Boy Meets Girl (Warner Bros.) (1938)

HOLLYWOOD TAKES LAMPOONING IN “BOY MEETS GIRL” Visitors to the Warner lot who saw “Boy Meets Girl” on the stage, showed a good deal of concern over the picture version of the Sam and Bella Spewack play. They were afraid the studio would pull its teeth. Their fears, we are happy to report, are groundless. Benson and Law, played by James Cagney and Pat O’Brien, the two hoodlum scenarists are just as rebellious as ever and are still writing the same story over and over again. C. Elliot Friday, the producer, is the same wordy, bewildered prig who wants trumpets that slide and pictures with scope and sweep. Susie, the waitress, (Marie Wilson) has her baby as unexpectedly as ever. And the same amazing lunacy pervades the Royal studios. No, the Warners haven't removed the sting and bite from “Boy Meets Girl” which starts Friday at the Strand Theatre. It sticks out its tongue and thumbs its nose at the picture business in the same delightful way. But they haven’t made the mistake of rolling up the curtain, putting a camera in the orchestra pit and photographing the play. They called in the Spewacks and had them make the play into a motion picture script and there is a great deal more action, many more scenes and a lot more dialogue. The new dialogue has the same punch as the old. There were only four sets in the play. The most important was, of course, Mr. Friday’s office. In the picture that’s still the most important setting but there are many others. The Spewacks Mat 105—15c Jimmy Cagney — a butcher weighed his script. have taken the action out of the confines of those few sets and moved it all over the studio. Instead of hearing it over the radio, you see the premiere. You see what goes on in projection rooms, the writer’s office, the music department, the studio streets—you see happening what could only be inferred on the stage. When you come right down io it, you can’t blame people for worrying, now and again, that their favorite play, novel or short story won’t be the same on the screen. Every once in a while the men who make the cinemas throw everything out of the window but the title. This isn’t the case with “Boy Meets Girl.” In fairness to the real film producers, one couldn’t blame them for eliminating a scene like the story conference where Friday picks up a script as though weighing it and says it won’t do and the writers insist they had the butcher weigh it and he went wild over it. But that scene is in the picture. And so is the scene where Law announces that the script ought to be good because it’s the same story they’ve been writing for years. So, too, is the scene where Rodney, played by Bruce Lester, protests to Friday that the uniform he is wearing isn’t authentic and gets fired for his audacity even though he is certain that he is right. 2 Mat 301—45c "NOW DON'T YOU WORRY,” says Jimmy Cagney and Pat O'Brien to Marie Wilson, the beautiful but dumb waitress who collapses in the two wacky writers’ office. The trouble seems to be that Susie is going to have a baby, which starts the fun in "Boy Meets Girl,"" the smash screen comedy adapted from the play, which has its local debut soon. @ Motion Pictures Are Your Best Entertainment @ Marie Wilson Is Dumb—Like Fox Says Marie Wilson to Marie Wilson I thought it would be smart to play dumb and dumb to play smart. So I played dumb. But now I’m beginning to wonder. Was I very dumb to play dumb or would I have been dumber to play smart and vice versa? If I seem to be getting a little mixed up, please don’t pay any attention to me. Just skip this paragraph and go cen to the next. You see, it all started as a gag. Playing dumb, I mean. I really don’t think I’m a bit dumb. In fact, I think I was pretty smart to think of the idea of playing dumb. But now, as I said before, I’m beginning to wonder. When people disregard the dumb things I do occasionally— and I have done a few dumb things in mylife—with the remark: ‘Well, she can’t help it if she’s dumb,” and seem astonished when I say something witty or bright, it’s cause for worry. When a person playing dumb reaches that point, it’s a crisis or whatever they call it and something ought to be done about it. So I’m taking my pen in my hand, as the saying goes, to ex plain that I’m not as dumb as I look in pictures, even when | played the bull fiddle in “Melody for Two.” That wasnt my idea, anyhow. I must say, though, that while the bull fiddle