Back before the newer, tougher Production Code was enacted in July, 1934, films were often quite bawdy--far bawdier than most folks today would expect. While nudity was rare (but NOT unheard of), topics like homosexuality, promiscuity, infidelity and even abortion were talked about in Hollywood films. While not among the more risqué films of the day, "Bachelor Apartment" is very Pre-Code in its sensibilities!Wayne Carter (Lowell Sherman--who also directed this film) is an unabashed womanizer and playboy. He uses a wide variety of pickup lines and routines to get women to sleep with him and in this Pre- Code world, the women are more than eager to oblige. However, when he meets a nice lady, Helene (Irene Dunne), he has second thoughts about his life. While he loves the hot sex, he starts to realize that he's missing out on something. So, to be near Helene, he hires her to be his secretary and through most of the film admires her without telling her he loves her. Does this dirty old man have a prayer with Helene? And, is he capable of changing to get her?I liked this film. Sherman was a terrific actor and if he hadn't died so young, he'd probably be remembered today--both for his stage and screen work. It talks about the old double-standard and exposes both the positive side (it can be fun) and negative (ultimately, it's rather lonely) without being preachy or heavy-handed. Well worth seeing.

Lowell Sherman had some success as an actor and some success as a director without ever becoming a major name in either speciality: the most interesting thing (but one) about 'Bachelor Apartment' is that he both directed and starred in it. As a screen personality, Sherman was probably the nearest thing to George Sanders before Sanders came along: Sherman typically played a wealthy cad who seduced women solely for his own pleasure, with no concern for their welfare. In at least one movie, 'You Never Know Women', Sanders's character is perfectly willing to commit rape.As I've noted in a previous IMDb review, I find Sherman implausible in such roles. I know almost nothing about his offscreen life (and I don't much want to know), but on the screen he tends to come across (to me, at least) as if he is gay ... in that word's modern sense. Sherman nearly always played skirt-chasers, yet I invariably find him unbelievable as a playboy. He was a talented actor, yet seemed much more believable when playing characters who were epicene (he was brilliant in 'What Price Hollywood?') or men whose sexuality was irrelevant to the plot (as in 'Mammy'). In 'Bachelor Apartment', Sherman portrays Wayne Carter, a millionaire businessman who's also a playboy ... so credibility flies out the window.Carter's only roommate is his live-in butler, very well-played by Charles Coleman ... but we understand that a vast series of women have spent their nights (not all at the same go, mind you) alongside Carter in his bed.I'd mentioned the most interesting thing but one about this movie. Here's the MOST interesting thing about it: the plot line of 'Bachelor Apartment' seems to anticipate two much better works, namely 'My Sister Eileen' and 'Neptune's Daughter' (the latter an MGM musical that had a much neater plot than usual for MGM musicals). Along to New York City come two small-town sisters: the older one level-headed, the younger one much prettier and flirty with it. (Did anybody mention Ruth McKinney and her sister Eileen?) The younger one (well-played by the obscure Claudia Dell) meets the millionaire's butler and mistakenly believes (for contrived reasons) that the butler is the millionaire himself. When protective older sister Irene Dunne learns that her younger sister is involved with millionaire Carter (actually the butler), she stomps into Carter's executive suite to straighten him out. For once genuinely innocent of womanising, Carter doesn't know anything about it ... yet he finds himself attracted to Dunne, and he gets ready to award her the next notch on his bedpost.VERY OBVIOUS SPOILER. It's simultaneously bang obvious and wildly implausible what's going to happen, yet it happens anyway. Carter, planning to seduce Dunne, ends up sincerely falling in love with her ... and (get this, please) he actually gives up his tom-catting to marry her and settle down! Oh, pull the other one.I had more trouble believing this movie than I did with several other Lowell Sherman vehicles. Irene Done has never dunne (I mean Irene Dunne has never done) a thing for me; I've never found her especially attractive nor especially sexy, and I simply couldn't believe that this millionaire playboy would chuck his sybaritic life for this particular woman. In this movie, Irene Dunne wears a hairstyle that renders her even more unattractive than usual. Further, I had the same credibility issue here that I do with most other movies in which a working-class heroine lands a wealthy husband: we're meant to believe that she sincerely loves him, yet she's fully aware that the huge bulge in his trousers is his bank balance. Since the husband is a playboy who has habitually exploited women, it's hard to believe that he never wonders if perhaps he is being exploited in turn by a gold-digger.On the positive side, 'Bachelor Apartment' has one of those great old-movie casts with several interesting performers in supporting roles. Claudia Dell and Charles Coleman, both obscure, are excellent here. Perennial dress extra Bess Flowers has a larger role than usual here. Less favourably, Arthur Housman, in the role of a drunk (what a stretch!), does absolutely nothing here that he didn't do better and funnier while cast as a drunk in fifty other movies. Norman Kerry, cast in a supporting role in this early talkie, proves why his stardom ended in silent movies.'Bachelor Apartment' is well-made; Lowell Sherman was an under-rated director, and might conceivably have gone on to greater success behind the camera after he became too old to carry on in skirt-chaser roles. (He died suddenly of pneumonia, aged only 49.) Any film with a Max Steiner score and production by William LeBaron is worthy of attention. When the clichés settle, my rating for this movie is just 6 out of 10.

