Advertisement

The Moviegoer

At the Center

Ten years after its original release Samuel Goldwyn's personal prize package looks pretty much the same: it is still elegant extravaganza bursting with top-flight specialty entertainment. The film has a superstructure of Gershwin music (last score before the composer's death); it has as well the minty savor of screen spectacles in the Thirties which sticky current jobs somehow cannot boast.

Top dog in the Ben Hecht screenplay is Adolph Menjou playing a Hollywood producer whose movies nosedive until he meets a wholesome miss (Andrea Leeds) with the proper pedestrian slant concerning what the public wants. She becomes his private consultant--"Miss Humanity"--on the plain citizen's tastes in story twists. Instructions explicitly forbid her mingling in film colony circles where she might "go Hollywood;" one night she dares venture into a hamburger wagon where Kenny Baker sings while he flips ("love walked right in . . . and drove the shadows away") in a romantic golden voice custom-built for Mr. Plain Citizen. Sugar daddy Menjou gets the word and the bird. If this plot wearies it nevertheless does not get in the way sufficiently to spoil the central production and comedy numbers which it strings together.

Golden-voiced Baker surely ranks as one of the better crooners: his "Love Walked In" softens up the gruffest customer and sends him away humming. In addition there are the Goldwyn Girls; Vera Zorina in a number of first-rate ballet offerings; the Ritz Brothers running hot and cold through a dozen harebrained interludes; and Phil Baker with accordion and gags. There is little doubt who makes the ranking bid to steal the show: Bergen and McCarthy at their first-flush-of-fame best sparring with Baker and more delightfully with Bobby Clark. Even the W. C. Fields routine with McCarthy pales next to Clark's classic buffoonery. Each wheeze is on hand--"you fugitive from a picket fence," "you animated clothespin," "you talking totem pole"--but crisp as toast before that long-term contract with Chase and Sanborn.

Advertisement
Advertisement