Made for Each Other
“CAROLE CRIES!”
About Made for Each Other
John Mason, a young New York lawyer in Judge Doolittle's office, is in line for a partnership if he marries the judge's daughter Eunice. On a business trip he meets Jane, and they marry the next day. A trial cancels the honeymoon; John wins the case, but Doolittle gives the partnership to a colleague, Carter, who then marries Eunice. After the baby arrives, Depression pay cuts and John's mother, living in the small apartment, wear the marriage down. On New Year's Eve the child is in hospital with pneumonia. Serum has to be flown from Salt Lake City. Doolittle puts up $5,000, a pilot fights a snowstorm and parachutes with the package, and the baby lives. A few months later John is named a partner, and his son speaks his first words.
Cast & crew
More about Made for Each Other
Jo Swerling wrote the screenplay from a story by Rose Franken, with Frank Ryan uncredited. David O. Selznick produced it for United Artists release, borrowing James Stewart from MGM. Shooting ran from late August to late October 1938. A Life article later tied the serum flight to Selznick's attempt to have serum flown for his brother Myron.
Themes
Background
Swerling's script sets the young household inside the Depression: the firm orders pay cuts, bills pile up, and the partnership John expected goes to someone else.
Making
Lombard took the part while she was pressing Selznick for Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. She married Clark Gable not long after this film opened.
Reviews
Frank S. Nugent, in The New York Times, called it thoroughly delightful. Variety described "an exquisitely played, deeply moving comedy-drama." Time wrote that the domestic story had more dramatic impact than the disasters manufactured in Hollywood that season.
Audiences
Reviews were warm and the Music Hall booked it, but the film lost $292,000.
Look
Leon Shamroy photographed it at the Culver City studio, including the night hospital scenes and the snowbound flight for the serum.
Music
Oscar Levant wrote the score and did not receive a credit.
Preservation
The film is in the public domain in the United States. Walt Disney owns the original negative. Kino Lorber issued a Blu-ray in 2018 from a 2K scan.
Notes
- The New York opening was at Radio City Music Hall in the week of February 17, 1939.
- Selznick's ads sold a dramatic Lombard with the line "CAROLE CRIES!
- During the New Year's Eve party scenes, special-effects technician Edmund E. Fellegi fell from a forty-foot catwalk while releasing balloons and was killed.
- Frank S. Nugent's New York Times notice ran on February 17, 1939.
- The New York Times later placed the film on its ten-best list for 1939.
Scenes
- John and Jane marry a day after they meet, then lose the honeymoon to a trial.
- On New Year's Eve the baby is rushed to hospital with pneumonia.
- A pilot parachutes with the serum after the plane fails in the snow.
Influenced by
- Rose Franken's story, adapted by Jo Swerling
Also available
- Internet Archive (made_for_each_other_film)
- Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray (November 13, 2018)
