Be Yourself

“Aw, pluck him, he’s a pansy!”

Chanteuse takes up with a limp boxer and puts moxie in him.

“Cookin’ Breakfast for the One I Love”, aped by a callboy at the very swank nightspot where she’s the top act, “like a swan that is dying.”

The champ gets a nose job and woos a floozy.

A return match flattens his beezer and him.

Nevertheless, he wins a private bout and swings back to the chanteuse.

Fanny Brice, Robert Armstrong, décor by William Cameron Menzies.

 

Whoopee!

Goldwyn and Ziegfeld (who presents the squaw attired in heavenly creations).

Cowboys and cowgirls join at a fork in the trail, the hypochondriac on a frenetic rest cure (who of course is Harold Lloyd in Why Worry?) has a nurse named Custer, Mary Custer.

Three cinematographers (Garmes, Rennahan, Toland) have this in Technicolor (two-strip).

“Look, Jewish traffic cops!”

The suitor has a drop of Indian blood, the girl’s father forbids. Sheriff Bob Wells means to have her.

Mr. Underwood, “a nervous man”, returns to his ranch.

The Goldwyn Girls, arranged by Busby Berkeley (Stuart Heisler editing).

A foundling, as Mr. Oscar Wilde says, Mr. Eddie Cantor inducted into the tribe, hoofing and warbling.

 

Dear Mr. Prohack

The senior official in the Treasury, who holds the purse strings of the nation, comes into money and is nearly swept off his feet.

Crowther (New York Times), who knew nothing of such things, calls it “a quaint little British effort”.

A very brilliant comedy that culminates in a fever dream whilst listening to “Idylls of the King” on the Third Programme, the technique is very advanced and altogether remarkable, Ken Russell’s late style is prefigured.

Economically, this is related to the military snafu in Val Guest’s Further Up the Creek.

It ends in a knighthood and a substantial benefit to the government.