Wonderful World of TCM: There Goes My Heart (1938)

This Norman McLeod romantic comedy tries to be one of those zany, fast, sharp screwball efforts that marked the decade, but it doesn't quite get into gear. I didn't expect much from it going in, but with a supporting cast that featured Patsy Kelly, Alan Mowbray, and Eugene Pallette, I couldn't resist checking it out.

The film's conceit is a common one: A bored heiress (Virginia Bruce) runs away and pretends she's a "commoner." Not so common is the casting of Frederic March as the slick newsman who tries to track her down and reveal her identity. I do mean "not so common" in more than one sense of the word, too. I'm no film historian, and I may be showing my ignorance here, but March as a reporter just doesn't gibe with me, unless he's filing society dispatches for the "Hamptons Estates Gazette" (or something ritzy-sounding; make up your own if you don't like that one).

I didn't see much chemistry between Bruce and March, and that made this romantic comedy a bit of a lackluster one at times. Not even the arrival of Patsy Kelly to come on screen and holler for a bit livens things up enough. But let me tell you what I loved about this one--Pallette as March's hard-boiled editor. Now, I ask you, what could be more natural casting than that?

Pallette's tough pug face and trademark bellow might signal a mindless brute, but his persona wasn't that simple. Here he shows a verbal dexterity far more clever than his appearance might indicate. Should not a newspaper editor be a little gruff, a little intimidating, but also savvy enough to combine street smarts with a knowledge of worldly affairs? This is Pallette's character, known only as Stevens.

I would have loved to have seen more of his story, as his needling of March is more entertaining than March's banter with Bruce. There should have been a series of 75-minute programmers with Editor Stevens, preferably with some cool alliterative nickname like Smoke or Stitch (after all, a pre-"Blondie" Arthur Lake's photographer gets the cool moniker "Flash Fisher"), running his paper and solving crimes and such.

Pallette could have been sort of like Lionel Barrymore's Dr. Gillespie in MGM's "Kildare" series, only he'd be able to use his fists as well as his wits. That's right, Stitch Stevens would be a two-fisted crusading newsman, one who saves his real ire for those who do wrong to his community or especially his beloved paper (though of course he maintains a gruff exterior when dealing with his staff).

Pardon my tangent, but I think that's a great idea. Oh, well. Stitch Stevens' time in "There Goes My Heart" is too brief to do anything but hint at what might have been. But don't get the idea that this film is a total waste of time. It's unexceptional, but it's a pleasant time killer. It's no "Trial of Stitch Stevens," but then what is?