Cinema: The New Pictures: Dec. 13, 1937

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First Lady (Warner) was previewed in Washington, D. C. by an audience containing as many wives and girl-friends of political bigwigs as Warner's astute publicity department could coax into the theatre. Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt was invited but did not attend. Had she been there, however, she would probably not have been offended by this candid camera record of female Washington. First Lady is an almost exact celluloid reproduction of the play by Katharine Dayton and George S. Kaufman on which it is based. Its quips are badinage rather than satire, and direct their wit at the immemorial field of petticoat intrigue rather than at any particular person.

Lucy Chase Wayne (Kay Francis) likes to sit in the gallery and hear promising young Senators read off the speeches she has written for them. Knowing that many destinies which flower in the forum originate in the boudoir, she plans to put her husband, burly Secretary of State Wayne (Preston Foster) in the White House. Obstacle to this plan is blonde Irene Hibbard (Verree Teasdale), another bedroom statesman.

Irene's husband, Supreme Court Justice Carter Hibbard (Walter Connolly), has reached the time of life when his chief interests are chronic indigestion and listening to the Whoops Family on the radio. But Lucy realizes that the only way to keep Irene from booming young Senator Keane (Victor Jory) into a Presidential threat is to inaugurate a rival boom for Irene's husband. Last-minute legerdemain with a previous marriage of Irene's cuts short the boomeranging boom by intimating that, as husband of a woman whose foreign divorce has no legal standing, Justice Hibbard has been living in sin for ten years.

First Lady is carried off with an unusual vivacity by Kay Francis. Its main drawback—that, as in most Kaufman plays, its crises are epigrammatic rather than emotional—is counteracted by its novel background and its general impudence. It is further notable for being Verree Teasdale's (Mrs. Aaolphe Menjou) first picture since her serious illness in October 1936. Her blonde coloring makes her a handsome foil to the darkling insipidity of Kay Francis, whom she outplays in their scenes together.

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