There Goes My Heart (1938)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

If you believe films like "There Goes My Heart," every gal with money wanted to be poor in the 1930s and ran away from home. Thanks to the huge success of "It Happened One Night," the ambitious reporter-newsworthy heiress angle, the heiress disguised as a commoner, etc., was done over and over again - this film, "Love is News," "Bright Lights," "Anything Goes," "They Wanted to Marry," "Love on the Run" - I could go on.Now we have "There Goes My Heart," where a young heiress (Virginia Bruce) gets away from her overprotective grandfather and escapes to New York. There, she meets a young woman (Patsy Kelly) who offers to share her apartment and helps her get a department store job. Meanwhile, a newspaperman (Fredric March) is on the story, but doesn't tell Bruce who he is.As others have pointed out, Virginia Bruce, though lovely, was no screwball comedy star. Here she's in a Carole Lombard role. Patsy Kelly for me always gave a large, loud stage performance. She's very funny in this; other times I've found her annoying. Fredric March is quite relaxed in his role, and Eugene Palette is effective as the stereotypical editor who's always angry at his reporter. Harry Langdon has a nice cameo at the end.There are some good scenes in this film, particularly the ice skating sequence, and Kelly's attempts to demonstrate the "Vibrato" exercise machine. The drunk scene between Palette, March, and Arthur Lake is good, too."There Goes My Heart" is filled with wonderful actors like Alan Mowbray and Marjorie Main, plus the aforementioned Langdom and Lake. It doesn't try to be more than it is, and it's successful in his own right if you don't expect too much.

HEART is an attempt at a screwball comedy that fails for a couple of reasons: a plot that gets too entangled, to the point of incredulity, and a lead actress who may look a little like Carol Lombard, but clearly isn't. Virginia Bruce is the female in question as a runaway heiress who ends up working incognito in her grandfather's department store, clearly meant to resemble Macy's. The thin-faced Bruce is a bit too wistful for the role, unfortunately. The role really could have used Lombard -- or Thelma Todd or Irene Dunne or Katherine Hepburn or Claudette Colbert, or even one of the Bennett sisters. Frederic March is, as always, note-perfect as a cynical reporter on Bruce's trail who -- what else? -- ends up falling for her. There is a stunt-filled ice skating sequence that takes up a bit too much time, compounded by a very rushed ending that leaves major plot strings untied. The wonderful Eugene Palette is on hand as March's blustery editor, and wisecracking Patsy Kelly is in fine form as a downtrodden store clerk who takes Bruce in. This may be no BRINGING UP BABY or NOTHING SACRED or IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, but it is fun to watch March, Kelly and Palette in action. And it is also viewable in its historic context, surrounded as it was by several masterpieces of the genre.

...It doesn't entirely work, unfortunately. Fredric March is excellent, as always. What a fine and versatile actor! And Virginia Bruce is winning, as she always was. She plays an heiress, he a newspaper reporter sent to get a story about her. (This aspect presages the Bette Davis movie "Golden Arrows.") Eugene Palette, always a treat, plays his editor.Bruce is not an ideal screwball heroine, unfortunately. Her pale, wistful beauty doesn't really lend itself to the genre, though she is dine in the movie. Patsy Kelly is hilarious as her pal: Bruce has sailed to Manhattan in her yacht while granddaddy is away. She finds herself in the City with no money. At a diner (kind of an Automat but not really) she and Kelly scam some food. Kelly picks her up! "If you don't have anywhere else to go, you can spend the night at my place." Kelly's ostensible romantic interest is Alan Mowbry, a neighbor who is studying to become a chiropractor by mail. What a couple they make! Back at the store where Kelly works, which Grandpa owns, we see Kelly demonstrating a device called "Vibrato." It's a kind of Sapphic intimation of the Vega-Meta-Vitamin sequence decades later from "I Love Lucy." The movie has a sterling supporting cast, which also includes Nancy Carroll, delicious as a jealous, catty fellow saleswoman.It also, unfortunately, has afar too lengthy and pointless scene with Bruce and march at a skating rink. Why it was allowed to go on so long is a mystery. (There is a similar scene in one of Irene Dunne's lesser comedies -- "Joy of Living," I think.) The movie begins in a stylish, chic manner but it loses its way. It could have been in the top tier but as it is it's still fun.

Okay, so this is a copy of It Happened One Night. Big deal. There's actually a fair amount in it that is different. The basic elements are the same: Girl runs away from dad/grandfather and dodges the detectives but comes face-to-face with a reporter hiding his identity from her.I would say that the primary difference between films is the attitudes of the leading men. Clark is essentially blackmailing Claudette in IHON, while in this film, Fredric doesn't seem to have any intention of publicising Virginia - he doesn't want to write the story in the first place, keeps delaying the finish of his story, and finally he rips it up and refuses to do it at all. In TGMH, there is also a strange but amusing supporting actress who works in the same store as Virginia does. Oscar Shapely of IHON is not her equivalent, though amusing in his own way, believe you me.It Happened One Night is definitely the more solid of the two movies, but There Goes My Heart is fun to watch and should be more actively viewed than it is, instead of being condemned by a majority that probably hasn't seen it, but bases their opinions on the negative reviews of others. I myself was sceptical - I just watched it prepared to react whatever way the movie led me, and I have to say that I did like it and would definitely see it again.