“Peter, What Does a Professor's Wife Have to Do? I Meant to Ask You Yesterday” - Vivacious Lady

What's this, another chance to celebrate the great Ginger Rogers? Okay, I'll accept the offer! 

via Pinterest

This post about Vivacious Lady is my entry into the Third Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers blogathon hosted by Love Letters to Old Hollywood and In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood. Make sure you click through over the next few days to read all the entries, and keep Crystal in your thoughts as she's going through a serious health scare. 

Let's dive in and discuss a movie that Ginger said she had a blast filming in her memoirs! 

Vivacious Lady is the perfect description for Ginger Rogers. She brings brightness and vivacity to every role, and looking back at her work, it's hard to understand why RKO was so reluctant to let this chameleon try her hand at drama. She excelled at just about everything (and she did everything Fred did, just backwards and in high heels, as the saying goes)!

In Vivacious Lady, Ginger plays a New York City nightclub performer who falls in love with the stuffy and repressed college professor played by Jimmy Stewart. He's firmly beneath his father's thumb and never does anything without permission... until he meets Ginger, that is. 

Jimmy plays Peter Morgan Jr., and he's in New York to retrieve his playboy cousin and bring him back home where he can be monitored by the loathsome Peter Morgan Sr.

At any rate, Keith says he's not going home until he can convince this girl he's in love with to marry him and come back home with him. 

He goes out to the coat check to call his father, Peter Sr., to tell him that he's found Keith ("it's a girl this time) and that they'll be on the 4 am train. He's talking so loudly over the music that everyone around him is shushing him.

After he hangs up, he catches a glimpse of who's singing... 

...it's Francey Stevens, played effortlessly by Ginger Rogers. 

...and to say that he's entranced by her appearance and her voice is a bit of an understatement. 

...he's absolutely smitten. 

(If you find the chemistry between Ginger and Jimmy so wholly believable, chalk it up to the fact that they were dating at the time and that Ginger specifically requested him for this role.)

And because he's made such a racket, she naturally zones in on him and starts singing to him. The feeling's obviously mutual!

After her set's over, she rushes over to the table, looking for Keith (he's in hiding so that he can dodge Peter), but instead strikes up a conversation with Peter. 

He offers to get her something to eat, but she says the food here is terrible. 

Francey: Do you want to take me out?
Peter: I do! Very much! How 'bout it? 

Francey: All right.

Peter: And we might see some of New York.

Francey: All right.

So they head out, and Keith comes back to the table once he's been given the all clear, but he doesn't know that Francey left with Peter until he gets there. 

Meanwhile, Francey and Peter spend the whole evening together talking. 

Francey: Did you like my dance?

Peter: You were singing when I came in.

Francey: You didn't see my dance? When I wear the little thing with sequins? 

Peter: No.

Francey: Oh, I'm sorry. That's the best number I do. I want you to see it.

Peter: Why? 

Francey: It's a great number.

Peter: Is that so? Terrific.

They've talked and talked and talked so much that...Peter missed his train. 

He walks her back to her place and they share a kiss. They talk about whether they think things through (small things, no. Important things, also no, according to Francey) and how small things can bloom into important things and how it doesn't matter because ultimately we have no control over anything. If you thought that was the end of this whirlwind evening, you're mistaken! 

Peter's on the next train with a severely hungover Keith, and he reveals something to him: he's married! 

Keith: Don't tell me - you're in love.

Peter: No. No. I'm married.

And then he tells her he's married to Francey, and Keith cottons on to what he's saying! But he's too hungover to actually do anything about it, so instead, for the rest of the movie, he falls into the role of complicit cousin who very much loves his new family member. 

And now that they're married and out in the open, on the train, anyways, they can shack up in the same cabin. "It only took a day to happen but I'm in love with you for always."

And now for some complications! The train pulls in to Old Sharon, the college town that the Morgan family has run for generations. Peter's father and grandfather have been president of the university, and Peter's a botany professor there (bound for the same post). 

