I don’t want to spend that much time on bad movies, and this product of the low-budget Liberty Pictures studio is a bad movie. But—it has a notable premise, which I wonder if it was the first to use: a divorced couple, both of whom are divorce attorneys, meet in court representing opposed parties, which leads to their reunion.
That said, this is no Adam’s Rib.
John and Evelyn, the husband and wife, are played well enough by Neil Hamilton, in one of the hundred roles he had before he was Commissioner Gordon on the Batman TV show, and the British stage actress Miriam Jordan. In the first two minutes of the film they split, after an argument that references that great bane of married couples, the overbearing mother-in-law.
They divorce, and when they next encounter each other it is in John’s law office. He learns to his great surprise that the opposing attorney is his ex-wife, who has earned a law degree and passed the bar since she became single again.
Evelyn is representing the Populopulinis, a poor but hard-working family of Italian immigrants. Their American-born son married a daughter of the wealthy Devonshires. The mother-in-law, Mrs. Devonshire, disapproved of the marriage and forced her daughter to get an annulment. Now the elder Mr. Populopulini is suing the Devonshires for one hundred thousand dollars, on behalf of his son, charging that Mrs. Devonshire has maliciously wrecked what was a happy marriage.
Once John gets over the shock of learning that his ex-wife is now a lawyer, he finds much mirth in situation: that his wife is bringing suit against an awful mother-in-law, when she has her own “battle-axe,” as John refers to his ex-mother-in-law.
Evelyn is not amused, and when John becomes patronizing, telling her she should try to settle for a much lower amount on behalf of her client since she will undoubtedly lose to him in court, she tells him that she will advise the Populopulinis to accept nothing less than the full amount.
Evelyn wins the case. It is obvious to everyone in the courtroom except John and Mrs. Devonshire that the young couple were thoroughly happy together and it was the snobbish mother-in-law—her disdain for the immigrants is called out as un-American—who forced them apart. (The legal case for suing a mother-in-law under these circumstances is less clear to me.)
A better script would have made the court trial the climax of the film and the immediate means by which John and Evelyn are reunited. Yet the film doesn’t seem to know what to do with its ex-wife/lawyer premise. The trial occurs at the halfway mark, and the movie hasn’t yet figured out how John and Evelyn are to be reunited, or—given how peevish John is—why.
The film therefore limps along until its runs out the clock and a “The End” follows on John and Evelyn’s embrace.
There is a moment, however, when the film attempts to reflect on itself. This occurs during a bridge party, which is arranged by the trial judge, who wants to see John and Evelyn remarry and thinks that an evening with him and his wife, and another married couple, will show off the charms of matrimony. A fourth couple is also invited: John’s law firm friend David and his girlfriend Mitzi, a pretty bubble-head whom the confirmed bachelor David has no intention of marrying.
When one of the women compliments Evelyn on her victory as a “woman lawyer,” the talk turns to the societal implications of all this:
Mitzi But I do think it’s wonderful the way the feminist movement is progressing. It’s getting so that women can do anything that men can.
Judge I wonder.
David It seems to me that the bonds of matrimony have kept women from freeing themselves and accomplishing things.
Judge (clasping his wife’s shoulders) I may be old-fashioned, but I still think the bond between two heads legally on a pillow is the foundation of our social life.
Mitzi In another hundred years marriage will be a thing of the past.
Judge Then I’m afraid we shall see the end of our civilization.
David I can’t see it. It seems to me that all our social ills today result from modern people trying to adjust themselves to an outworn formula.
Judge Depends on what is in the two heads on the pillow. Whether it’s sense or nonsense, love or passion, trifling of youth or the sympathy that comes with experience and maturity.
Mitzi Well a head’s a head, isn’t it? You can’t bore a hole in one and put something into it that isn’t there, can you?
As it happens, the older married couples who are supposed to model the happiness of marriage fall to bickering. On the other hand, the “modern people” ideal doesn’t seem to work out either, as Mitzi later sues David for breach of promise when he fails to propose to her. Meanwhile, Evelyn remains improbably fond of her ex-husband, yet confesses that “living alone I found dignity and peace and self-respect.”
If there is a clear lesson in the movie is that nobody likes an overbearing mother-in-law or a shrewish wife, and certainly not both. Mrs. Devonshire has not only broken up her daughter’s marriage but henpecks her timid husband. The Devonshire daughter and her Italian husband are able to reunite when Mr. Devonshire gets drunk with Mr. Populopulini, and the immigrant coaches the wealthy WASP on how to lay down the law to his wife.
Two Heads on a Pillow claims an interesting literary source. The movie credits “Albery” (evidently a misspelling of Albert) Demond and Dorothy Canfield as writers. Publicity states that the movie was “suggested” by Dorothy Canfield’s story “The Eternal Masculine.”
Dorothy Canfield Fisher, one of the most influential progressive social and educational activists of the first half of the twentieth century, and a prolific and successful author of both fiction and non-fiction, published a story in 1908 titled “The Eternal Masculine.” Her credit on the movie poster is an indication of how prominent a name she was at the time, since this story has nothing to do with divorce or lawyers, though it is certainly about relationships between the sexes.
The protagonist of “The Eternal Masculine,” Elizabeth, is 25, beautiful, accomplished—and single. This is not by choice. Her married sister Dolly explains to her that she must downplay her competence. Men require women to be weak and helpless in order to take an interest in them. Dolly’s husband, she says, is devoted to her “because he thinks I’m a pretty little silly who couldn’t draw the breath of life if he didn’t show me how.” It’s an act on her part but that’s the way men are.
On a trip, Elizabeth decides to try out this ruse and, to her surprise, it works. She attracts the attentions of Paul, who believes he is teaching her, for instance, how to write a check (Elizabeth handles her family’s finances), how to play golf (she is a trophy winner), and how to ride a horse (she is an expert equestrian).
After a while, though, she notices that her self-Stepfordization has started to become natural to her, and she is losing her old personality and abilities:
She has fallen too much in love with Paul to wrest herself out of what started as a ruse. But when Paul is about to pop the question, a horse bucks and she has to save them because he doesn’t know how to control it and she does. Afterwards, she ashamedly confesses what she has been doing, and sobs angrily that she can’t keep it up any longer.
Paul in turn confesses that he was not about to propose marriage. He was about to break off their relationship. The whole time he had been ashamed of his uncharacteristic attraction to a “brainless, pretty, childish, helpless girl,” and had decided to end things before he made the mistake of consigning himself to such a marriage.
Realizing that they actually want to be accepted as equals, they agree to begin their courtship “all over again at the very beginning.”