Plot

This comedy/drama (which is really more drama) tells the tale of Ruth Brock (Nancy Carroll), a young woman who is at odds with the pace and texture of life in her small town. On the one hand, she is a dutiful daughter and the sole supporter of her aging father (William Collier, Sr.), home-maker mother (Jane Darwell), and younger sister (Rose Coghlin); she works at the local bank in her small upstate town and, from the looks of the film's opening sequence at the bank, may be the most serious and diligent employee under the age of 50 that the bank has. But she's also got a fun-loving, flirtatious side, which comes out when she's in the company of young men, especially her boyfriend and co-worker Conny Billup (Edward Woods). Invited to a party at the local getaway at a nearby lake, she is sidetracked briefly by the attentions of Romer Sheffield (Cary Grant), the town's resident ne'er-do-well -- a playboy of independent means who takes pleasure in the gossip that he knows is stirred by his every move, Sheffield does as he likes, without a care about what anyone thinks. That's fine for him, but his flirtation with Ruth causes her all kinds of problems -- in a fit of jealousy, Conny abandons her at the lake in the middle of the night, and in the ensuing confusion the whole town soon thinks that Ruth was alone with Sheffield at his mansion for hours, till two in the morning, and immediately believes the worst of her. She is fired from her job and can't even speak any longer to anyone in town. Her own mother, who is mostly concerned with the loss of her salary, attacks her. And then a ray of hope arrives in the person of Bill Fadden (Randolph Scott), a one-time neighbor boy who left to become a geologist, and is passing through on his way to do a survey nearby. He's loved Ruth since he was a teenager, and hasn't seen her in years, and their chance meeting in her parents' house leads the to two to decide to marry. But Conny, still jealous and now angry, successfully poisons Bill's image of her. He rejects her, and Ruth's world seems to be collapsing around her once again, until she realizes that her one real chance for redemption lies with the man who started it all, Romer Sheffield. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Review

Based on a novel by Harvey Fergusson, Hot Saturday is ostensibly a comedy -- and there are some funny moments in it, to be sure, mostly provided by Cary Grant, playing a small-town ne'er-do-well, Grady Sutton as a co-worker of the heroine, and William Collier, Sr. as her father. But it's just as much a morality tale and a piercing look at small-town hypocrisy. Director William Seiter's forte was comedy, but he handles this somewhat more serious material well enough, with a lot of help from a trio of talented leads: Cary Grant essays the role of a devil-may-care lothario -- who turns out to be a lot more serious about life than he thought -- beautifully; and Nancy Carroll strikes a good balance between seriousness and flirtatiousness, given the restrictions of the era in dialogue and action; Randolph Scott doesn't have quite enough screen time to establish his character, but what he does get out on screen is sufficient for the production at hand, which seems a little bit rushed as it is. The action in Hot Saturday takes place in about one week, and in the course of that week a good part of the social fabric of the small town in which it is set will be torn apart, and its weakest links exposed -- it all happens too fast by the standards of modern viewing, but in 1932 it probably seemed proportioned just about right, and there is enough to enjoy eight decades later - especially in the glib-tongued performance of the young Grant -- to make it worthwhile viewing, at least as a period piece about early 1930s morality. The denouement also contains a fascinating (for the early 1930s, when Americans still didn't live in cities), off-handed rejection of small-town virtues and morality, as the two leads blithely head for New York City, and a cheerful resolution of their problems with the blessings of big-city clergy. The movie was adapted from a 1926 novel of the same name by Harvey Fergusson, a major author of the early/middle twentieth century, and if not brought to the screen on the level of, say, Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt or Elmer Gantry, it's still worth a look. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Cast

• Cary Grant - Romer Sheffield
• Nancy Carroll - Ruth Brock
• Randolph Scott - Bill Fadden
• Edward Woods - Conny Billop
• Lillian Bond - Eva Randolph

William Collier, Sr. - Harry Brock; Jane Darwell - Mrs. Brock; Rita La Roy - Camille; Rose Coghlan - Annie Brock; Oscar Apfel - Ed W. Randolph; Jessie Arnold - Aunt Minnie; Grady Sutton - Archie; Nora Cecil - Gossip; Marjorie Main; Stanley Smith - Joe; Dave "Tex" O'Brien - Guest

Credit

William Seiter - Director, Arthur Todd - Cinematographer, Joseph Moncure March - Screenwriter, Seton Miller - Screenwriter, Josephine Lovett - Screenwriter, Harvey Fergusson - Book Author

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