God's Gift to Women
Director: Michael Curtiz
Year Released: 1931
Rating: 2.5
Don Juan-esque "womanizer" Toto (Frank Fay) spots Diane Churchill (Laura La Plante) and becomes smitten with her immediately, but her father John (Charles Winninger) doubts his sincerity, so he makes him take a pledge to, for half a year, avoid any and all carousing ... and then sends his "personal physician" Dr. Dumont (Arthur Edmund Carewe) to give him a physical (and tell him he has an aneurysm and could drop dead at any moment). The plot must have been frivolous (and predictable) even back in the early Thirties, and Toto's approach to courtship is aggressive and predatory, but it seems to get more zany and charming as it goes along, with him being "punished" for surrounding himself with so many temptations ... and the whole thing amounts to a major violation of the Hippocratic Oath (... tsk, tsk). In real life, Fay wasn't what you'd call the nicest person (allegedly he was one goose step away from joining the Schutzstaffel), so the title has to be referring to Ms. Louise Brooks (playing Florine), who was God's gift to women, men and the history of cinema.