Cocktail Hour (1933)

An attractive illustrator (Bebe Daniels) for popular magazines is an independent woman with no interest in marriage in spite of the marriageable men pursuing her. Two of the men are her boss (Randolph Scott) who has a Neanderthal attitude toward career women and a callow youth (Barry Norton). On the ship to Europe, she meets yet another man (Sidney Blackmer)! Based on the short story PEARLS AND EMERALDS by James Kevin MacGuinness and directed by Victor Schertzinger (ROAD TO SINGAPORE). Typical of the attitude toward career women in the 1930s and 1940s, this pre code romantic drama has a strong and independent career woman who lives life her way at the center of its story but, of course, before the movie is over she succumbs to the male of the species and settles for home and hearth. Still, Daniels has an appealing presence and she makes her character more complex than the screenplay would have it. With Muriel Kirkland, Jessie Ralph, George Nardelli and Marjorie Gateson.