Who Is the Biggest Charmer?

The Talk of the Town (1942) is a joyous experience. It features a romantic triangle between three actors who are absurdly charming: Jean Arthur, Cary Grant, and Ronald Colman. It’s a bit of an odd tale, but frankly, with these three people in the mix, who cares about plot?

You can’t watch Cary Grant’s smirking, musing, or flirting….

Hear Jean Arthur’s lovely tweety voice…

Or witness the sweetness of Colman’s subtle smile….

without giving into them, can you?

The only question is which of the three is the MOST charming.

Certain actors carry a patina of their roles with them. To me, Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Denzel Washington are all like this. Try to watch Tom Hanks without the echoing sweetness of Josh (Big) and his other early comedies winning you over; I can’t make it through half a minute of any of his movies without already loving the guy.

But it’s not often that THREE actors this charming share the screen, as they do in The Talk of the Town.

The story is a peculiar mishmash. Jean Arthur’s Nora, a teacher, is renting her house to a renowned legal scholar, Professor Michael Lightcap (Colman). Her old school chum, Leopold, is on the run from the law, accused of starting a fire in a mill that killed his foreman. He hides in her home right as Lightcap arrives and pretends to be her gardener to fool the new resident.

Lightcap may be the only person who can save Leopold’s life. The mill’s owner is egging on a mob to kill Leopold for his alleged crime. The fugitive, annoyed by Lightcap’s cold legal logic, moves Lightcap with his passion and firebrandy ways (couldn’t resist), which are what made the mill owner hate him to begin with. Nora finagles a job as a secretary to Lightcap to protect Leopold from being discovered by the mob–or by Lightcap.

A triangle really is the right word, as Nora is impressed by Lightcap’s prestige, intelligence, and ethics, and torn between these new feelings and her old affection for Leopold.

Yet it would be a mistake to leave Leopold and Lightcap out of the mix: the film is as much about intellectual as romantic affection. Whether Lightcap is most drawn to Leopold or Nora is a question that never gets answered.

And who can blame him? This is a charm off, my friends, and in every corner of this Isosceles is an actor—and by extension, character–you can’t help watching. Let’s dig a little deeper:

Jean Arthur

Whether she’s wisecracking as Saunders (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), flirting without realizing it (The More, the Merrier), baffled (Easy Living), or earnest (Shane), Jean Arthur is adorable. I love seeing her in oversized PJs.

The look somehow captures her appeal–the way people underestimate her until that feisty, birdlike voice and the frustration she evokes so well (she should be annoying but somehow never is) draw you in and win you over.

Ronald Colman

I fell for Ronald Colman in Random Harvest, and woe betide the woman who ever watches that film: his “forgotten man” will haunt you. With a voice nearly as memorable as Arthur’s, the broken veteran in Random Harvest moves seamlessly from his shaken condition to the debonair man of consequence. He is equally convincing in both versions of himself. His gruffness in The Talk of the Town‘s start, therefore, never fools me for a second. This, my friends, is a sweetheart, make no mistake–and thus he proves to be. These two films came out in the same year, so perhaps others didn’t have this early love affair with him. But watch him in anything, and you fall for the man.

Cary Grant

Cary Grant, of course, is the most obvious charmer–playing, as he often admitted himself, the part of Cary Grant his whole life. He is never fully convincing as the local troublemaker driven by his ideals–until he questions his own judgment due to his admiration for Lightcap.

Cary Grant often seems to be in reflective mode, and his torn feelings about Lightcap play over that gorgeous face. But then, we are on his side as soon as we recognize that face. This is the slightly disreputable version of the actor you can’t help but adore, the rabble rouser with a naughty streak, with a pinch of The Awful Truth and Topper. You’re never convinced this is the Cary Grant of Suspicion, though he is accused of murder. Like with Arthur, you can’t ever count him out, even when he’s romantically (and ethically) paired against a potential Supreme Court justice, Lightcap.

So who do YOU think the winner of this charm-off would be, however it may end in the film? I leave it to you to decide.