"There is no one on the screen who can fall so hopelessly in love as Loretta Young," said The New York Times in its review of Private Number (1936). Many film connoisseurs would be inclined to agree, and there's a lot to be said for the pleasures of watching a gorgeously lit Loretta Young doing what she did best in a 1930s romantic melodrama. But oh, if only it had been made three years earlier! The spice and grit of the pre-Code era could have made this picture something really special. Instead of Young's character innocently finding herself at a gambling house and wrongfully arrested in a raid, for instance, the pre-Code version might have had her willingly turn to such seamy places. Instead of playing the mere victim to Basil Rathbone's lecherous advances, the pre-Code Young might have turned the tables on him in some breathtakingly nasty, sexual way.

But it is nonetheless important to evaluate a movie on its own terms, and not unfairly judge it for what it does not even try to be, and in that regard, Private Number is still an entertaining, absorbing, very well acted melodrama, even if it is a bit safe and predictable. Young arrives at the Winfield household looking for work. What she quickly learns, in a very uncomfortable job interview, is that the head butler, played by Basil Rathbone, is a cruel, demented creep who offers her a job as a maid purely because he has the hots for her. Furthermore, he will demand a kickback from her wages. Young gets up, grabs her suitcase, and starts to head outside. When another maid (Patsy Kelly) asks why she's leaving, Young shudders and replies, "I couldn't work here. That butler, he gives me the creeps."

But Kelly convinces her to stay, and eventually the main plot thread comes into focus: while resisting Rathbone's constant advances, Young eventually meets the Winfields' college-age son, played by Robert Taylor, and the two of them fall in love when Young travels with the family to their summer retreat in Maine. The Maine sequence is beautifully romantic and gives the audience what they no doubt want: stunningly photographed (by cameraman Pev Marley) scenes of Robert Taylor and Loretta Young in love with each other on a moonlit lake. Taylor proposes to Young, but Young resists, fearing the social complications of a maid hooking up with her rich employer's son.

Private Number practically unravels in the third act, with developments that are overly preposterous even for a melodrama of the 1930s, an era that was simply crammed with crazy movie plots. Rathbone, insanely jealous, tries to drive the lovers apart, and thanks to his masterful orchestrations, Young is all of a sudden chicly dressed and living in a Park Avenue apartment, making it look to Taylor like she was just a gold digger. And Young falsely believes that Taylor is out to punish her in court. In fact, with all the misunderstandings going on, it's a wonder this movie isn't a screwball comedy.

Director Roy Del Ruth, however, keeps a brisk pace, as per usual in his movies of the era. Young and Taylor look good together in this, their only film together. Taylor was borrowed from MGM for a role that normally might have gone to Fox's own Tyrone Power, who was paired with Young many times. And the supporting cast is excellent, including Patsy Kelly, Joe E. Lewis, Monroe Owsley, Jane Darwell and a dog named Prince (who plays a dog named Hamlet). Prince, in fact, steals all of his respective scenes and turns in a truly great canine performance. But it's Basil Rathbone who ends up stealing the entire movie, and one even wishes he were in it more. Most of his best scenes come early, and he is deliciously evil, steely and arrogant.

Private Number is based on a 1914 play originally called Hush Money, a title that was quickly changed to Common Clay. On Broadway, the lead role was played by Jane Cowl, a renowned stage actress who was also a playwright (Smilin' Through) and who acted in a few Hollywood films. In 1919 the play was turned into a silent feature, Common Clay, starring Fannie Ward. A 1930 remake, also called Common Clay, was produced by Fox, directed by Victor Fleming and starred Constance Bennett.

Private Number looks fine, though hardly pristine, in its new Fox Cinema Archives DVD. Overall, it will please fans of its stars, especially the ethereally beautiful Loretta Young. Her fans will also get a kick out of a breathtaking exchange of "in" dialogue. At one point, Patsy Kelly is describing another character and says to Young: "He's as handsome as Gable -- and Gable ain't bad." To which Young replies, with a smile: "I'll say not!" Clearly this is a jokey reference to the fact that the real Loretta Young and Clark Gable had burned up the screen one year earlier in The Call of the Wild (1935). But the line must have carried added resonance to the film community since it was known around Hollywood that Young and Gable had had an affair on that film, resulting in an illegitimate baby daughter -- an event that would cause Young, a strict Catholic, to feel privately ashamed for the rest of her life. After her death in 2000, Young's authorized biography officially revealed the truth to the world.

Fox Cinema Archives has also just released several more classic titles from the era, including the terrific Me and My Gal (1932), starring Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett and directed by Raoul Walsh, the tuneful Sweet and Low-Down (1940), featuring Linda Darnell and some stellar numbers by Benny Goodman, and Four Sons (1944), a war drama starring Don Ameche and a remake of the silent John Ford film of the same title.

By Jeremy Arnold