Really Surprised!

How sad is this?

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

It was 1936. Irene Dunne had just finished being the lead in the popular Kern masterpiece: "Showboat". In it, she had shown off her wondrous singing voice. One song required her to do a bit of comedy in blackface. This looked promising enough to recommend her for a lead in a straight comedy. This film is what they came up with. Apparently, it was quite popular in it's day. But I submit that it hasn't aged particularly well.The plot revolves around a scandalous novel, "The Sinners", written by a small town young woman: Theodora Lynn, who has adopted the pseudonym Caroline Adams, to hide her identity from her 2 elderly aunts she lives with, in particular, and the people in her town, especially the conservative Literary Circle. Thanks to the very conservative views of the town, Theodore has lived a very sheltered life, hardly having been beyond the borders of her town. As her illustrator Michael Grant(Melvyn Douglas)remarks, in her book, she imagines many of the things she would like to do, but is afraid of disapproval. Theodora seems to agree with this. Michael has acquired the ambition to help get Theodora out of her shell, and live some of the things she has written about. Initially, Theodora is hesitant, refusing to tell him where she lives(he finds out anyway), and panicking when he makes advances on her in his NYC apartment. For some reason, during his brief stay at Theodora's home, he irritates everyone by whistling tunes.. Theodora retaliates by playing and singing "Be Still My Heart". After finished, Michael whistles again, inducing Theodora to bang on the piano and muss her hair, her aunts to slam the door, breaking the glass portion and causing the cat to scream from having it's tail caught in the door. That should wake up the dozing audience! Then, Michael hitches his adopted dog to the front of the hand mower, as if he is pulling it, singing "Get Along Little Dogie" Again, this irritates the aunts. Against her objections, Michael finally induces Theodora to go berry picking in the woods with him, and go fishing with him, where they get further acquainted. Finally, Theodora gets the nerve to tell off the members of the Literary Circle, including her aunts, but good. She starts wearing very frilly evening gowns, and gets drunk to show she's not afraid of an occasional drink. "Theodora's gone wild" say the women in her circle. Eventually, she tells reporters that she is Caroline Adams, creating a sensation in her hometown. Michael, estranged from his wife, tries to dissociate himself from Theodora, fearing scandal relating to her will include himself, and embarrass his politically important father....I leave the finale for you to see. Available at YouTube.Thomas Mitchel does a good job making the town newspaper editor interesting, with limited screen time. ..Spring Byington is the most prominent of the Literary Circle, and has a surprise waiting for her at the end worth fainting for. ...Thornton Hall serves as Theodora's publisher and friend, and long shares her secret.

Theodora Goes Wild was released two years into Hollywood's production code and yet the entire premise of the movie is one huge "how did they get away with that?!". Only The Lady Eve, Ball of Fire and The Moon Is Blue perhaps out do it in terms of most pre-code post-code films. A film with a heroine who writes risqué novels and rebels against her ultraconservative, God-fearing, Helen Lovejoy type aunts who deem it their obligation to keep the fictional town of Lynnfield, Connecticut (yet another screwball comedy set in the state) the one last pure, God-fearing town in America. Moral puritans who try to ruin everyone else's fun and claim to speak for a larger group- every generation has them. Theodora Goes Wild proceeds with an ending in which the once silent majority Lynnfield show their true colours. - This movie hasn't lost an ounce of relevance for today's world. The scene at the beginning of Theodora Goes Wild in which the local literary group read passages from the latest "scandalous" novel from author Caroline Adams really is jaw-dropping. However, the local newspaper run by Thomas Mitchell starts printing a serialization of the scandalous bestseller in an effort to show the town how people live, love and learn in the real world. Little do they know Caroline Adams is their own Theodora Lynn, a Sunday school teacher who's been playing the church organ since she was 15. Under the rules of the Production Code, a character must receive a punishment for their so-called "immoral" actions. Not here though! Despite Theodora rebelling against her God-fearing upbringing, she receives no punishment. Whoever said old movies are stuffy and the dreaded "O" word, outdated? Despite writing highly successful adult novels, Theodora's conscious still objects to it and thus requires a bit of Melvyn Douglas as Michael Grant to ignite Theodora's sexual awakening after he seduces her while wearing a vest as his only piece of torso. Despite neither of these two performers being sex symbols, it's surprising how steamy this scene comes off. Melvyn Douglas plays a potentially creepy stalker but is charming enough and carefree to a comic degree that he gets away with it. The man has adapt comedic timing (I never tire of that whistling of his) and it's easy to see why Douglas was one of the most reliable male co-stars of the time. However what succeeds in making him a more interesting character is the discovery that Michael is actually just as repressed as Theodora due to being enslaved in a hateful marriage on behalf of his father's political livelihood. Once Michael liberates Theodora from her small town way of life she returns the favour and liberates him from his New York, bourgeois decorum.

. . . says Melvyn Douglas as smug sophisticate Michael Grant, the perfect foil to Irene Dunne's title character, the virginal church organist Theodora Lynn, who lives with her two spinster aunts in her namesake Connecticut village and dashes off to big bad New York City with the seamy best sellers she writes to let off steam. It's as if Julie Andrews was playing a singing nun and an aging topless actress IN THE SAME MOVIE, instead of decades apart in THE SOUND OF MUSIC and S.O.B. The script for THEODORA GOES WILD is consistently clever, and the supporting cast doesn't miss a trick to sell the comedy. There's more than a grain of truth in THEODORA's depiction of New Yorkers as the biggest bumpkins of them all, something which still holds true in today's Weiner\Spitzer Era. The Connecticut Literary Circle Ladies seem dying to break into the chorus of THE MUSIC MAN's "Pick a Little, Peck a Little," if only Meredith Willson had written it in time! But whenever Miss Dunne drops into the husky rich bi*ch contralto of her "Caroline Adams" pseudonym, it's enough to melt the ice cubes in your martini!

This film surprised me with how well produced it was and what a great comedy it turned out to be. Irene Dunne, (Theodora Lynn) played the role of a small town gal living in Lynnfield where everyone was very religious and lived life straight as an arrow. One day the newspaper man in Lynnfield, Jed Waterbury, (Thomas Mitchell) posted a notice of a new book that he was going to feature in his daily newspaper called, "Sinner" by Adams. The people in town were outraged, however, they liked reading the articles in the paper and soon the people decided to tell Jed Waterbury to remove the book and the feature in his paper. It just so happens that the author of this book comes from Lynnfield and no one would ever expect just who it could be. Melvyn Douglas plays the role as Michael Grant who is linked romantically with Theodora and he gave a great supporting role. This is lots of fun to watch and enjoy this great classic from 1936.