Give Me Your Heart (Mayo, 1936)
My Winter Movies # 6
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Jay Mallory’s Sweet Aloes had triumphed on the English stage with Diana Wynyard in 1934. Though the American version was less successful, Warner Brothers felt it had that certain spark which would make it a Hollywood triumph. The production studio William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies owned, Cosmopolitan Pictures, agreed to finance the film on an impressive budget, with Warner Brothers distributing it as a regular attraction. Scripts were sent to a great choice of contenders for the part: Ann Harding, Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, and Kay, whose impressive work in I Found Stella Parish (1935) and The White Angel (1936) had Warner Brothers ready to give her an equally dramatic boost.
To ensure the movie’s success, Kay was reunited with her frequent leading man, George Brent. Roland Young, Frieda Inescort, Patric Knowles, Henry Stephenson, Helen Flint, and Zeffie Tilbury were selected for the supporting characters. No part could have been selected better. Director Archie Mayo and Kay had worked together previously. Strangely, considering how much they disliked each other, he was one of her best directors. Famously, he had gone as far to tell her that she couldn’t act, which, maybe in her determination to prove him wrong, gave way to her excellent work in this picture as well as the others they completed together.
Production began May 4, 1936, and Kay and George Brent appeared on Hollywood Hotel (a radio program) on September 25, 1936 to promote the movie. A few critics noted that it was unusual the Production Code Administration allowed Give Me Your Heart to even be considered, let alone produced, as a major attraction, considering adultery and unwed motherhood violated the code. But Mayo made sure, without going overboard, to let viewers know that the characters in the film were «three nice people who have happened to get themselves involved in a serious mess». With the bonuses of Kay’s beautiful wardrobe by Orry-Kelly, and Leo F. Forbstein’s excellent score, Give Me Your Heart became one of Warner Brothers’ most successful films of the 1936-1937 season. (More here.)
