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Pity racket, American hustle. "A flash in the pan of Manhattan," where folks believe their press and savor their mawkishness, a scoop to rescue the journalist (Fredric March) from the purgatory of obituaries. Newspapermen are scarcely welcome in provincial Vermont: The tippling quack (Charles Winninger) waxes magisterial ("The hand of God reaching into the mire couldn't elevate one of them to the depths of degradation"), more concise is the local boy who bites the visiting snoop in the leg. Misdiagnosed as dying from radium poisoning, the lass (Carole Lombard) keeps up the ruse to ditch Dullsville and get toasted at the Big Apple. "The bravest kid that ever lived" until she isn't, the proper center for a media whirl, the printed poem swiftly used for wrapping bug-eyed fish. "For good, clean fun, there's nothing like a wake." William Wellman and Ben Hecht have no patience for hooey, their satirical view ponders the difference between counterfeit gallantry and authentic venality. The would-be doomed muse savors the parade thrown in her honor, feels remorse creeping in during a wrestling match, guzzles till she drops at the "Heroines of History" nightclub show. She takes a punch from the reporter and responds in kind, their love is clinched in the sight of both with swollen jaws. "We gave 'em a chance to pretend that their phony hearts were dripping with the milk of human kindness." A bogus sultan with half-unglued beard, the splenetic rises and drops in Walter Connolly's voice, the camera's oddball obfuscations (a tree branch or a flower vase blocking a conversation, ankles sticking out of a waterfront crate). Above all, Lombard aglow in fireman's cap and oversized coat, an image to validate both Technicolor and John Qualen's Scandinavian-accented "Yumpin' Yiminy!" Wellman reworks the material variously in Roxie Hart and Magic Town. With Sig Ruman, Frank Fay, Troy Brown, Maxie Rosenbloom, Margaret Hamilton, Hattie McDaniel, Olin Howland, Monty Woolley, and George Chandler.
--- Fernando F. Croce |