Peter: You're gonna like Old Sharon. You're gonna like my family too. And they'll love you. I hope so.

Francey: Never having had one of my own, I have an illusion about one.

They meet up with Keith again, as the train pulls into the station, and Keith has a go at the new dynamic. 

Keith: The old man looks calm considering you're married. 

Peter: I haven't told him.

Keith: Oh, you haven't told him. 

Peter: No.
Keith: Save me two seats on the 50-yard line.

Peter: I'm gonna tell him. I'm old enough to know what I'm doing. It isn't as if I ran off and got married. I thought it out carefully. If he has anything to say, he can say it to my face.

They make a plan that Francey will go with Keith until Peter can tell his family, and she'll pretend to be affiliated with him. 

Oh, and did anyone mention that Peter has a girl waiting for him back in Old Sharon? Francey certainly didn't know! This is Helen, and she thinks Francey's there for Keith, so she has no problem letting her feelings be known in front of Peter. 

We also meet Peter Morgan Sr. for the first time. Charles Coburn pretty much invented the overbearing, snobby upper class father figure, but he plays it so well. He was a great character actor with so many impressive credits to his name, and he won an Oscar in 1943 for the classic The More the Merrier. 

Francey's not a fool though, she sees exactly what's happening, and she wants to mark her territory, so she walks over to Peter's car, while he's sitting with Helen, and plants a big kiss right on his lips. 

Helen's definitely impressed. 

She tells him to wipe his face before someone else plants a kiss on him, too. 

Meanwhile, Francey and Keith get into a taxi and drive off. 

Peter calls her later, and Keith's there to egg him on (he tells him he bought a wedding cake). Peter still hasn't told his parents, but he's still hopeful. After they hang up, Peter Sr. comes bounding in for a...conversation? If you can call it that.

Peter Sr.: The student council meets this afternoon. As a member of the advisory committee, you'll be there. Furthermore, we're having spring difficulties between male and female students a little early. Fraternizing in the lockers. Then there's the Prom. 

Peter: I want to tell you about that girl.

Peter Sr.: I'll give no more thought to your involvement. I'll take care of Keith my own way.

Peter: You don't understand.

Peter Sr.: The subject is closed.

Peter: The subject is NOT closed.

Peter Sr.: This is so distasteful.

Peter: At the risk of being a bore, I will talk about it.

Peter Sr.: I insist you respect my wishes!

It turns into a screaming match that Mrs. Morgan, Martha, overhears, and she clutches her chest as their voices raise. She has a heart condition that they're all very careful about; even the slightest stress gets her worked up. 

Then, Peter calls Francey and tells her to get dressed up so that Keith can take her to the prom. ("Why bore her on her first night?" Keith wonders.)

The steal little moments here and there, but it's hard with the overbearing Peter Sr. and the cunning Helen lurking around trying to keep them apart. To explain her presence, Peter and Keith tell the family that she's a new student in Peter's botany class. 

I love the framing here, how Francey, arguably the 'lowest' person in terms of rank or station, is sitting in the chair like she's on a throne while all the richie rich people argue around her. Helen's very...nice to her, let's just say, and beckons Peter to leave with her, saying, "Come, sweet." 

It enrages Francey that she can't say anything, but it doesn't stop her from picking up a stand and threatening to hit Helen with it. 

Unfortunately, she does it just as Peter Sr. and Martha are walking in, and she doesn't exactly give a great impression here. She runs off, instead, to the powder room so she can sit for a bit by herself. 

In the dance hall, Peter and Helen are dancing together. He wants to get out of the dance they're in, but she won't let him, she actually pulls him in tighter, because she doesn't want to give up the dance and she doesn't want him to start acting like his father (at least she's smart about that, eh?). 

We go back to the powder room, where Francey is smoking and fixing her stockings just as Martha walks in. She puts on an affected tone as she talks about her fancy hose from Livingstone's in New York ("I think it pays, don't you? Naturally. To buy the best, I mean."). 

