THE MEANEST GAL IN TOWN. RKO, 1934. ZaSu Pitts. Pert Kelton, El Brendel, James Gleason, “Skeets” Gallagher. Director: Russell Mack. Shown at Cinevent 40, Columbus OH, May 2008.

   ZaSu Pitts hadn’t yet reduced her acting to the fluttering “dear me” mannerisms that most people associate with her, and she does a decent job of playing a small-town shop owner who’s getting tired of waiting for long-time beau Chris (El Brendel), the local barber who won’t ask Tillie to marry him until he’s successful enough to afford a second chair.

   Tired of waiting, Tillie buys the chair for him, but her plan is railroaded by the arrival of out-of-work actress Lulu White (Pert Kelton), who promotes herself into a job as manicurist at Chris’s shop. Other complications follow, just enough of them to stretch the film to a thin 62 minutes, with an improbable ending that keeps Pitts off-screen for much of the last section of the film.

   Comedian El Brendel was less irritating than in other films in which I’ve seen him, but the paring of Pitts and Brendel was not a match made in cinematic heaven. Jim Goodrich, who attended this showing with me, was not happy that ZaSu Pitts was wasted in an unpleasant role.

GOOD GIRLS GO TO PARIS. Columbia Pictures, 1939. Melvyn Douglas, Joan Blondell, Walter Connolly, Alan Curtis, Joan Perry, Isabel Jeans. Director: Alexander Hall.

   A decent screwball type of comedy, one with a complicated plot, relatively speaking, and one that’s actually quite funny. Not of the side-splitting slapstick variety, but one that’s amusing all the way through.

   Melvyn Douglas plays a tweedy sort of visiting professor from England who befriends a waitress (Joan Blondell) who works at a hamburger joint close to campus.

   Her goal in life: to coerce a male student with a rich father who objects to their friendship to pay up with a trip to Paris. Blackmail? Yes, and Professor Brooke (that’s Douglas) tries his best to make her see the error of her ways.

   But here’s where a “flutter” somewhere inside her helps. That’s her conscience talking.

   And here’s where it gets complicated. Brooke’s future brother-in-law is Jenny Swanson’s next target, and somehow she works her way into his home (and Brooke’s fiancée) before Brooke himself gets there before the wedding – mostly by ingratiating herself with the patriarch of the upscale Brand family, played with the utmost gusto by Walter Connolly, who’d rather be back home in Minnesota than in New York City and having to deal with the pair of spoiled socialites he has as children.

   It is difficult to say exactly how this not very unique storyline leads itself to humor, but it does. Both Melvyn Douglas and especially Joan Blondell lend their physical talents to the proceedings as well as using their lines to good advantage, acting and reacting.

   That Melvyn Douglas and Joan Blondell end up with other may come as a surprise to perhaps one or two viewers of this film, but it will be obvious to everyone else within the first five minutes. Nonetheless it is touch and go for them for a good long time.

[UPDATE]   Later the same day.   As perhaps even intermittent readers of this blog will recall, Douglas and Blondell also appeared together in There’s Always a Woman. It came out the year before (1938), and I reviewed it here.

   But I watched this one first, wrote this review, and forgot to post it until now. (This was back in April when I was having problems with my hip.) I thought the earlier film was a little too mean-spirited, but it was obviously the story and not the two co-stars, since (as you’ve just read) I found this one to be exactly what screwball comedies are supposed to be: a little wacky and fun to watch.

   Having also now read the comments on both movies posted on IMDB, there is also the possibility that I am out of step with (almost) everyone else. As the old saying goes, “Humor is a funny thing.”

   And, for whatever it’s worth, a note on IMDB says “Originally titled Good Girls Go To Paris, Too, but the censors objected.” Hmm. You’ll have to think about that one — but not too long.

CHAMPAGNE FOR CAESAR. United Artists, 1950. Ronald Colman, Vincent Price, Celeste Holm, Barbara Brittton, Art Linkletter, Byron Foulger, Ellye Marshall, LyleTalbot, John Eldridge, Vicki Raaf, Bess Flowers; Gabriel Heatter and George Fisher as themselves. Screenplay by Hans Jacoby and Fred Brady; music by Dimitri Tiomkin. Director: Richard Whorf. Shown at Cinecon 44, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2008.

