Small Town Girl

Bored out of her wits, the title heroine (Janet Gaynor) forsakes her devoted boyfriend (James Stewart) to elope with a drunken playboy (Robert Taylor) who’s forgotten he has a fiancee (Binnie Barnes). The newlyweds keep up a loveless marriage for the sake of appearances, though Gaynor still yearns for her husband’s affection. William A. Wellman directed this MGM soap opera (1936), and while he’s funny ridiculing the banality of small-town life, he seems to lose interest once the action shifts to upper-crust Boston and Taylor’s woodenness asserts itself. With Lewis Stone, Andy Devine, and Edgar Kennedy. 90 min. (JR)

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