Again, Martha doesn't really know who Francey actually is yet, but she takes a liking to her immediately. She asks for a cigarette, and when Francey offers her the last one, she instead breaks it apart so that Francey can have a puff as well. 

An uncredited Hattie McDaniels (who went on to win an Oscar the next year for Gone with the Wind) pops in to tell Martha that Peter Sr.'s waiting for her and that she better put away the cigarette. She bids Francey a goodbye with "I hope you're going to like us." 

After Francey leaves the powder room, she runs into Keith and tells him that she's just met Martha. 

Francey: I think she's wonderful!

Keith: She was my favourite aunt before she got married.

They go to find Peter, and Francey finally gets a dance with him. 

Francey: I don't mean to be prudish, but the way you were holding that girl!

Peter: Well, now, she was holding me!

Francey: Would I be too boring if I suggested you break off your engagement?

They go out into the garden, and it's here that Peter finally decides he's going to tell his parents about Francey. He rushes back in and tells Keith to round up his parents and bring them out. Meanwhile...

...Helen comes out to chat with Francey. I could recap it, but it's much better when you see the cat fight for yourself. It's one of my favourite scenes:

My favourite line in that whole exchange is when Helen asks if she has to give Francey a piece of her mind, and Francey replies, "Oh, I couldn't take the last piece." 

Anyways, they get into it, culminating with Francey slapping Peter Sr. instead of Helen. Keith, who'd been trying to get Martha to the doors, sees what's going on and dances her away from the action to protect her heart. 

According to the trivia section of IMDb, Ginger's legs were padded and wrapped with boards to protect her valuable dancing legs (insured for $500,000), and that her next movie was The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, so they had to ensure she wouldn't hurt herself. But man, the gymnastics of some of the cat fight!

Francey: I've made a mess of things.

Keith: Don't be silly. Helen was a mess before you got to her.

And now Fate has decided it's Keith's turn for a tongue-lashing from Peter Sr. 

Peter Sr.: I want to discuss that girl.

Keith: Uncle, that girl happens to be a very good friend of mine.

Peter Sr.: I won't stand it. Bringing her home. Get her out of town.

Keith: I can't. She's here because She heard Old Sharon gave a great course in Botany.

Peter Sr.: Keith Morgan, I've watched you go to perdition in your dipsomaniacal way at least twice during this semester and I've made no issue of it. And I'll overlook this. But if that girl makes one more mistake like last night, it'll go hard with everyone. Now, get out.

The next morning, Keith drops Francey off for her first botany class with a "Be good and make Mother proud."

Francey replies, "I'll be home as soon as Papa learns me all about the flowers."

Yeah, Francey makes absolutely no impression walking up the aisle, eh? 

She heads straight for Peter's desk, where he's helping a student to see something through a microscope. Anyways, the lesson goes well. Here's a gif that basically sums up everything that happens: 

via journeysinclassicfilm

Francey moves into the Martha Gregory Apartments, so that she's out of Keith's hair and that she and Peter can be alone together. Too bad the sign says that no gentlemen are allowed upstairs after 6 pm. 

(Recognize the front desk man? He's played by Franklin Pangborn, and you've probably seen this hilarious character actor playing some sort of gossipy shop worker or hotel manager in other films from the era.)

They have to sneak off to spend some time alone, and Francey again asks when he'll tell his father. I think we can all guarantee by now that he's not going to have a pleasant reaction? Might as well just pull off the band-aid. 

Peter agrees with her, and says he'll tell his father just before he's due to give a speech at a library endowment ceremony. He won't be able to get away from him if he's stuck in his office waiting to speak. Because that sounds like a great idea! 

So Peter rushes off to tell him. 

Peter Sr.: Why aren't you at the faculty?

Peter: Dad, sit down.

Peter Sr.: Mr Noble is endowing a new library. We should honour him with our presence.

