One Hour with You. 1932. USA. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, with George Cukor. Screenplay by Samson Raphaelson. With Jeanette MacDonald, Maurice Chevalier, Genevieve Tobin, Charles Ruggles. 35mm preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. 90 min.
Genevieve Tobin had unusual looks and a comic talent that could have been well-suited to leads, but somehow she never caught on as such in the minds of Hollywood producers. She usually played supporting roles, but frequently to scene-stealing effect, as in this famed musical directed by Ernst Lubitsch (“with the assistance of George Cukor”). Tobin’s Mitzi is a creature that the Production Code would all but kill off in movies—sexually avaricious and without scruples. Tobin worked through the end of the decade (including one of her best-known roles, in The Petrified Forest from 1936), but her career slowed after 1935. She married the director William Keighley and retired from films after 1940’s No Time for Comedy.