I woke up early this morning had my cup of coffee and turned on the TV. I got excited because on my TiVo I recorded “The Divorcee
The movie starts off in a party with the socially elite crowd having a gay old time. Jerry Bernard played by Norma Shearer is the informal leader of the pack. She announces she is going to marry Ted Martin (Chester Morris) but another man, Paul (Conrad Nagel) in the pack isn’t too happy about it. You see, Paul has always been in love with Jerry. He begins to drink his woes away, and is the designated driver…huh? On the way back to the city he gets into a bad accident severely disfiguring Dorothy (Helen Johnson) a passenger in the car. Paul later marries Dorothy out of guilt and not love.
Jerry marries Ted and 3 blissful years later they celebrate their anniversary. It is at this gathering Jerry meets “the other woman,” Janice Meredith (Mary Doran). Jerry confronts Ted and like most men in those days, and perhaps even today, Ted down plays the affair. “It didn’t mean a thing to me,” or “you’ll the one I love.” What a loser! Jerry feels if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for her. She sleeps with his friend, Don (Robert Montgomery) while Ted is away. When Ted returns, he wants her forgiveness, and Jerry is willing to forgive him because while he was away she “had balanced their accounts.” Ted has a change of heart. Now it all changes, the forgiveness he wanted, he wasn’t able to give! In this scene Jerry is ahead of her time, she lets him have it, and lets him leave. She tells him that she’ll get on, and the only man her door is closed to is him. She embarks on series of affairs including one with Paul who is married to a disfigured Dorothy.
My, my how attitudes have changed since this movie was released. The film may be dated, but still resonates today. Jerry is a strong woman in this film and like Ted said later Jerry “reasoned like a man.” When Ted went to his wife to plead for forgiveness he didn’t expect her to tell him that she herself had taken the same road. He expected her to forgive him, forget it, and move on. Society at this time didn’t see a philandering husband as something bad, but if a woman did it, she lost her honor. A man would tell his wife how his sleeping with another woman had no bearing on the love he had for his wife. However, his male ego is unable to deal with the situation in the reverse. When we see this movie today we see Tom in the wrong, but it was Jerry who was in the wrong back in the 30′s. At the very end of the movie Jerry even blames herself and goes back to Ted to “fight” for her marriage. Jerry’s tactical retreat leads to the film’s traditional, and unrealistic happy ending.
