Director: Lew Landers
RKO’s programmer take on the runaway heiress meets newspaperman plot is They Wanted to Marry, a nicely innocent but altogether forgettable screwball comedy. The lovers are played by Gordon Jones and Betty Furness, the former of whom is actually not a writer, but a photographer—a trade which comes to cause problems for Furness and her family. Typically in a romantic comedy from the era, the woman must give up her ambition and make sacrifices in order to please the man, but in this case the roles are reversed. Furness, good as the “other woman” in similar genre picture like Swing Time, doesn’t quite have the edge to pull off the part, and unfortunately the dialogue she’s given doesn’t do much to help her cause (including such gems as,“I know a good seven-letter word for goodbye: GOODBYE!”). The misunderstanding that pulls them apart momentarily is not particularly convincing, nor are many of the overwritten turns—in one case, Jones goes to hand in his notice at work only to receive a raise, and despite the hiccup the script has him quit only two minutes later. Regardless, the stakes are low but the romance is a pleasant slice of escapism, moving at an amiable clip and photographed in terrific art deco sets borrowed from bigger budgeted pictures.
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