Peter: This is more important than Noble.

Peter Sr.: Your problems are secondary.

Peter: You know that girl you think is Keith's girl?

Peter Sr.: Now, wait a minute! Wait a minute!

Peter: She's my wife!

He clues in to what his son told him as he gets up to the table... 

...in the audience, Martha and Helen are watching and they know something's up. Peter Sr. excuses himself and goes back into his office to ask Peter to clarify what he'd just said. 

Peter Sr.: What was it you said?

Peter: I said that girl is my wife. And, Dad, she's the finest wife that any man could have.

Peter Sr.: Peter, are you mad? I think so and I hope it's permanent.

Peter Sr.: I won't allow you to toss your life away.
Peter: Let me do as I wish. It's a courtesy you'd... 

Peter Sr.: You're confusing courtesy and licence. Your career here might lead to the presidency of this university. I say, "might".

Martha comes in just then to find out what all the hubbub is, and Peter's about to tell her, but then his father starts yelling, and he starts yelling, and her heart starts to act up, so again, he doesn't tell his mother. But at least his father knows? 

Francey's despondent when Peter tells her what happened. She doesn't want to cause any problems for the family or the university, she just wants to be Peter's wife out in the open. 

Peter sneaks into her apartment while she's having trouble with the Murphy bed (it won't stay up) and begs her not to leave (she'd called downstairs to get a ticket for the 1 am train back to New York).

The front desk man shows up with her ticket and Peter has to sneak out through the window once he yells that she's not leaving and raises suspicion.  

It works, somehow, on every level. Francey convinces the front desk clerk that she has a hoarse voice and sounds like a man; Peter convinces her not to leave before making his escape... 

...and guess who's waiting for Peter as he sneaks down the fire escape? 

Helen. He tells her that he's going to teach Francey privately for a while as she recuperates. 

The next morning, Peter calls Francey because she's late for class. 

She tells him she'll be there after a fashion.

Helen, however, heads straight over to Martha's sickbed and reveals the truth about Francey (as she understands it). 

Helen: That girl we thought was Keith's - well, she's not, she's Peter's!

Martha: Probably nothing. A silly flirtation.

Helen: Is leaving a woman's apartment in the dead of night a flirtation?

Martha: Gossip. Pay no attention to what you hear.

Helen: I saw him sneaking out this morning with my own eyes!

Martha: There's only one way to handle a woman like that. I'm getting up!

So Martha gets dressed and heads over to Francey's apartment to give her a piece of her mind (remember, she thinks Francey's the other woman, she has no idea that it's actually Helen who's the other woman!). 

Francey then reveals the truth when she mistakes what Martha says ("I know all about you and Peter") and assumes that she means she knows that they're married. 

At first she's shocked, but then Martha is overjoyed that Peter has married Francey. She then reveals a secret of her own: she exaggerates her heart condition whenever her husband starts to show his temper and it always works in calming him down. 

Naturally, trouble invites trouble, so Keith shows up to the apartment as well. He and Francey start dancing to a record and encourage Martha to join in...

...just as Peter Sr. is arriving to tell Francey, once and for all, to scram! 

Peter Sr. shows up and can't believe what he sees. He even has to check the number on the door because he's convinced he's in the wrong place: 

It's Francey and Keith teaching Martha the latest dance trends. 

This is one of the funniest scenes in the movie, in my opinion, as they teach her the moves and then improvise...

...and Francey jitterbugs off in the opposite direction...

via tumblr, source unknown

...and walks directly into Peter Sr.'s path. Ginger's comedic timing, the way she stops and notices who she's run into, and then keeps up the dance as she walks away to warn Keith, all without making a sound, makes me laugh every time. 

It's also hilarious as Keith keeps checking behind him to make sure that Peter Sr.'s really there as he and Francey jitterbug into the bathroom to avoid a confrontation.

Sweet Martha is still oblivious, and wants to know why her dancing partners aren't there to "Praise Allah!" as the music commands. 

