Guy Kibbee and Aline MacMahon worked together in 10 movies, including their most famous pairing in Gold Diggers Of 1933 (1933). Just two short years later, the duo of the sharp-tongued frump and the harmless, middle-aged rake was revered enough by audiences to be billed in the trailer for this drama as "those loveable screenmates". Here, in this wanderlust cautionary tale, a frustrated publisher of a small run newspaper (Guy Kibbee) has had enough of provincial life and hits the road, leaving his wife (Aline MacMahon) and two small daughters in the lurch. In shock, his now-deserted wife rallies and makes the newspaper into a rousing success. When the prodigal husband returns many years later, in a plot twist that presages Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) by many decades, he takes a domestic position in her home as a cook in order to be near the girls he left behind. Kibbee's most lasting claim to breakfast table fame originates from this movie: the scene where he fries eggs in the holes cut out from slices of bread gave nickname to the dish "Guy Kibbee eggs".

By Violet LeVoit