This is a madcap comedy starring Pat O'Brien and Jimmy Cagney.  They play the screenwriting team of Benson and Law, who believe there is only one story needed for the movies: Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl.  They are on the hook to write a boffo script for a fading cowboy star when they chance upon a sweet girl from the studio commissary who is in a family way.  They extemporize a script where the cowboy finds a baby, and when the baby (named Happy) is born he becomes a publicity sensation.  Benson and Law finagle power-of-attorney to manage Happy and the cowboy is put out at playing second fiddle.  There are many frenetic swings of fortune.  This movie is a boat load of fun.  Kind of a Front Page lite.

James Cagney seemed intent to prove that he could machine-gun his dialogue as fast as Pat O'Brien so I had to turn on closed-captioning several times.  The naive mother was played by Marie Wilson whom I just saw as Carole Lombard's maid in Fools for Scandal.  Ralph Bellamy is the movie producer trying to ride herd on his actors and screenwriters.  He is also an intellectual snob and a health nut.  He makes a big point of ordering "raw" milk and in one scene complains that Cagney has broken his Vita-Glass window.  This was a brand name for glass that was UV permeable and supposedly promoted better health, but apparently had been largely debunked by 1938.  At one point an actor pretending to be Happy's long lost father claims that he "did not go down on the Morro Castle".  This was a cruise ship that caught fire in 1934 killing 137 people.  The timing does not actually work out.  I think much of the script was intended as jokes that are not today self-evident.

Familiar faces: Penny Singleton (Blondie) has a quick scene as a manicurist, and Ronald Reagan plays a radio announcer for a movie opening.

Boy Meets Girl trailer on TCM

Loveable rogue Bill Landin (Pat O'Brien) steals Claire (Kay Francis) from her own wedding to elope with her.  Claire's dad and Bill's boss Claudius (Thurston Hall) takes it all in stride and then embezzles most of the money from his advertising firm and skips out of the country.  Star adman Bill makes compromises to keep the company afloat and gets decidedly less loveable.  Claire helps Bill land a client (Melville Cooper) and Bill gets mad.  Bill skips out to ride a tramp steamer around the world while Claire goes to work for the ad agency.  Bill comes back, starts working for a rival agency, and steals all of Claire's clients.  While waiting for the divorce lawyer Bill repents and Claire takes him back.

 

This finishes out my Kay Francis for MCMXXXVIII.

Garden of the Moon with Pat O'Brien, Margaret Lindsay, and John Payne.  John Quinn (Pat O'Brien) is the manager of the hottest nightclub in L.A., "Garden of the Moon" in the Royal Hotel.  He rules the place with an iron fist and an attention to details.  When his upcoming headliner, Rudy Vallee, is involved in a bus accident, he is convinced to hire an unknown orchestra by his publicity manager, Toni Blake (Margaret Lindsay).  This new band is led by Don Vincente (John Payne), a talented musician and band leader who refuses to kowtow to Quinn's demands and standards of behavior.  Before Vincente can perform his first number he is given his two weeks notice.  Knowing that Quinn is a sucker for visiting royalty, Toni and Vincente trick Quinn into believing a Maharajah from India is coming to see his old college buddy, Vincente.  The fraud barely lasts the evening and Quinn once again fires Vincente, only to be told by the hotel owners that he is to hire Vincente for a six month contract.  Quinn uses bullying and trickery to alternately force Vincente to leave or convince him to stay.

It wasn't until the visiting Maharajah bit that I realized I had seen this movie before.  Pat O'Brien has the best role with his fast-talking, totalitarian Quinn.  Familiar faces in this movie are Penny Singleton as Quinn's secretary, Melville Cooper as the head waiter, and Jerry Colonna as one of the band members.

Pat O'Brien and Margaret Lindsay

Jerry Colonna

Cowboy from Brooklyn with Dick Powell and Priscilla Lane.  Elly Jordan (Dick Powell) is a down-on-his-luck Brooklyn singer who hops a freight train with his band mates in an attempt to make it to Hollywood.  They are kicked off of the train in Wyoming and petition the family owners of a dude ranch to work in exchange for food and lodging (complicated by Elly's irrational fear of all animals).  Jane Hardy (Priscilla Lane) is the rancher's daughter who hits on the bright idea of dressing Elly in cowboy clothes and having him sing cowboy songs to entertain the "dudes".  The next two dudes to arrive for some R&R are a fast-talking theatrical agent (Pat O'Brien) and his publicity man (Ronald Reagan).  Hearing Elly sing they think they have found a marketable diamond-in-the-rough and turn him into a New York sensation named 'Wyoming' Steve Gibson.  Trouble ensues when it is revealed that he is not a real cowboy at all.

That is about as succinctly as I can describe the plot and it still seems wordy to me.  Priscilla Lane (you may recall) is one of the Lane Sisters. It was fun to see Ronald Reagan and Pat O'Brien together pre-Knute.  This is not a movie I would go out of my way to see.

Pat O'Brien and Ronald Reagan

Angels with Dirty Faces with James Cagney and Pat O'Brien.  Cagney and O'Brien are childhood friends in Hell's Kitchen.  While stealing fountain pens from a stopped railway car, Cagney is arrested but O'Brien gets away.  Cagney's stint in reform school is just the start of 15 years of crime and arrests.  He often beats the rap but on the advice of his crooked lawyer partner, Humphrey Bogart, he accepts a plea to spend another 3 years in prison while Bogart keeps their money and builds up their crime businesses.  Once out of stir, Cagney looks up his old pal O'Brien who has become a priest in the old neighborhood.  He also finds himself betrayed by Bogart.

This may be the only Cagney gangster movie I've ever watched from start to finish.  He was nominated for Best Actor for this role but to me it was just Cagney acting like Cagney.  If this movie wasn't a stereotype at the time it must have laid the groundwork for all such movies to follow.  There were big shootout scenes where Cagney fired by making "punching" motions with his gun.  There was also a heavy presence by the "Dead End" kids.

"Whadda ya hear? Whadda ya say?"