   Finally, an authentic star was showcased, the elegant Celeste Holm, playing a vamp (“Flame O’Neill”) who’s hired to distract genius TV quiz contestant Ronald Colman (“Beauregard Bottomley”) so that he will flub the answer to the final multi-million question that will bring down the skin lotion empire of a nutty magnate, played with hilarious and movie-stealing effect by the incomparable Vincent Price.

   This the kind of film you don’t see much of anymore, a comedy for adults, and one whose subjects are still relevant, corporate greed and inane TV shows. Art Linkletter is perfectly cast as the TV show host (in an engaging and sympathetic performance), and every performer is pitch-perfect, down to Beauregard’s pet parrot, voiced by the great Mel Blanc.

   After the screening, Holm arrived in a wheelchair, and was interviewed, with her much younger husband (maybe 40 years younger) in close attendance. She seemed frail but occasionally her voice became stronger, although she had to be constantly prompted by her husband, who filled in the details she was unable to remember.

   Later, my brother and I, having lunch next door at a restaurant, saw her wheeled in and she passed by our table, impeccably made up, her skin extraordinary youthful looking.

STORM IN A TEACUP. United Artists, UK/US, 1937. Vivien Leigh, Rex Harrison, Cecil Parker, Sara Allgood, Ursula Jeans, Gus McNaughton, Lee Strasberg. Based on the play Sturm im Wasserglas by Bruno Frank; author of the Anglo-Scottish version: James Bridie. Directors: Ian Dalrymple & Victor Saville.

   Vivien Leigh is beautiful, almost exquisitely so, Rex Harrison is lean and lanky, with ever so often a wicked glint in his eyes. Other than Technicolor, what more could you possibly want in a movie?

   An English manor overflowing with dogs, you say, leashed as part of a protest against a Scottish provost who talks about the welfare of the little man but who sadly forgets when it is time to put it into practice – and hilariously so? ’Tis done, and more.

   Vivien Leigh is the good Provost’s daughter, and Rex Harrison is the roguish but idealistic young reporter from England who pokes a stick in the Provost’s spokes when the latter refuses to hear a plaintive plea from Mrs. Hegarty (Sara Allgood) for leniency.

   It seems the good lady has failed to pay a licensing fee for her mongrel dog Patsy, and it is off to the pound for the latter.

   Harrison’s subsequent newspaper story is the storm in a teacup that grows and grows from there. Complicating matters is that Harrison also has his eye on Vivien Leigh, and while she pretends otherwise, so does she, only vice versa.

   This is a good old-fashioned comedy, done English style, with plenty of wit, subtle and not so subtle – and not only that, but dignity under adversity and pressure: witness the Provost stalwartly leading his entourage straight through the mob of local townsfolk that was jeering him so rudely only moments before. This happens not very often in the US, where the back door is the more common way out.

MODERN LOVE. Universal, 1929. Charley Chase, Kathryn Crawford, Jean Hersholt, Anita Garvin. Screenplay by Albert DeMond and Beatrice Van. Director: Arch Heath. Shown at Cinecon 44, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2008.

   Long considered to be a lost film, but “recovered” by researchers at Universal, this Charley Chase feature was filmed during the transition from silent to sound and includes silent episodes with intertitles, interspersed with some talking sequences.

   In this modern comedy of manners, Charley’s young wife (Kathryn Crawford) is forced to keep her marriage a secret to hold on to her job. When a client (Jean Hersholt) arrives from France, Crawford is obliged to give a dinner party, with Charley serving the meal.

   This extended sequence is the comic highlight of the film, with Hersholt, unfamiliar with American table manners, willingly following Charley’s lead at using what he imagines to be proper etiquette. The other guests, not wanting to embarrass Hersholt, imitate his bizarre performance to Crawford’s consternation and Charley’s barely concealed delight.

   Charley gives a charming performance, nicely supported by Crawford, and if the film lacks the inspired playfulness of his best shorts, it’s still a very entertaining demonstration of Charley’s comic skills.

   Another rare Chase film was screened during the weekend, The Awful Goof (Columbia, 1939), the first of four shorts that completed Charley’s contract at Columbia.

   This is one of those marital comedies at which Charley excelled, which often consisted of two married couples involved in misunderstandings that put Charley on the receiving end of some unwelcome attentions from a husband who suspects him of playing around with his wife.

   This short was, in part, a remake of a classic short, Limousine Love (1928), and not a very successful one. The audience loved the short, while I found it a sad reflection of past glories.

