In a strange move for Hollywood, Universal filmed this tale of the man who created a more efficient machine gun and even built a better mousetrap not as a straight-up biopic but rather as a domestic comedy. In place of the usual "and then I wrote/built/discovered" plot of most biopics, the film focuses on the unconventional courtship of Maxim (Don Ameche) and Jane Budden (Myrna Loy), a pig farmer's daughter out to land a rich husband. When she can't fight her attraction to the penniless inventor, she decides to turn him into the rich husband she wants. Though it may seem strange to modern eyes to be laughing and swooning romantically over a man who made killing others easier, the leading performances of Myrna Loy and Don Ameche as Mrs. and Mr. Hiram Maxim are so charming, reality is sidelined. They even get away with playing their characters as innocent youngsters, even though both stars were around 40 at the time. Each was coming off long-term contracts at other studios, Loy at MGM and Ameche at Fox, and worked so well together it's a pity Universal didn't think to team them further.

By Frank Miller