School for Husbands (1937) User Reviews

Lesson of the Day: See Another Movie

[boblipton · 4/10 · 6 December 2017]

Diana Churchill is married to Henry Kendall and they're both a bit bored. June Clyde is married to Romney Brent and they're both a bit bored. In walks Rex Harrison who tells the husbands they need to pay more attention to their wives. The wives think a dalliance with fifth-billed Sexy Rexy is in order. Alas, I was bored.

At least part of the the problem was the poor copy I saw. Its audio track reduced the married couples to much the same sort of nasal drone that made it hard for me to understand what they were saying. However, the real problem with the film was that while it promises lascivious goings-on, except for scenes of the two leading ladies in their scanties, demonstrating how to roll their stockings, there aren't any. It teases the audience, but never delivers.

It's based on a stage play by Frederick Jackson and, except for about five minutes of its length is shot in the living room of the Kendall-Churchill flat. The dialogue is neither particularly witty nor deep, although it is possible that the censors laid a heavy hand on the script. Nonetheless, we cannot judge a film by what it might have been under other circumstances, but by what is was when we saw it, and this one was not particularly good.

Sexy Rexy On The Ascent

[malcolmgsw · 5/10 · 25 November 2014]

This was Rex Harrison's seventh film and already he was on the ascent.It would not be long before his name would be above the title.Leaving the likes of Henry Kendall and Romney Brent to flounder on in quota quickies of this nature.The film was made at Shepperton Studios,then called Sound City.Its basic function pre war was to churn out films of this nature.Basically the sort of thing that was probably inspired,if that is the word ,by a west end play.It has to be said that Harrison really has the field to himself as both Kendall and Brent do little to enhance the proceedings.In fact their time had come and gone.The future was Rex Harrison.

Dubuque citizens and juvenile minds get slapped around.

[horn-5 · 22 December 2006]

A couple of lonesome and 1937-horny wives (Diana Churchill and June Clyde) fall for a philanderer (Rex Harrison), and arrange to get their husbands (Henry Kendall and Romney Brent) off to Paris so they can be free for one night of philandering phun and phrolic. The husbands are all for this as they think it will cure their wives of being infatuated with this man-about-town...and there is always the chance they may run into a couple of philandering phillies in ol' Paree.

Actually, the philanderer is the one who put the idea in their heads to go away so the coast will be clear for his marauding raid party, with no intentions of curing anybody of anything.

The Film Daily reviewer allowed that this film would shock the little old ladies of Dubuque (as in Iowa), but the chances were it would never show in Dubuque when the censors got through with it, for there would be little left to make much sense, for the risqué stuff comes not only in dialogue but in business.

(He didn't bother to explain just what he considered constituted "business" but he evidently thought that despite the rising population numbers in Dubuque at the time, the mothers and grandmothers of Dubuque didn't indulge in any business while raising those numbers.) And, then, he got real snitty tacky and wrote...this will probably go big in the arty houses, but it is not suitable for juvenile minds. That means it is out for most of our theaters which have a large percentage of juvenile minds. You have to be grown up mentally to ride with this one." (Note that he wrote "juvenile minds" and not juvenile attendance...and, possibly was rebuked in the Dubuque bus station at some point in his life while growing up mentally strong enough to be able to ride with "School For Husbands." ) Those Dubuque censors must have been really tough, because stiff-necked Joe Breen gave this his PCA approval. He might have looked away and missed the scenes when they were doing business, though.

They ate it up in Peoria, Paducah and Philly.