Lowell Sherman was a star and director of silent films and talkies until his death in 1934. His best-remembered films are probably Way Down East (1920) and What Price Hollywood? (1932). In Bachelor Apartment he stars as a rich New York playboy who seems to have an endless parade of women going through his apartment. At one point he tells is butler (Charles Coleman) that he is "going hunting" and returns with a silly woman (Noel Francis) with whom he dallies until prim Irene Dunne comes hunting for her sister. Funny and risqué, this film deals rather openly about sexuality, teasing, infidelity, and "getting what you want." Sherman and Dunne are terrific as the sparring boss and steno, but Mae Murray bizarrely steals the several scenes she is in. Murray, a silent-film queen of the teens and 20s, made only 3 talkies. At age 40, she's still trying to be the sex goddess and comes off as being unlikely and unlikable. Murray affects a baby lisp and vamps and saunters about. She looks pretty good but she seems very otherworldly.Claudia Dell is annoying as the dumb sister, Ivan Lebedeff plays a dancer, Norman Kerry (also a silent star) plays a producer, Bess Flowers is the woman who lost her necklace, Lee Phelps is the cop, and Arline Judge is one of the secretaries.Dunne was always good, and Sherman has a terrific comic roue act that always borders on being quite gay. But watch him closely in this film (which he also directed) and study his comic timing and the pacing of his comebacks. The dialog is snappy and suggestive. Coleman and Francis are also very good indeed.Lowell Sherman, who also directed Katharine Hepburn in Morning Glory) is long forgotten but certainly deserves to be remembered as a wonderful actor and fine director.

John Howard Lawson, later one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten, composed this screenplay which is ostensibly quite the reverse from his normal proletarian bent, but is actually deeply altered by wordsmith J. Walter Ruben to a suave and somewhat risqué (pre-Code) comedy. Fortunately, some sense of Lawson's customary concerns remains, and is dealt with nicely by Irene Dunne, co-starring with the elegant Lowell Sherman, who also directs with his usual flare in this tale of a Park Avenue man about town struggling with a raft of nubile and aggressive young creatures. An early sound film, it forms the first arrangement of what has become a basic cinema plot device, as we know it, that of the carefree unmarried man being chastened from his rollicking ways by exposure to feelings of romantic love. Cinematography by the brilliant Lee Tover is of particular value here and one should advert to the art direction of Max Ree, who garnered an Academy Award for his characteristic talent during this same year (1931) as a result of his work with CIMARRON. Although Mae Murray's flamboyance is transcendental, the acting is generally quite good, with a particularly strong and stage-accented performance from the lovely Dunne as an older sister attempting to shepherd a wayward sibling while standing her own ground against a playboy's blandishments. One of the final pieces of Sherman's tragically shortened directorial career, the film offers many admirable passages, none less so than the opening scene, with that eternal butler Charles Coleman patiently dealing with an importunate telephone and doorbell, setting the pace in a picture that never pushes too hard or tries too strenuously for its effects.