Naughty but Nice(Warner Bros.) (1939)

¢ CURRENF PUBICIT, * (Opening Day) (Review) STARS,GAGSTUNES If You Want To Have Fun IN ‘NAUGHTY BUI NICE’ AT STRAND “Naughty but Nice,” the new Warner Bros. comedy which opens today at the Strand Theatre, is a hilariously satirical disclosure of some the skeletons in the closets of the denizens of Tin Pan Alley, both the composers and the publishers. Since it is about the industry, art or profession of supplying America and most of the rest of the world with popular music, it has a good deal of music as well as comedy in it. In fact, even in the face of the suspicions it may engender about the efforts of some writers of popular songs, two of the best of them, Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer, have supplied it with five new tunes which they are willing to bet will resist analysis by tune detectives. Sharing almost equally in the acting and singing burden are Ann Sheridan, Dick Powell and Gale Page. As to Ann, she is not only given the honor of introducing three of the new songs, but she is given the best role of her career to date, a part with plenty of opportunity to display the very individual type of charm which led to her recent designation as the “Oomph” girl. The comedy is mainly entrusted to as impressive a cast of actors and fun-makers as has ever been assembled in Hollywood, numbering such sure-fire favorites as Helen Broderick, Zasu. Pitts, Allen Jenkins, Maxie Rosenbloom, Ronald Reagan, Jerry Colonna and Luis Alberni. In addition, the National Jitterbug Champions a crew of swing happy youngsters, do their stuff in a big dance scene. With side excursions into the matter of tune plagiarism and the even more diverting matter of the jitterbug craze, the screen play, written by Richard Macaulay and Jerry Wald, tells how, without intending to do so, a professor of classical music becomes the nation’s foremost composer of hot swing tunes. RONALD REAGAN'S FAN MAIL ZOOMS Ronald Reagan’s recently zooming fan mail has been given its first detailed analysis by the Warner Bros. Studio fan mail department. Apart from straight requests for autographed pictures, what people want to know most about him is the following, in this order: 1. What’s your real name? 2.Who’s your girl friend? 8. What does your ring signify? 4. Do you wear makeup before the camera? 5. How long are you under Warner Bros. contract? The answers are: Reagan is his real name, he’s going with different girls and hasn’t a “steady” as yet; his ring is a fraternity ring; he wears practically no makeup. : Currently Reagan is with Ann Sheridan, Dick Powell and Gale Page in “Naughty but Nice,” the Warner Bros. comedy with music which is the current attraction at the Strand Theatre. —See ‘Naughty But Nice’ STORY SYNOPSIS (Not for publication )—Professor Hardwick (Dick Powell) leaves his aunt-ridden home in the sticks to go to New York and sell the classical rhapsody he has written. He succeeds, but it comes over the air as a “Killer-diller” swing tune. An unwilling member of the Tin Pan Alley gang, he finds himself getting into all kinds of hilarious complications including a love triangle with Zelda (Ann Sheridan) and Linda (Gale Page) as the feminine angles, a jitterbug contest, and a plagiarism suit, all of which finally resolve into a happy ending. Humor, melody and rhythm are skillfully blended to make “Naughty but Nice,” the Warner Bros. production featuring Ann Sheridan, Dick Powell and Gale Page, which opened yesterday at the Strand Theatre, the most satisfying dish of comedy entertainment that has come from Hollywood in many months. It is refreshingly novel too, for it cannot be classified under any restricted form of comedy. In its complications it is farcical and it has many touches of that erazily cock-eyed humor which can be so amusing when not done to repletion, and yet underlying it all is the spirit of first-rate satire. What it satirizes is the industry — art or business, as you prefer — of supplying the world with new songs to sing, whistle, hum or dance to. It drags out into the light the skeletons in the closets of the purveyors of popular music, but that’s not done in the manner of a serious expose. The only objective is laughs, and the picture garners a bounteous crop of them. The authors, Richard Macaulay and Jerry Wald, have exploited the hilarious consequences of an unwitting invasion of New York’s Tin Pan Alley by a young and intensely serious professor of classical music in a freshwater college. He comes to sell a symphonic rhapsody he has composed. He does sell it, but, without his knowledge or permission, the thematic melody is lifted from it, given an injection of swing, dressed up with some words and published as a popular song entitled “Hooray for Spinach.” The young prof is annoyed, very much annoyed and yet when he returns to New York to complain, he stays to become the nation’s leading composer of swingy tunes as well as to win some passing notoriety as the unintentional winner of a jitterbug contest, when he becomes involved in a jive session with the National Jitterbug Champions. Aiding and abetting him in these developments