Boy Meets Girl (Warner Bros.) (1938)

Advance PUBLICITY (Fiend Story) ‘Boy Meets Girl,” Starring Cagney-O'Brien, Due Here James Cagney and Pat O’Brien, one of the most popular film teams of recent years, have been reunited and they will come to the screen of the Strand Theatre next Friday as the co-stars of “Boy Meets Girl,” the Warner Bros. film version of the comedy of the same name which was so big a hit on the stage. Most interest, aside from that bestowed upon the stars will probably be centered around the debut as an important player of Marie Wilson, the pretty, blonde Warner comedienne, chosen by popular acclaim for the role of the waitress who is the unwitting cause of the farcical complications upon which the two writers played by Jimmy and Pat capitalize. Ralph Bellamy, following his success in “The Awful Truth,” Dick Foran, and Frank McHugh also have important roles. The best guarantee that none of the bite and satire as well as uproarious comedy of the stage play have been discarded in turn ing it into screen entertainment is the fact that Bella and Samuel Spewack, who wrote the stage play, also prepared the screen version. And a further promising augury is the name of Lloyd Bacon, Warner’s ace megaphonist of box-office hits, as director. The story, concerns the greatest stunt in the antic careers of the two prankish writers played by Jim and Pat. Before “Happy,” the baby son of Susie, the waitress, is even born, the two writers arrange to make him the star of their next western epic. The complications of the mad plot ensue as the result of the efforts of the various personalities of importance at the studio to capitalize on the career of the infant. Meanwhile, the mother is almost lost in the shuffle, but in the end everything comes out all right for her and everyone else except the studio’s cowboy star, whose brilliance has been dimmed by the tiny competitor. Jimmy Cagney, Pat O’Brien Raising Devil Again There was a good deal of tomfoolery on the Warner lot after Jimmy Cagney returned to the fold. Mr. Cagney and Pat O’Brien, who were playing in “Boy Meets Girl,” the comedy coming to the Strand Theatre, were responsible. Director Anatole Litvak, who was making “The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse,” was the first victim. They walked on his set with scripts of “Clitterhouse” in their hands and announced they were reporting for work. “We've read our parts, but we don’t quite understand what we're supposed to do,” O’Brien told Litvak. “Suppose we go over this a little before we make the scene.” Litvak looked blank. “You're not in this picture,” he said. “We are,” Cagney assured him. “The front office just told us.” Litvak was on the phone in a minute talking to Robert Lord, the producer. Lord told him to have the policeman throw Mr. Cagney and Mr. O’Brien off the set. Rosalind Russell was another victim. The two visited her on the “Four’s A Crowd” set and stood back of the camera staring at her. Then they went away and came back to stare some more. After she forgot her lines a couple of times, she got her revenge by complaining loudly to Director Michael Curtiz that she couldn’t work with “bit” players watching her. Busby Berkeley turned the tables on Cagney and O’Brien. They kept riding on to the “Gold Diggers in Paris’ set on scooters to annoy him, and Berkeley stood it for the first few times. The next time the girls rushed the actors and pushed them off the stage. They didn’t come back. (Advance Feature) Cinderella Had Nothing On Marie Wilson In “Boy Meets Girl,” the Warner Bros. comedy coming to the Strand Theatre next Friday, Susie, the waitress, has a line that goes like this: “Only the other day, Mr. Benson said something very true. He said: ‘Susie, you’re Cinderella.’ ” Marie Wilson says that line in the Warner Bros. picture. And she says it with great feeling. For she believes that, like Susie, she is Cinderella. “T keep waiting for twelve o’clock,” Miss Wilson says, her blue eyes wide, a dreamy look on her pretty face. “I keep expecting my coach to turn back into a pumpkin.” And if you press her, she’ll go into the matter at length. She'll tell you how she: dreamed about ‘being a motion picture star, and lhow the dream came true. She’ll tell you about how she almost starved in those lean years after she came to Hollywood. And she'll tell you that the part of Susie in “Boy Meets Girl” is the glass slipper. “They let me put it on and