Her Cardboard Lover was directed by George Cukor two years after Philadelphia Story and two years before Gaslight. The movie has its fans, but to me it’s a royal mess. It’s clearly an adaptation of a French bedroom farce — literally, in fact, since it’s based on a 1927 Parisian play that was immediately translated and adapted for Broadway by Valerie Wyngate and P.G. Wodehouse. It was so successful on stage that a year later it was made into a silent comedy with Marion Davies in the lead — still widely admired. It was ham-handedly re-made again in 1932 with the title The Passionate Plumber, starring Buster Keaton (doesn’t sound very French, does it?). The 1942 version is the one that’s usually shown. Each time, the original play was drastically rewritten, so by the time we get to Cukor’s version it hardly makes any sense. The acting is bizarre — Robert Taylor as the romantic lead tries to be a combination of Buster Keaton and Clark Gable (yes, that weird) and comes off like a animatronic idiot, and Norma Shearer (in her last film) plays the ditzy farce heroine like she’s a silent melodrama star having an extended hysterical breakdown. But the main problem is the directing. Cukor is one of the greats, but here he’s pretty bad. The feel is closer to 1932 than ’42. Judging from IMDb and Amazon, the film has its fans. The script has some very funny moments — I’m assuming they kept a lot of Wodehouse’s zingers from his original adaptation. But for me this is a good example of how Hollywood hacks could butcher a good script, and even fine directors can leave a mess.