Naughty but Nice(Warner Bros.) (1939)

MINGLE IN COMEDY COMING TO STRAND A love triangle in swingtime is the theme of “Naughty But Nice,” Warner Bros.’ novel musical comedy opening Friday at the Strand Theatre. Ann Sheridan, Dick Powell and Gale Page headline the cast and are the parties of the hilarious triangle, with plenty of additional comedy provided by Helen Broderick, Allen Jenkins, Ronald Reagan, Zasu Pitts, Maxie Rosenbloom and Jerry Colonna. Harry Warren and Al Dubin penned the tf: ovul het tunes, with acknowledgements to Vie eatonal anc 2 aK | Wagner, Franz Liszt, Wolfgang Mozart and Johannes Sebastian Bach. The strictly jive numbers (which are already being heard over the airwaves) are “Corn Pickin’,” “Hooray For Spinach,” “I’m Happy About The Whole Thing,” and “In A Moment Of Weakness.” Gale Page Mat 114—I15c Comes to City Dick’s adventures begin when. as a serious young professor of music, he leaves his aunt-ridden home to go to New York and sell a rhapsody he has_ written. Helen Broderick, an aunt of his who ran away from home years before to marry a _ saxophone player, guides him to Tin Pan Alley, where the music publishers vie for his composition. It isn’t until he returns home and is listening to the radio program on which it is to be introduced that he learns they have used it as a swing number. He hotfoots it back to New York, aghast at what they have done, but he gets involved in a party where he gets outrageously drunk on what he imagines to be lemonade. When he wakes up several days later, he finds that he has signed a contract to write more songs, in collaboration with pretty Gale Page. He also finds that he has been making love to a night-club singer, Ann Sheridan. Torn between the two girls, and torn between his love for classical music and the swing tunes his publishers want him to write, he is ina veritable dither. Next he is sued for plagiarizing a song, originally written by a French composer. His aunts rally to his rescue in the court, and one of them proves that she was having a love affair with the French composer when he was writing the song, and that he had stolen the tune from an earlier work. The trial helps Dick to choose between his two girl friends, too, and all ends well. Cast of Comedians Imagine if you can Allen Jenkins and Jerry Colonna as a thieving pair of tunesmiths who don’t mind signing their names to anybody’s song — so long as it’s a good one. Imagine Maxie Rosenbloom as a combination cook, butler and valet who cleans ashtrays with a vacuum cleaner. Imagine Helen Broderick as a jitterbug, Zasu Pitts “swinging it” on the harp, and the National Jitterbug Champions going to town and you have a small idea of the high jinks that go on in “Naughty But Nice.” Others in the cast include Luis Alberni, Vera Lewis, Elizabeth Dunne, Bill Davidson, Granville Bates and Halliwell Hobbes. MAJORING IN JIVE—"Professor'’ Dick Powell finds himself teaching a class of jitterbugs—or is it vice versa?—in the new swingtime comedy "Naughty But Nice" which makes its local debut at the Strand Friday. (Mat 307—45c) (Advance Feature) Hotfoot Wins itterbug Contest For Dick Ponell In ‘Naughty But Nice’ To fall flat on your face, get up, grab one foot in both hands and hop around on the other all in perfect time to music is a good trick, but Dick Powell mastered it. He further proved himself a super-man when 108 pounds of red-headed femininity launched herself from the floor to throw her arms around his neck and lock her shapely extremities around his waist without causing him to lose step. It happened during the hilarious jitterbug sequence for Dick’s new Warner Bros. comedyromance, “Naughty but Nice,” which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre with Ann Sheridan, Gale Page, Zasu Pitts, Allen Jenkins, Ronald Reagan and Maxie Rosenbloom in other featured roles. Dick, in this night club sequence, is the victim of another’s error and his own innocence. He has a sub-normal sense of taste and so he has imbibed too many “Hurricanes,” a powerful rum drink, thinking they are lemonades. Allen Jenkins gives him the hotfoot, which takes effect just as Dick burns his finger lighting a cigaret for Ann Sheridan. Dick howls with pain and finds himself on the dance floor hopping around and holding his foot. There is a jitterbug contest going on and a red-headed girl whose partner has been disqualified takes Dick as a partner. And Dick unwittingly wins the contest. The National Jitterbug Champions who worked in “Naughty but Nice” were a sight to behold. They were not satisfied with the endless hours of dancing they got on the set; they Dick Powell danced beMat 111—15c ween scenes, during their lunch hour and they went out in the evening to dance some more. Inhibitions were cast to the four corners of the sound stage. The two score rug cutters looked and acted as if they had been stricken with St. Vitus dance, palsy and delirium tremens all at the same time. How they could keep going was a wonder. There was a first aid man on the set but contrary to expectations, he had an easy time of it. He thought nature had _triumphed finally when one of the girls asked him one day to tape her instep. “So the dancing finally got you,” he said with a triumphant gleam in his eye. “It did