GIRL WITHOUT A ROOM. Paramount, 1933. Charles Farrell, Charlie Ruggles, Marguerite Churchill, Gregory Ratoff, Grace Bradley, Walter Woolf [King], Sam Ash, Leonid Kinsky, Mischa Auer, Leonard Snegoff, Alex Melesh, John T. Murray, Spec O’Donnell, Edith Fellows, Harry Stubbs. Screenplay by Frank Butler and Charles Binyon, based on stories by Jack Lait. Director: Ralph Murphy. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   Farrell arrives on a scholarship in Paris to paint and rents a room in a boardinghouse filled with eccentric bohemian artists and expatriate Russians (including the Trotsky, Walksky, Galiopsky/Sitsky crew).

   There is a far-out Bohemian girl, “Nada”; a playgirl (Churchill) pursued by an alcoholic rich American but falling for Farrell; and Vergil Crock (Charlie Ruggles), master of the revelries, and mentor for the babe-in-the-wood Farrell.

   Back in 1989 I described this as a “funny, charming, delightful sendup of the ’30s avant-garde French art scene.” In the Cinecon program notes, it’s described as the kind of “sparkling, madcap entertainment that Hollywood once fashioned without breaking a sweat.”

   I have to admit that what I loved before, I found tiresome, with an array of good character actors bringing occasional bright moments among the madcap chaos. Actually, what I found most interesting about the film was the brief appearance of Spec O’Donnell, the talented participant in several of the brilliant and truly funny Max Davidson two-reel silent comedies, here reduced to playing a 30-second bit.