QUEEN HIGH. Paramount, 1930. Charlie Ruggles, Frank Morgan, Ginger Rogers, Stanley Smith, Helen Carrington, Rudolph Cameron, Tom Brown. Music arranged by John Green. Director: Fred C. Newmeyer. Shown at Cinefest 28, Syracuse NY, March 2008.

   This early sound musical, based on a Broadway musical comedy that co-starred Charlie Ruggles and Frank McIntyre, was adapted for the screen with McIntrye replaced by Frank Morgan, and an enlarged ingenue role for Ginger Rogers.

   Morgan and Ruggles are combative partners in a garter-manufacturing business, which is the basis for some naughty dialogue and semi-risque situations in the opening scenes. When the two partners decide to dissolve their relationship, their lawyer devises a plan in which the loser at a game of cards will serve as valet to the other partner for a year, after which the partnership will be dissolved.

   Ruggles loses the game and his increasing dissatisfaction with his new role and his attempts to sabotage it fuel the comic situations until it’s all happily resolved. There’s a nicely staged musical number early in the film, but the music is generally incidental to the comedy.

NO TIME FOR LOVE. Paramount Pictures, 1943. Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, Ilka Chase, Richard Haydn, Paul McGrath, June Havoc, Marjorie Gateson. Director: Mitchell Leisen.

   Sandhog Jim Ryan (Fred MacMurray, who is surprisingly buff with his shirt off) is suspended for four months from his job digging a tunnel because of a “friendly” fight with fellow workers that was by happenstance shot by society photographer Katherine Grant (Claudette Colbert).

   Because the picture was run by her jealous boyfriend in his magazine (without her knowledge and against her wishes), and its publication led to Ryan’s job loss, Katherine feels responsible and hires Ryan to assist her while he is suspended for four months — which turns into a disaster as he clashes with her on all of her assignments, including picking a fight with a body builder she is try to photograph.

   The two are the perfect mismatched pair: she is elegant and refined, and he thinks all her friends are stuck-up jerks and chases after blond floozies. Obviously they are going to fall in love.

   A few good lines, but mostly the movie is carried by the charm of the lead actors. The underground tunnel set is very well created and the movie was deservedly nominated for an Oscar for Art Direction. The actors must have loved working in all that mud!

   Definitely worth a look, but MacMurray and Colbert are much better paired in The Egg and I.

Rating:   B.

TRUE TO LIFE. Paramount Pictures, 1943. Mary Martin, Franchot Tone, Dick Powell, Victor Moore, William Demarest, Mabel Paige, Ernest Truex, Clarence Kolb. Director: George Marshall.

   Delightful George Marshall screwball comedy with Powell and Tone radio soap opera writers who have hit a dry spell and are facing an angry sponsor (Clarence Kolb) who want to cancel the continued adventures of Kitty Farmer. Powell goes out in the rain looking for inspiration and meets Mary Martin in a diner where she mistakes him for a homeless guy out of work because he left his wallet at home.

   She brings him home to meet eccentric dad Victor Moore who is constantly tinkering with nonsensical inventions; Uncle William Demarest, a grouch who can’t (or won’t) work (Mom: Now you’ve hurt his feelings. Pop: They never seem to bother him at the dinner table); Mom, Mabel Paige, who has no patience with the new out of work addition to the family; a little brother who wants to be doctor and keeps asking people for blood; and little sister who has hit puberty at about 90 miles per hour and has eyes for the new boarder.

   Using the family for their inspiration Powell and Tone have a hit on their hands, and Powell moves in with the family to get more inspiration, but Tone gets suspicious, and posing as a playboy, he begins to move in on Mary Martin.

   Meanwhile Powell has to keep the family from hearing the radio program and is forced by suspicious Mom to take a job at the bakery with Pop. And keeping the family from hearing the program gets harder and harder, especially when they do hear the show and notice how close it is to their everyday life — right down to the dialogue.

   The usual complications ensue. Martin tries to get Tone to hire Powell, and Demarest finds out Powell has been sabotaging the family’s radio to keep them from listening to the broadcast and figures out what they boys are up to.

   Fame sits well with the family who find themselves on easy street — Moore even puts Demarest to work at the bakery — but Martin doesn’t like her new family and Moore puts his foot down to bring Martin and Powell together for the finale, turning the tables on Powell and Tone with the help of their director Truex.