not,” the girl replied indignantly. “Some clumsy dope stepped on my foot in the studio commissary this noon.” Some scientifically-minded person induced Dick Powell to wear a pedometer to see how far he traveled while filming his part of the dance. Dick took it off when it registered 13 miles, saying he was tired enough without being made more tired by reading the mileage. On another day one of the girls put it on and it registered 24 miles at the end of the day but she declared she wasn’t tired and would dance again that night. “They must be the fore-runners of a new race of super men and women,” Dick groaned. “I’m still young and healthy but I can’t take this jitterbug stuff. It’s too much for me.” When the sequence was finished he checked up and found his legs bruised from knees to ankles, that he would have to sit down carefully for a while because he had lost his balance and sat down heavily on the floor and that he had lost six pounds from the strenuous exercise. Besides those mentioned above, the cast of “Naughty But Nice” includes Helen Broderick, Ronald Reagan, Allen Jenkins, Jerry Colonna, Luis Alberni, Vera Lewis, Elizabeth Dunne, Bill Davidson, Granville Bates and Halliwell Hobbes. Ray Enright directed from the screen play by Richard Macaulay and Jerry Wald, and Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer wrote the original music, which includes four new hit tunes. Allen Jenkins Asks Pardon For ‘Protruding’ “IT hope you’ll pardon me if I’m _ protruding,” says Allen Jenkins elegantly, as he walks into a room in “Naughty but Nice’’. the comedy coming to the Strand Friday. In real life, Jenkins is a well-educated fellow who has no difficulty with five, six or even seven syllable words, but in the picture he’s an illiterate song writer and his “malapropisms” provide much of the comedy. Other gems include, ‘“Congratulations, my friend, on this suspicious occasion.” Allen Jenkins Mat 113—l15c | "OOMPH' GIRL ANN SHERIDAN Mat 120—l5c Slapsie Maxie Suffers For Columnist’s Error Maxie Rosenbloom used _ to admire beauteous Ann Sheridan from afar on the set of “Naughty but Nice,’’ the Warner Bros. comedy opening Friday at the Strand Theatre. “She won’t have anything to do with me,” he said sadly, “since the time a col Maxie Rosenbloom Mat 116—15c umnist said we had been out to gether when we hadn’t ever. Now, when I take out a girl I don’t care for hardly, it never gets into the newspapers. They’re doin’ me dirt with my women, those colyumists!” NEW SWING TUNES IN “NAUGHTY BUT NICE” AT STRAND Five new songs by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer, all of them potential hits, are introduced in ‘‘Naughty but Nice,” the Warner Bros. comedy featuring Ann Sheridan, Gale Page and Dick Powell which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre. Three of the new songs are sung as solos by Miss Sheridan, whose singing voice has been heard occasionally in previous pictures but who has never before been given as fine an opportunity to demonstrateher talents as a songstress as she is given in “Naughty but Nice.” Two of her songs, ‘‘Hooray for Spinwen. anid “Corn Pickin’,” are distinguished not only by infectious melody but.also by their spirited up-to-the-minute rhythm and will undoubtedly become very popular with dance enthusiasts. The other, “I Don’t Believe in Signs,” is more on the ballad order. Gale Page, who has never before sung in pictures but was a radio songstress before becoming a film actress, is given the opportunity to introduce “In a Moment of Weakness,” a hauntingly beautiful melody, and in singing the refrain she is joined by Miss Sheridan. Powell sings “T’m Happy About the Whole Thing,” and in this his voice is joined by that of Miss Page. ANN SHERIDAN IS IDEAL REDHEAD Now that Ann Sheridan has been elected America’s ‘oomph girl,” statisticians have discovered that she has the ideal figure for red-heads. Yes, indeed. There’s an ideal blonde figure. And an ideal brunette figure. And of course the red-heads have figures, too. The “ideal” standard is arrived at by a composite of all the dimensions of glamour girls of various types. In the event that you’re interested in finding out who might need such data, it’s Milo Anderson, Warner Bros. costume designer. He _ studies girls’ figures. It’s part of his work, and believe it or not, he’s very objective and scientific about it all. Miss Sheridan of the “oomph” fame is 118 pounds in weight, five feet, five inches tall. She has a 26-inch waist, 36-inch hips, and a 36-inch bust. That’s right on the nose — or whatever it should be right on — for the ideal redheaded figure. The red-head ideal is a somewhat larger figure all around than its nearest rival in size, the brunette. Another characteristic of the typical film red-head—and this, believe it or not, is also part of Anderson’s statistical dope — is the fact that they have husky throaty, velvety voices of rather low register. So, as you might expect, Ann has just that sort of voice. It was so effective—and some folk might say suggestive —that in “Naughty but Nice,” her latest Warner Bros. picture, scheduled to open next Friday at the Strand, in which she was originally scheduled to sing only two songs, she sings four. Ann Sheridan Mat 118—l5c Page Twenty-one