6/10
The Pecking Order
22 October 2007
Though the careers of Robert Montgomery, Joan Crawford, and her husband at the time, Franchot Tone's respective careers were not hurt by films like No More Ladies, this was the kind of stuff all three of these players were looking to get out of.

There was a truism at MGM back in its heyday. For films where the men wear tuxedos you first get Robert Montgomery. If he turns it down get Franchot Tone. If it's bad enough for Tone to turn it down God help him, Robert Young is stuck with it. So knowing the pecking order and knowing the billing, you can guess who Crawford winds up with.

Robert Montgomery plays another of those irrepressible womanizing playboys who's sowed enough wild oats to qualify for a farm subsidy. He's decided to settle down with society girl Joan Crawford who has certain ideas about infidelity and how wrong it is. Montgomery behaves at first, but when he uses their perpetually inebriated friend Charlie Ruggles as an alibi that doesn't hold up, Crawford decides on some revenge with Franchot Tone.

No More Ladies is harmless enough and when Edna May Oliver as Joan's grandmother is on the screen, always entertaining. But it was the stuff that MGM was grinding out in its dream factory. It was a case of Montgomery and Tone look great in tuxedos so cast them as urban playboys.

Well, both of them did look great, Louis B. Mayer wasn't wrong about that.
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