And then she turns around and finds her stuffy old husband standing right behind her. Naturally, the fun is over. 

He's apoplectic that Martha's there acting a fool (she tells him it's an exercise for her heart) and reveals that he came to get rid of Francey once and for all. 

Francey: I know you don't approve of me.
Peter Sr.: Do you expect me to?

Francey: You know nothing about me.

Peter Sr.: Peter met you in a dancehall. Before he had a chance to catch his breath, you hooked him.

Francey: I hooked him for that very desirable and very underpaid job of his or his social condition. Is that what you mean?

Peter Sr.: The solution to a situation like this is quiet divorce.

Francey: You're not grading papers or dismissing classes. He's my husband.

Peter Sr.: If you insist on being unreasonable, I must ask Peter for his resignation.

Francey: You can't do that!

Peter Sr.: Come, dear. I must be off.

And then, dear readers, he whistles and beckons Martha like she's a lapdog expected to follow her master. And that, dear readers, is what finally causes Martha to snap. 

Martha: Even though you break my son's heart, I'm still supposed to love you through and through.

It's like he doesn't hear anything as she reveals all the miseries she's been put through for the sake of appearances, and simply asks, "Are you coming?" "Coming?" she replies, "I'm going." 

Keith goes straight to the university to see his cousin, and to drop a bombshell: Francey's going to be on the four o'clock train back to Manhattan 

Francey calls to tell him she's leaving, and that nothing he can do will change her mind, but Peter tells her that he's going to take care of everything before the four o'clock train, and that if he's not there, get on the train anyways. 

Then Peter decides to torpedo his career... 

...as his father watches from the sidelines. He gets drunk quickly and teaches a class...

...and it goes about as well as you could imagine. 

After the class, Peter and his father have as close to a heart-to-heart as they'll ever get, and Peter reveals some hard truths to him, namely, that being a botany professor (which he loves) isn't as important as being a husband to Francey. 

Peter: I refuse to sacrifice my wife's happiness for this university, as much as I love it.

Then he tries to get to the train station to catch Francey. 

We cut to Francey in her train cabin, crying to herself when the porter brings her a ham sandwich (which she was lucky to get, he says, because the kitchen was just closing). He asks if she's okay, and she tells him she's just fine, so he leaves. 

He checks on his next cabin, which just so happens to be Martha. She's crying, too. They both ordered the ham sandwich, but over the next few minutes, in another hilarious scene, they cry over everything so much as the porter comes back to check on them both, that they get him crying too. 

They realize that they're both on the same train when the porter brings Francey a cigarette that had been torn in half (calling back to their moment in the powder room) by the lady next door. They embrace and their moods improve again (as does the porter's, thankfully!), and suddenly they're both hungry for the ham sandwiches they'd been crying over. 

But outside, Peter and his father are trying to catch the train so they can get their women back, and the only way Peter thinks to do it is to crash his car into the train. Peter Sr. again, is less than understanding, trying to impress upon his son the value of the car, but Peter's not having it: "My wife is valued at more and I'm not gonna trade her in!"

They rush onto the train in all the confusion, and find the porter. When Peter asks about a young blonde who just left her husband, he tells him to go to Francey's cabin; Peter Sr. can't even get out the description of his wife when the porter tells him which cabin Martha's in.

At first, Peter Sr.'s romantic overture is...just sad, really. But with gentle prodding from his son, he says the right thing to get Martha to let him in: he plays at heart troubles caused by the train accident. It works, Martha ushers him straight in to take care of him. 

And that leaves Peter and Francey, who returns to her own cabin with him on her heels. "A honeymoon without a husband is silly, isn't it?" he asks. 

They embrace... 

...but the cabin bed nearly falls on their heads (much like earlier with the Murphy bed), and once they regain their wits, they shut the door and get down to finally having their honeymoon. 

A most subtle way to indicate what's going on behind closed doors! 

THE END!