class public, only then can their union be fulfilled.
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