Men Are Such Fools 1938

Linda Lawrence [Priscilla Lane] skyrockets from a stenographer’s desk to a job as an account executive in a bustling advertising agency. Although she is more drawn to a thriving career than to marriage, she falls in love with ex-football hero Jimmy Hall [Wayne Morris] after his forceful courtship. They marry after Jimmy promises that he will not ask Linda to resign her position. Linda is pursued by her boss, Harvey Bates [Hugh Herbert], and by Harry Galleon [Humphrey Bogart], a powerful radio contact man who can push her career forward if she will be “nice” to him. Jimmy’s jealousy begins to simmer, and Linda steps down to become a suburban housewife just as her name starts to echo through the advertising and radio worlds.

As the tension grows, Linda grows increasingly aware that Jimmy is unambitious and content in a futureless job. She quietly promotes a junior partnership for him in an expanding firm, hoping to coax him into a shared future of success. When he refuses the opportunity, she walks out on him and returns to her demanding career. Jimmy, in turn, accepts the partnership and soon becomes a rising star, crashing the newspaper chatter columns as a Broadway playboy.

A year passes with little sign of reconciliation, until Linda announces a trip to Paris, ostensibly to obtain a divorce and to marry Harry, who has shifted from a business interest to a proposal. Jimmy races to intercept her, and his intervention plays exactly into Linda’s plans. The sequence culminates in a dramatic draw between love, ambition, and independence, with Linda achieving her aims even as old loyalties are redefined.

The story’s final turn draws Harry into the orbit of Beatrice Harris [Mona Barrie], a sardonic vamp whom he had discarded years before, closing a complex loop of romance, power, and personal ambition that has threaded through Linda’s ascent and the men who shaped her path.