The Animal Kingdom

Tom Collier, a publisher, has lived for years with Daisy, a painter, and marries Cecelia instead; Cecelia turns him into a success and closes the doors one by one, and Daisy, who asked for nothing, was the wife. Philip Barry's inversion is the whole argument, the wife as mistress and the mistress as wife, and William Gargan's ex-boxer butler sees it first. Leslie Howard repeats his stage role, Ann Harding is Daisy, and Myrna Loy, before the Thin Man made her the good wife, plays the other kind with relish. Made in the pre-Code window that let the film say what it means. RKO, 1932.