Word: miscasts
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...magnitude of the technicolor spectacle, number of hoof-beats per square actor. "California" fails miserably on the first two counts and barely comes within minimum standards on the last. Where the hero generally carries the plot on his godlike shoulders and livens the dialogue with sardonic humor, a miscast Ray Milland almost appears to be a slightly paunchy heel...
Robert Flemming and Jane Baxter are more than perfect as Algy and Cecily, but the brave attempts of Pamela Brown, miscast in the part of Gwendolyn, are somewhat negated by her unfittingly low voice. The decor by Motley is more than suitable: it rivals the more famous work of Cecil Beaton on this year's "Lady Windermere...
...machine was notorious. Penrose's predecessor was Boss Matthew Stanley Quay, the dark, withered, predatory man whose miscast eyes were cocked over all the craft and spoliation in Pennsylvania. Quay had been content to run the machine. Curiously, Penrose's chief ambition was to be mayor of Philadelphia, an aim which he might have achieved if he had not been photographed one dawn leaving a Philadelphia brothel. Pennsylvania's voters, however, sent him to the Senate for 24 years...
...potential comedy in a story about a maid with a yen for fixing plumbing and an over-frank manner in the presence of superiors gets stuck in an under brush of plot complications. Given this bad material to work with, Lubitsch has made the worst of it. He has miscast both Miss Jones and Boyer in light comedy parts, and his attempts at satirizing English high-life seem ponderous, especially when handled by Peter Lawford and Helen Walker. Add to this a further attempt at satire in the person of a priggish druggist which comes out sinister rather than funny...
This time Austrian-accented Paul Henreid is the overly sensitive, love-tortured medical student. (Henreid's blatantly un-British enunciation is lightly dismissed by a reference in the script to his "Viennese mother.") Eleanor Parker, a pretty, plumpish, 24-year-old ingenue, is physically miscast as the scrawny little slut of a waitress. But under Director Edmund Goulding's shrewd guidance, she does a fine, shoulder-wriggling job in the repellent role that gave Bette Davis a start as the screen's No. 1 hussy...