Merrily We Go to Hell ran into trouble when it came out in 1932. The use of the word Hell in the title gave some distributors an attack of the vapours. To get round potential objections, in the UK the problem word was simply removed and the film went by Merrily We Go to __, which was also the case in certain states in the US.
The film itself is often described as a comedy, but it isn’t really funny. But then that is often the way with the comedy of manners, which this is.
This is a big one in the feminist canon, not least because it was directed by Dorothy Arzner, one of Hollywood’s few top-flight female directors of the time. Its star is female too, Sylvia Sidney playing an heiress who marries a journalist who becomes a successful playwright and starts an affair with his lead actress. To get her own back on Jerry (Fredric March), Joan (Sidney) decides she’s going to be very “modern” about it all and start having affairs too.
This, the manosphere will be delighted to hear, does not really suit Joan at all, and in the end the effort of keeping up a false front while gallivanting about with a handsome young actor (played by a handsome young Cary Grant) gets to her.
So, silly Joan, you might say. And that is ultimately the film’s rather moralistic message – another one in the eye for the moral majority incapable of distinguishing medium (loose living on screen!) and message (stay in your lane, don’t play around).
But if Joan doesn’t come out of it bathed in glory, spare a moment for Jerry, who is presented as a weak man who reaches for the bottle whenever the going gets tough. This is what makes the film hard to swallow, so to speak. Implausible even. The first meeting of Jerry and his future wife is at a swanky do, where he sweeps her off her feet with a display of rambling, incoherent, drunken blah that would only appeal to a fellow soak, which Joan isn’t.
The prevailing mood of the film, in fact, is sad, not humorous, and the very adult veneer that it presented to the world in 1932 has worn very thin over the decades. The delights to be had are the joys of texture. Sidney’s radiant performance in outfits designed to flatter her, square-headed March in his prime, and those glimpses of young Cary Grant – all the suavité already in place, engines raring to go – plus a nicely targeted tarty-villainess turn by Adrianne Allen as the blonde who turns Jerry’s head.
Arzner directs at a clip and gives the whole thing a screwball buzz that’s evidently why this is so often described as a comedy, when it’s really not. But it is a fascinating film, not least because of the picture it paints of this dismal male, and his unconventional relationship with his wife.
Unconventional relationships were Arzner’s meat and drink, as films like The Wild Party (student falls for teacher) and Dance, Girl, Dance (two female dancers fight for the same man) attest. This extended to her personal life – a 40-year relationship with actress Marion Morgan. Hollywood’s increasing image of itself as the guardian of the nation’s morals probably contributed to Arzner’s decision in 1943 to retire. At the time this was made she was the only female director under a long-term contract with a Hollywood studio, having arrived at Paramount as a typist and worked her way up.
Though Merrily We Go to Hell isn’t just a good example of the “pre-Code” movie’s willingness to tackle difficult topics, but of Arzner’s skill and flair.
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
