***Gypsy Love?-Ray Milland’s Crystal Ball

 

DVD Review

 From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Crystal Ball, starring Ray Milland, Paulette Goddard, 1943

No question the golden age of the romantic comedy, the chaste boy meets girl love romantic comedy, was in the late 1930s and early 1940 at the time of black and white film. When one thinks of that period the names of directors like Frank Capra and Preston Sturgis automatically come to mind with classic films like It Happened One Night and Sullivan’s Travels. However there were other directors and other films that filled that late Great Depression and World War II movie theater night in order to help take away the blues and to give sighs. The film under review starring suave Ray Milland and fetching Paulette Goddard in Crystal Ball is one such effort. No so much for the plotline which is fairly thin, nor for the acting although that is okay but for the “feel good” sense of the thing in order to help those left behind at home while the boys are off doing what they have to do to rid the world of some evils sigh and chase away the blues until said boys come home again.

Here’s why. A down on her luck former beauty contest loser po’ girl and crack rifle shot (played by Goddard) from Texas (although not all such po’ girls are from Texas) needed a job to keep herself going in New York City and not go home in defeat. As luck would faihave it Madame Z at the carnival takes this fetching lass under her wing and gets her work as a ringer. Now Madame Z is involved in all manner of scam using her arts as a classic fake crystal- ball gazer, including providing workers for scamming Mayfair swells women out of their jewelry and other valuables. Enter one such Mayfair swell lovely who has her lawyer (played by Ray Milland) on the love hooks who had been told to seek out Madame Z’s advice to find some lost jewelry. The whole deal was set up in order to get the lawyer to purchase land, oil land with the swell’s cash. Things move along and go awry though when our ringer falls, and falls hard for the lawyer. That falling hard, that inevitable meeting and meshing of ringer and lawyer despite all obstacles, including that Mayfair swell and many scenes of mandatory misdirection until love conquers all is what brings the sighs. And I am sure chased a few 1940s female movie-goer blues away as well.