IN NAME ONLY (1939)

One day while out walking near his country home Cary Grant runs into the beautiful Carole Lombard fishing.  As they talk you can tell there's a spark between them, but Grant has a terrible secret: he's married to a horrible, evil, gold digging, ice queen, devilish, manipulating, superbitch!  Lombard finds out about the superbitch soon enough and Grant demands a divorce, but SC does all kinds of underhanded things to stretch it out in hopes that the stress will doom Grant and Lombard's relationship.

IN NAME ONLY starts out slow, but once the emotional roller coaster gets going it's a wild ride.  Being such an old film I'm sure most modern audiences would find the whole thing dated, but I was happily surprised at how mature and non-sappy the film was for the time.  Good pace, brave performance by Kay Francis at playing somebody so unlikeable, good writing strong performances by the entire cast (I was especially intrigued to see two such talented slapstick performers trying out their dramatic chops).  For a 1930's melodrama IN NAME ONLY is a good one and worth checking out.