are Miss Sheridan, a seductive night club “hot mama,” Miss Page, a sweet and pretty but also businesslike writer of lyrics, with both of whom the professor gets romantically entangled and an aunt, played by Helen Broderick, whose years do not quite square with her tremendous enthusiasm for hot, swingy music. In the course of the story, there are introduced five new songs by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer, every one of them so refreshingly novel in melody and treatment that, as a matter of fact, they actually constitute a refutation of any dire impression of the song writing profession that those who see the picture might otherwise carry away. The songs are, in addition to the aforementioned “Hooray for Spinach,” “Corn Pickin’,” “In a Moment of Weakness,” “I Don’t Believe in Signs,” and “I’m Happy About the Whole Thing.” This happens to be the first picture in which Miss Sheridan, recently designated by a jury of experts the screen’s champion “Oomph” girl, is given an authentic starring role, and it is easy to see why she was so honored. In addition to displaying highpowered allure, she creates a thoroughly entertaining character and sings three of the new songs in a warm and velvety voice and with a seductive lilt that makes her delivery the last word in the screen singing. Powell, of course, who previously demonstrated his talents as a comedian in “Going Places” and several other pictures, has another role that seems tailored to his measure, and he achieves a hilarious characterization as the young prof. Miss Page, for the first time in her screen career given a chance to demonstrate her vocal talents, emerges as a lovely creature with an equally lovely voice. Backing up their efforts nobly are Miss Broderick in a typical role, Zasu Pitts in an equally characteristic part, Maxie Rosenbloom as a retired prize-fighter turned butler, Allen Jenkins and Jerry Colonna as a pair of thieving song writers, and Ronald Reagan as a song publisher. Credit for the smooth and competent direction goes to Ray Enright who is one of Warner Bros. most successful comedy directors. Makes Crooning Debut Gale Page’s warbling of “In a Moment of Weakness,” a Harry Warren-Johnny Mercer number, in Warner Bros.’ “Naughty but Nice,” is expected to be one of the screen’s great song hits, and to establish Gale as one of the top-notch singers in pictures, It is the first time she has sung on the screen, though she was widely known for her singing voice on the radio before she came to Hollywood for a career in films. NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET co-starring with these two lovelies, Gale Page (Mat 201—30c) and Ann Sheridan, Dick Powell, in "Naughty But Nice.” MUSIC MATES—Allen Jenkins and Jerry Colonna, two of the big star cast in the Strand comedy ‘Naughty But Nice." EMPTIED POCKETS PRIME REQUISITE FOR GOOD ACTORS No actor can be allowed to bulge during production. This explains, in part, the fact that few actors can find one of their own cigarets while on the set and must ask the prop boys, the script clerk or a visiting Elk from Indiana to supply one between “takes.” “Empty your pockets” is one of the first rules a young actor learns when he starts motion picture work. A cigaret package is sometimes translated into an apparent deformity to the oversensitive camera and a wallet in the hip pocket may add twenty pounds to the apparent weight of a leading man in the place he least wants to appear fat. One thin handkerchief was all that Dick Powell allowed himself to carry in his pockets when he was before the camera for scenes in “Naughty but Nice,’ the Warner Bros. comedy with music which is now showing at the Strand Theatre. “TI have to be careful,’ he would say when he was borrowing a match. “Even a package of matches makes a bulge—and I can’t afford to look fatter than I am. If I should be caught in a strange town in my present condition — without money, keys, wallet, auto license or even a letter showing how much money I owe the bank, I’d probably starve before I could convince anyone that I could be trusted for the price of a meal. “This is one time when the girls have it all over we males. They’re used to getting on without pockets, and they can keep their purses handy. “An actor at work is a man without pockets. Frank McHugh has the right idea. He has all the pockets of the suits he wears for screen work sewed shut at the start of the picture. You see, he’s plump too. He can’t afford to bulge before the camera.” Puzzled Over ‘Oomph’ Ann “Oomph” Sheridan is a little puzzled about the meaning, pronunciation and a few other things of the proud title she now wears, “America’s Oomph girl.” For example, says Ann, whose latest Warner Bros. picture, “Naughty but Nice,” is now showing at the Strand Theatre, what is the correct spelling? Newspapers and wire service bulletins discovered four ways to spell it, including ‘“U-u-mm-H!”, in announcing her selection from the group of fifty-six famous beauties voted on by a jury of twenty-five distinguished judges of feminine charm. Radio chatterers found at least four ways of pronouncing it. Page Twenty-three (Mat 204—30c)