it fit,” she says. But Miss Wilson is wrong. There’s nothing Cinderellaish about her. No fairy godmother has been watching out for her. The only one who has been looking out: for Marie Wilson is Marie Wilson. Necessity, not a fairy godmother, put Miss Wilson in pictures. After she gets the Cinderella information out of her system, she’ll admit that. “T had to do something to help support my family,” she will tell you. “Father was dead and though he left $11,000 that only lasted two weeks when I spent it all on clothes and cars.” Mat 204—30e BOY MEETS GIRL — Jimmy Cagney and Marie Wilson play lead roles in the Warner Bros. version of the smashing stage success “Boy Meets Girl." The film marks Cagney's return to the Warner lot and Miss Wilson's elevation to a star role by popular acclaim. Pat O'Brien co-stars with Jimmy Cagney in film. @ Motion Pictures Are Your Best Entert.inment @ ~ Mat 201—30e ZANIES ON THE TELEPHONE — Jimmy Cagney and Pat O'Brien, starring in “Boy Meets Girl,"’ from the riotous Broadway stage success, do a little frantic phoning. The two team up to play a pair of wacky Hollywood playwrights. @ Motion Pictures Are Your Best Entertainment @ "Mat 203—30ce MARIE WILSON — plays Susie Seabrook, the pretty but dumb waitress whose baby “Happy,'’ becomes the inspiration for the great Hollywood buildup in the riotous comedy, "Boy Meets Girl,’ coming Friday to the Strand Theatre. (Opening Day) CAGNEY-O'BRIEN TEAM AGAIN IN ‘BOY MEETS GIRL’ Reunited after a screen separation of almost three years since they made “Ceiling Zero,” James Cagney and Pat O’Brien are costarred in “Boy Meets Girl,’ the Warner Bros. comedy about Hollywood which opens today at the Strand Theatre. Teamed before in_ pictures which were mainly grim and serious, Jim and Pat on this occasion played their roles entirely for amusement value, and for the first time in their careers, they put on a lampooning show of two typically wacky Hollywood writers. In “Boy Meets Girl,’ they head a cast which also includes that pretty, blonde comedienne, Marie Wilson, in her first leading role —said to be a “natural” for her —Ralph Bellamy, in what is reported to be his best part since “The Awful Truth,” Dick Foran and Frank McHugh. Others are Bruce Lester, James Stephenson, Dennie Moore and Penny Singleton. The picture is based on the highly successful stage play of the same name by Bella and Samuel Spewack, and the screen version was prepared by the same two authors. The director was Lloyd Bacon, ace “box-office” megaphonist of the industry. In bringing the play to the screen, the original was adhered to with entire fidelity. There is nothing missing of the hilarious play built around the antics of the two irresponsible writers who plan to make the still unborn child of a studio waitress into a big motion picture star, and then succeed beyond their wildest expectations. With the baby star as its focal point, the picture is the same extravagant satire on Hollywood people and practices as the stage play was. Jimmy and Pat, of course, play the writers, while Marie is the waitress. FANS DO RIGHT BY MARIE WILSON Along about the time big-salaried-actresses like Joan Blondell and Marion Davies were being mentioned for the very choice role of the dumb waitress in “Boy Meets Girl,’ one pretty blonde gal on the Warner Bros. lot named Marie Wilson was doing great in “B” pictures as just a “dumb blonde.” So heavily did the aforesaid blonde score with the fans in one whodunit efter another that it wasn’t long before she was getting the third greatest amount of fan mail on the lot. And when the moviegoing public takes a player to its collective heart, something has to be done about it. Accordingly, with the public laying down a barrage of letters to the Warner front office, and with everybody in Hollywood, from office boys to stars yelling that Marie was the gal, the execs went into a final huddle which resulted in the ‘ole of Susie Seabrook being given to Marie Wilson With two stars like Jimmy Cagney and Pat O’Brien playing with her, Marie breezed through the role in perfect style with the result that the “dumb blonde” seems headed for stardom. One of the greatest smash successes to hit Broadway in the last decade, “Boy Meets Girl’ played two years in New York, and two years on the road playing in 235 cities. The film version, said to contain every bit of the humor of the stage play, will be at the Strand Theatre starting Friday.