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Lady Tubbs (Universal). When at the start of a film well-informed cinemaddicts are introduced to a character named "Ma" Tubbs whose job is cook for a railroad construction gang, whose favorite expletive is "you tie-jumping son of a tarantula" and whose niece is in love with the scion of an aristocratic Long Island family, they should know what to expect. "Ma" Tubbs (Alice Brady) will inherit $500,000, acquire superficial culture and, coached by a democratic Englishman (Alan Mowbray), will dazzle suburban society under a pseudonym. The crisis of "Ma" Tubbs's career will arrive when circumstances force her to demonstrate her incompetence as an equestrienne by taking part in a fox hunt. She will turn this defeat into a victory by proving that her snobbish hosts are really no more aristocratic than she is, and by marrying her mentor, who turns out to be a lord.
In his anxiety on the one hand to recapture the mood and restate the message of Ruggles of Red Gap and on the other to establish Alice Brady, somewhat prematurely, as a successor to the late Marie Dressier. Producer Stanley Bergerman overlooked the obvious fact that Depression has made social snobbery, as a target for superficial satire, thoroughly obsolete. Consequently, watching Lady Tubbs has at times the effect of listening to someone tell, under the impression that it is new, a joke which his audience has already half-forgotten. Its best moments as a farce are due to intermittently amusing dialog and the fact that Alice Brady makes a genuine characterization out of a role which for almost any other actress could have been only an extended exercise in mugging.
Typical shot: Mrs. Ash-Orcutt denouncing '"Ma" Tubbs's niece to a circle of friends, because ". . . she works!"