When Ladies Lasted Last And Gentlemen Did Not Eve Span-David Niven’s “The Lady Says No” (1951)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

The Lady Says No, starring David Niven, Joan Caulfield, 1951

One of the most fortunate things in my life, my professional career I should say which I am restarting here after a short hiatus at another publication, has been having Sam Lowell’s pithy comments and helpful hints along the way. (In the seemingly necessary to include interest of full disclosure these days Sam and I have been long, very long time, companions and he was the one who got me the lush long-time assignment at The Daily Literary Digest before luring me back to this publication where I had been a free-lance stinger when I was younger and when the publication was strictly hard-copy under Allan Jackson’s editorship now ended.) Two that apply to this review of 1950s The Lady Says No since there does not appear to be any other socially redeeming quality to recommend it is that, one, when all else fails for a “hook,” the hook being what you hang your hat on when reviewing films you can always use the old “slice of life” bit which I will invoke here. The other that applies is based on Sam’s old habit when he used to drink heavily and carouse with wicked women (before he met me and his match) was to just take whatever the studio publicity department put out, rip off the title and submit under your own by-line. And nobody complained. Of course today for old time films you have to cheap sheet Wikipedia and click and paste to do the same job. For the life of me I can’t figure out this silly film and so I was sorely tempted to just do that but no, this lady says no, I will trudge along trying to give the “skinny” as best I can.             

Of course if we are talking today, talking in today’s #MeToo whirlwind then something like the lady, or rather woman, says no that had a whole different and less menacing connotation back when this film was made for public consumption (although the overriding issues of male authority dominance and expectation and female subordinate resigned acceptance or flagrant abuse were I would argue not far from the surface then either). That is where blessed Sam’s “slice of life” snapshot theory comes into full force. It is extremely hard to see how a film like this, even a comedic film such as this would have any cache at all today. Certainly, the results, the ending could bear no weight today.

Bill, a globe-trotting photographer, played by David Niven, is on assignment to photograph and do a story on best-selling author Dorinda Hatch, played by foxy Joan Caulfield who has created a whirlwind in the eternal male-female, no, female-male battle of the sexes-so-called by calling for her version of an unarmed insurrection against Neanderthal males and his publication wants the scoop. As it turned out, as expected in the twelve millionth rendition of the Hollywood boy meets girl story that has saved many a studio (and incidentally got Sam on the road to taking credit for studio copy once he realized that half the films in that cinematic land depended on this beautiful little trope), there is some chemistry between them. Despite Bill’s hunter-gatherer manner and Dorinda’s obvious Seven Sisters naivete rampant in those day about what was what in the sexual wars for inexperienced young women-and ask Sam men too. The whole theme hinges on whether Dorinda’s naïvete or Bill worldliness will out in the end.

If it was just a matter of that battle royal this would be a thin-and shorter-film but the thing gets rounded out when the two sides start crusading for their respective positions among the GIs and their wives at Fort Ord out in Big Sur-Carmel-Monterrey country in California. (A place where Sam and I have gone many times especially when he gets into his Jack Kerouac and the beats mood and insists we go back to Todo El Mundo south of Big Sur where he hung out in the old days.)   Dorinda starts her own little rebellion (with some push-back) among the Army wives womenfolk in her fight. And here is really where this is a 1950s time capsule (maybe before actually) as a film all the while despite Dorinda’s feminist convictions she is inexplicitly attracted to Bill, uses whatever wiles, female or otherwise to tamp that madness, those hormones, down. You already know the ending, know it if you have been in anyone of the twelve million girl meets boy efforts Hollywood has put out in its existence. Not surprisingly despite the film’s origin in 1951 there is nothing of the red scare Cold War night and atomic thunder coming hellishly down on the world in this one. Nothing either that would pass muster with today’s audiences except members of the lonely-hearts clubs. Nothing that would resolve the eternal conundrum since Adam and Eve times, maybe before.