Without Love, 1945

Without Love - Released March 22, 1945 in NYC - USA release May 1945. Directed by Harold S. Bucquet. Written by Philip Barry and Donald Ogden Stewart

Lucille Ball (as Kitty Trimble) has to play second fiddle to the main event, which are the stars Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn (as Pat Jamieson and Jamie Rowan) who are two emotionally scarred survivors of previous relationships that went wrong (Tracy's was vaguely cuckolded by the immaturity of his prior-beloved; Hepburn's simply died untimely).

So the two decide to marry "without love" so that they can keep up their warm, unexpected friendship, and to also work together on a WWII scientific project for the Washington DC Defense Department (much is made of wartime shortages and housing deficiencies in the American Capitol).

Meanwhile, Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn (as Quentin Ladd) carry on an on-and-off-again love that has to make room for Wynn's habitual self-destructive drinking due to his failure to successfully enlist into the military. Ball provides a lot of snappy wise-cracks and self-deprecating, satirical patter which would have been at home in a 1930s screwball comedy, but this being 1945, the 'screwball' aspects are mitigated (though still very much present).

But the supporting characters are overshadowed by the love affair of the two main principals (and their screwy principals about love) that is the main source of humor and story-telling in this movie, similar in vein to Philadelphia Story (which makes sense, both films - - and the plays they are derived from - - are by the same author, Philip Barry).

With well-written dialogue and staged expertly, Without Love bogs down at certain story points having to do with predictable misunderstandings that make the plot become circular, spinning around without achieving anything except, finally, the expected ending. But Tracy and Hepburn work together well (to put it mildly) and as long as they're together onscreen, the movie runs smoothly, or as long as Lucille Ball is onscreen, making pithy observations or arching her eyebrows in disdain .

Original Page April 2016

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