act was the silliest thing I’ve ever done it was also the most enjoyable scene I’ve ever played in pictures. Well, getting back to where I started, it began as a gag. I’d been trying to get a job in pictures for such a long time but I couldn’t even get past the studio gatemen. Then, one day after I’d spent almost all the money my father left me, I decided something would have to be done about things. I was standing in front of my mirror, curling my eyelashes as I do every morning. “Marie,” I said to myself, “you're going to have to put on an act if you ever want to break into pictures.” I stood there and analyzed myself. I thought: “You look like a dumb blonde, Marie. Why don’t you play a dumb blonde?” I. decided I really had something there. So I rehearsed a little act in front of the mirror and @ Motion Pictures Are Your Best Entertainment @ practiced my squeaky laugh in the closet—if you don’t believe it’s a funny feeling, practicing a laugh in a dark closet, try it some time. Then I went out to M-G-M studios and asked for a test. It worked! Id asked for tests dozens of times before, and all they did most of the time was laugh at me. But this time they looked me over, sort of smiling, and made the test, in which I argued with Mr. L. B. Mayer on the subject of why I should have a job in pictures. I didn’t get the job at M-G-M, but the test finally resulted in me getting a contract at Warners. And here I still am. So, you see, it paid me to play dumb. But, as I said before, I’m beginning to wonder now. When your little brother indicates that he is convinced I’m no smarter than I look on the screen it’s upsetting. I told him he could go to bed without his dinner, but he didn’t. Everybody knows, I hope, how kid brothers are, though. You can decide for yourself when you see “Boy Meets Girl.” (Coming Friday to the Strand). Ma¥ 302—45c "TA-RA, TA-RA" — Three Tireless Trumpeteers give the big producer, Ralph Bellamy, a taste of tootling while Jimmy Cagney and Pat O'Brien lead the barrage, in a scene from "Boy Meets Girl," the Warner Bros. comedy adapted from the Sam and Bella Spewack play. Note Susie, the waitress, played by Marie Wilson, looking on in awe. The riotous screenplay moves into the Strand on Friday. Dick Foran, Frank McHugh and Bruce Lester have featured roles in the film. Advance PUBLICITY HAND HER SCENES? NO SIRE SAY STARS NEW COMEDIAN It took Ralph Bellamy seven years and fifty pictures to convince the motion picture makers that he could play comedy. Now Bellamy is wondering if it was a mistake. He is afraid he’s doomed to be a comedian for the rest of his screen life, and that isn’t what he wants. His ambition is to be a character man. Bellamy is a comedian in the Warner Bros. satire, “Boy Meets Girl,” which opens Friday at the Strand Theatre. He was a comedian in “Fools for Scandal.” And he got both those jobs on the strength of his performance in “The Awful Truth.” Before “The Awful Truth,” no one in Hollywood would give Bellamy a comedy job. He was a leading man—that was all there was to it. me throw it away if they Could help it. They gave me the best of every scene we were in together. If Director Lloyd Bacon had let them, they would have kept their backs to the camera.” Proud Pop Pat Plans Pix Of Kids’ Lives Mat 106—15e Pat O’Brien — a present for the kids. Hollywood contributes something new every day. The latest idea concerns the ia) bd ” retainer-photographer. Pat O’Brien, Frank McHugh and Allen Jenkins are responsible, the development having come from a discussion about things in general one day while Allen was . visiting Pat and Frank on the set of their latest Warner Bros. picture, “Boy Meets Girl,” which is coming to the Strand Theatre. Pat opined that it would be a swell idea if someone could make a monthly photographic record of his two children, Mavourneen and Sean, until they reached 21. He thought, too, that it would be a swell present for them on their 21st birthday. The three friends and fellowplayers at Warner Bros. decided to hire a photographer on a monthly retaining fee basis, the photographer to make shots of the children from time to time during the month, develop and print them and keep an album file for each. Birthdays, parties, every-day activities of the children would be recorded in photographic fashion. The photographer would keep track of the happenings of importance in the children’s life, including their pets, in the lens record.