   While not a musical, Martin sings “Mister Pollyanna,” and Powell does likewise for the memorable Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer tune “The Old Music Master,” and “There She Was,” a more typical Powell tune.

   Marshall was one of the masters of the screwball school and with this cast could hardly fail. While only mildly satirical, Powell is fine, Martin lovely and feisty, Tone good in his usual second lead mode (even breaking the fourth wall in the final scene), and Victor Moore delightful — especially in conflict with Demarest and browbeaten by Paige.

   In addition its interesting to see Powell in transition from this boy crooner to the mature screen persona that blossomed with Murder My Sweet three years later, and begun in Preston Sturges 1940 film Christmas in July.

   You do have to wonder, though, if most radio writers were pulling down a $1,000 a week and sharing a penthouse apartment and a valet in 1943 New York.

  TIMES SQUARE PLAYBOY. Warner Brothers, 1936. Warren William, June Travis, Barton MacLane, Gene Lockhart, Kathleen Lockhart, Dick Purcell. Screenplay by Roy Chanslor based on the play “The Home Towners” by George M. Cohan. Director: William C. McGann.

   With a running time of only 62 minutes, Times Square Playboy still seemed to last three times as long as it should have, at least if you ask me, and if you’re reading this, you might as well be. Although I didn’t time it precisely, I’d say it’s fifteen minutes for sure before there’s an inkling of what the story’s about.

   And I’ll make this summary as short as I can. A fellow from Big Bend back home, Warren William, has come to the big city — New York City, to be precise – to make good, and make good he has. And at the age of 40 he’s found the girl he wants to marry (June Travis), who’s currently working as a singer at hot spot night club.

   When his best man (Gene Lockhart) comes to town, the latter comes to the immediate conclusion that the new bride and her whole family are a bunch of chiselers ready for the kill, which is to say to sponge off William for the rest of their lives. To make things worse, he tells the groom-to-be so, and in no uncertain terms.

   The two of them fight, the bride-to-be and her family are told off, they storm out … and the best man has some planning to do before the wedding is back on again. Two and a half paragraphs and I’ve told you everything. Even My Little Margie sitcoms had more story to them than this.

   When I think of Warren William, I think of a classy but solidly rigid fellow — aristocratic if not out-and-out patrician.

   He’s certainly that in this movie, but in Playboy he’s also given a butler-cum-valet (Barton MacLane) who as part of his duties engages his employer in down-to-earth wrestling matches to try to soften his image up a little. It’s a good try, but MacLane seems to fit his part better than William does.

   June Travis made 30 movies in four years (1935-1938) and even her good brunette looks and broad grin of a smile didn’t mean that she made many movies with more of a B-budget than this one, which is a shame. (She did play Della Steet in one of the Perry Mason movies.)

   A short simple plot, though, I have to admit, isn’t a crime. But a comedy that isn’t funny might as well be. I got the wrong vibes from this one. I think Lockhart’s accusations could have hit an accurate target just as easily as not, and if so, then where would this movie have gone?

KING OF BURLESQUE. 20th Century Fox, 1936. Warner Baxter, Alice Faye, Jack Oakie, Mona Barrie, Gregory Ratoff, Dixie Dunbar, Herbert Mundin, Thomas “Fat” Waller, Kenny Baker. Screenplay by Gene Markey and Harry Tugend, from Viña Delmar’s unpublished short story “The Day Never Came.” Director: Sidney Lanfield. Shown at Cinecon 46, Hollywood CA, September 2010.

    Last year at Cinevent I saw the 1943 technicolor remake of this Fox musical, Hello Frisco, Hello [reviewed here ], with Alice Faye and Jack Oakie repeating their earlier roles. I didn’t particularly like the remake, and I can now say that I definitely didn’t like the original version.

   Warner Baxter plays a successful director of musicals who falls for a society dame and is convinced by her to “upgrade” his shows. His career and marriage founder, but his former pals, Faye and Oakie, come to his rescue and Faye graduates from best pal to girlfriend/future wife status.

   I found the 1936 version to be a tedious, hackneyed backstage drammer, occasionally brightened by the musical performers, with “Fats” Waller momentarily lifting the movie out of its well-worn rut. Warner Baxter had played the hotshot director one time too many, and his take on the role was funny when it wasn’t intended to be.

Editorial Note:   Of the three chorus girls in that eye-catching image you see above, the one on the right is Jane Wyman.