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Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939)
Irene Dunne—probably the only screwball woman I love as much as I love Barbara Stanwyck.1 Love Affair is not a screwball affair, it’s a melodrama and a very effective one. But Dunne is as effervescent as ever in it. The way she says “uh-huh,” the way her hands flutter, the way she can smile for real and smile by baring her teeth… I just love Irene Dunne. She’s 41 in this movie, by the way! What a dame.
In this movie, she meets Charles Boyer on an oceanliner. He’s an engaged playboy; she’s a retired singer who is (reading between the Hays Code lines) living in sin with her boss. They fall in love, but maybe it’s just the boat. They will rendezvous in six months if it’s the real thing. But then, on her way to the rendezvous point, Dunne gets hit by car and is paralyzed from the waist down. She refuses to tell Boyer what really hap…
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