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Design for Living (Paramount). Working on the theory that stage dialog, no matter how bright in a theatre, is never suited to the cinema, Director Ernst Lubitsch started his adaptation of Noel Coward's comedy by having it completely rewritten. In Ben Hecht's version, the only Coward line that remains is "It's good for our immortal souls"—Tom's dubious comment on the brandy which he and George (Gary Cooper) are drinking to console themselves when Gilda (Miriam Hopkins) has left them both to marry a booby from the advertising business. As refashioned to suit actors whose needs and talents are different from those of Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne and Author Coward, and to placate censors who are less likely than stage audiences to regard sexual eccentricity as a satisfactory solution for social problems, Design for Living emerges in the cinema as a flip, quick-witted euphemism, ending in ambiguity instead of on a sofa.
The first time Tom (Fredric March), George and Gilda make an agreement to form a triumvirate with "No Sex" included, their plan crumbles when George and Gilda set up housekeeping in a Paris flat, collapses when Tom reappears. When a year later Tom and George together rescue Gilda from one of her husband's appalling parties, they renew their contract with curiosity rather than confidence. Even more masterly as a tour de force than its original, Design for Living is almost as well acted. Hecht's lines, as glib as Coward's, lack only a little of their sparkle because they reflect less glittering situations. Good shot: March, dictating a letter to his friends to tell them about his London success as a playwright, stopping when he gets a telegram signed by both of them.