I’VE GOT YOUR NUMBER. Warner Brothers, 1934. Joan Blondell, Pat O’Brien, Allen Jenkins, Glenda Farrell, Eugene Pallette, Gordon Westcott. Director: Ray Enright.

   This light and lively (and just a little risque) pre-Code comedy is well worth your time and money, if the opportunity should ever come your way. Pat O’Brien and Allen Jenkins, his somewhat dour sidekick, play a couple of telephone company repairmen, and I’ve Got Your Number is filled to the brim with tales of their various adventures.

   Among which are being asked to install longer cords in a luxury apartment inhabited by a coterie of beautiful call girls (if I can fill the gaps, then you should be able too, but one blonde’s backless dress goes a long way in giving it away); unmask a phoney medium (Glenda Farrell) who’s using her phone line to flimflam her clientele who think she’s connecting them to their dearly departed: and finding a new job for a good-looking hotel switchboard operator (Joan Blondell) who lost her job playing along with a practical joke that turned out not to be so funny.

   And it also turns out that Pat O’Brien is quite the operator himself. Getting Joan Blondell to agree to go out for dinner with him is quite a task, but it’s one that he’s more than up far – what with his very persuasive rat-a-tat non-stop vocal ability. It is great, as always, to see a man with a way with women in action, even if he is so good-looking.

   Allen Jenkins claims to hate the ladies, but when he turns up later on with Gloria Farrell as his lady friend on a double date with the other two, we are not surprised (and, I have to admit, just a little jealous).

   Most of the tale is centered on Joan Blondell and her propensity for getting into trouble. It’s not her fault – well, not completely – when some bonds go missing while she’s on duty at the switchboard on the new job O’Brien gets for her, and getting her out of trouble again takes all of her brash young suitor’s formidable abilities.

   What makes the story the most fun, though, is that the players seem to be enjoying themselves as much as they’re hoping the members of the audience will, and I think they must have.