User Reviews

This amusing behind the scenes drama was released in 1940 and in a way, sounds like The Producers.

Alan Mowbray is Don, and his production partner is Jeff (Donald McBride). When a young woman, Helen, prevails upon Don to read her play, he begrudgingly agrees. It gives him a great idea.

It's the worse thing he's ever read in a lifetime of reading bad material. He and Jeff are trying to convince star actress Charlotte (Helen Vinson) to do a play for them.

They figure if they offer her this garbage of a play, she will beg not to do it. At which point, the partners will ask her to sign for another five years, and if she does, they will tear up the script.

Of course it turns out that Charlotte absolutely adores the script.

Meanwhile, the playwright, Helen Middleton, is turning down her boyfriend's offer of marriage so she can become a great playwright. She thinks she's on her way with this bomb.

This is an entertaining film, set in the sophisticated and often phony world of theater. It ends somewhat abruptly with nothing really wrapped up, though we can guess the outcome.

The acting is good, and there is a lot amount of humor to be found in the film. Someone here compared it to "Twentieth century" and "All About Eve." I definitely would not go that far!

Helen Middleton (Barbara Read) is a small town girl who wants to be an author, unfortunately she's not a very good writer. She reads and acts out the first play she's written over and over again for her family, which includes noteworthy actors J.M. Kerrigan as her father and Tommy Kelly (Tom Sawyer) as her brother, and her would be fiancé Ted Palmer (John Archer). Her father shows her a newspaper article which mentions that noted New York stage director Donald Avery (Alan Mowbray) will be duck hunting in their area this weekend. When she, and the rest of her town's press descend upon him at his hotel, he brushes them off. When she shows up at his room, he tells her to send her play to his office, never intending to read it.

Avery's partner and play producer Jeff Crandall, played by Donald MacBride (The Great Man Votes), then calls and insists he returns to New York because of a crisis with their lead actress, Charlotte Morley (Helen Vinson from I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang). Morley is threatening to sign with a rival producer after she completes her contract with Crandall and Avery for one more play. Crandall has an idea - if they can find a truly awful play with which to bluff Morley into believing will be her last play with them, one which would ruin her, they can force her to sign a contract for another 5 years. Enter the author Ms. Middleton, whose play is the worst piece of tripe Crandall's secretary (Leona Maricle) has ever read. Unfortunately, Morley calls his bluff, though it is unclear until the end whether she really believes the play is a good one, or is merely pretending herself since her contract would require Crandall to give her $15,000 if he refuses to produce a play she accepts.

So the comedy begins. Since it will cost Crandall less money ($13,000) to actually produce the play than to pay Morley and have nothing, he buys Middleton's play for $500 intending to have Avery significantly rewrite it. When Middleton shows up in New York, however, Morley urges her to exercise her contract rights as the author to have her play produced as written. Convinced that they'll never be able to find work again if they do the play as is, Crandall persuades Avery to "court" Middleton until she changes her mind. Unfortunately, since no one has ever told her how awful her writing really is, she sticks to her guns and the courting becomes overlong and not as funny as this film's producers must have thought it would be.

In the end though, everything works out (of course), even for Middleton whose small town boyfriend comes to New York to see "her" play.

Somehow I have to believe that Mel Brooks saw this film as a young man, and filed it's plot line away for future use. Basically it is an embryonic version of THE PRODUCERS, but unlike Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder - who produce a dreadful musical to score a windfall by Broadway accounting methods - Alan Mowbray and Donald MacBride are seeking to force a departing star from departing for a rival producer.

Helen Vinson has been starring in a series of plays written by Mowbray, and directed by him, and produced by his partner MacBride. She is tired of being their "Galatea" (they constantly take credit for her talent). So she has given notice to MacBride that she is not renewing her contract. However, the contract has a clause that after giving such notice Vinson must be in one last production before the contract is finished. But it is chosen by MacBride and Mowbray.

Mowbray is on his vacation when Vinson springs her surprise. The vacation is in a small town (Mowbray likes to go duck hunting near there). One of the locals is Barbara Read, a young girl who has written a long-winded tragedy called THE END OF EVERYTHING. She somehow manages to get a tired Mowbray to say that she can send him a copy of the play (he says it to get rid of her). She does so, just as MacBride and Mowbray start seeking a sure-fired bomb. Just like Kenneth Mars writes SPRINGTIME FOR Hitler, Read's play is a seeming godsend to MacBride. Mowbray (like Gene Wilder) is not so certain about this. He doesn't like the damage such a bomb would do to his reputation as a director.

What MacBride hopes is that Vinson, when she sees the play, will panic and cave in to returning to the contract with no problems. But Vinson reads the play and likes the fact that the central figure is her role. It has most of the lines and is the center of attention - a great star vehicle. So she starts encouraging Read's involvement in the production. But Mowbray (and a now panicked MacBride) want to doctor the play into some type of coherence. To do this MacBride suggests that Mowbray try to romance Read so that he can start making "helpful" suggestions regarding the structure of the play.

In some ways the best moments of the film are when Mowbray is forced into a round-the-clock romance and play rehearsal timetable. He is soon fairly potty because of lack of sleep (his abilities as a director are so compromised he acts like a zombie). Suffice it to say, Mowbray finally pulls himself together to straighten out Read, and to save the production.

One misses the snappy musical comedy numbers of "Springtime for Hitler", but Mowbray and MacBride (with Vinson and Read) make this an enjoyable little comedy. It eventually spawned a sequel, which I have yet to see.