After writing nineteen comedies, playwright Steven Gaye writes a tragedy called Old Love , in which a married middle-aged man makes love to a young woman, who eventually leaves him for a young man. Although everyone who reads the play dislikes it because of its lecherous protagonist, Steven’s young secretary, Linda Brown, understands the play because she is herself in love with an older man–her employer. Genevieve Lang, a young actress, visits Steven and turns down his offer to play the girl in the play. Four years earlier, Genevieve and Steven were going to run away to Paris when he had an idea for a play and stood her up. Genevieve, who is twenty-six, reminds Steven he is forty-eight, but admits she still loves him, and they decide to run away to Finland. In a moment, Steven retires from playwrighting, orders his valet, Flogdell, to pack his things, and dismisses Linda. No longer in his employ, Linda confesses her love to Steven, and he suddenly realizes she is an intelligent, fiery woman and is inspired to forget Genevieve, resume his writing, and change his play so that the girl makes love to the old man. He instructs Linda to insert her own declaration of love into the play and asks her to star in it. On the closing night of the play, Dickie Reynolds, who plays the part of the young man, makes love to Linda, but she rebuffs him because she still loves Steven. Steven later makes a date with Linda and arrives early to her apartment and discovers Dickie passed out on Linda’s bed. Linda comes out of the shower and finds a note from Steven pinned to Dickie’s shirt. Furious that Steven would assume she is seeing Dickie, Linda goes to Steven’s apartment to collect his seven photographs of her, and Steven admits he is jealous of Dickie’s youth. Linda suggests she and Steven marry, but he says he is too old. Dickie then swears his love to Linda, and frightened that she might have feelings for him, Linda runs to Steven, insisting they marry immediately. Steven agrees to marry her the next day and plans a small dinner reception, but excludes Dickie at Linda’s request. Unaware that Linda loves Steven, Dickie visits Steven hours before the wedding and asks for advice on how to win Linda. Steven calls Dickie a sissy under his breath but agrees to let him see her, convinced Linda will fall for Dickie because of his youth. Steven’s scheme works and Linda marries Dickie. During their February honeymoon in California, however, Dickie insists Linda rise early and spend each day exercising outdoors with him and his Princeton cronies, Butch and Chuck. In August, on the anniversary of the day Steven fired Linda, she visits her former boss and confesses her loathing of Dickie’s youth and her yearning to return to a New York life of theater, “mad dialogue” and Steven. Dickie then arrives with Butch and Chuck looking like bodyguards, and Linda hides in Steven’s bedroom. When Dickie threatens to search the apartment for his wife, she exits the bedroom in Steven’s bathrobe and Dickie leaves in a huff. Linda, ashamed of the stunt, says goodbye to Steven, but he tells her he has an idea for a new comedy and she begins to take notes. He then tells her he loves her. More on Wikipedia or Mubi
Watch Accent on Youth (1935)
