¿Qué hay, Nellie?

Hi, Nellie is one of the most arch, hilarious movie titles I've ever encountered. At first it sounds banal, but as it's tossed around in different scenes by different characters, it gets funnier and funnier. There's a barroom scene that's a howler.

But rather than just a prop for the title's running gag, the story is quite interesting on its own. It involves a newspaper and corruption and a missing banker, and things aren't what they seem. We're taken through some amazing sets. it's impressive to see how many resources were plowed into them by the studio, from tracking shots of the cavernous newsroom, of teeming city streets, of the interior of an elaborate nightclub, all following Paul Muni, who, by the way, is a rough-and-tumble editor relegated to the lovelorn column by his publisher.

And this is a great showcase for Muni. Most of his scenes show him in closeup. Remember, Cagney had Public Enemy and Muni had Scarface, both intensely focused on their personas. I think Muni, because of his stage background, overdraws his character in movie closeups. (He may have won the Oscar for Louis Pasteur because he wore a beard that restrained his over-expressiveness.) But hey, it's Muni, and it's fun to see him do his stuff.

This is a comedy-crime flick, fast-paced, with rapid-fire dialog between great Warner players, so you have to pay attention. There's a scene where a dim young reporter tells Muni that the children's picnic he was assigned to cover didn't occur because the boat taking the kids to the venue ran aground on a sandbar and broke up, so he only had one paragraph to report. This is great stuff!

In that stretch of years between his performance in I'm A Fugitive From A Chain Gang and The Story Of Louis Pasteur, Paul Muni hit a dry patch with his home studio of Warner Brothers. They put him in a series of films way beneath his talent when you consider what he subsequently did and I'm told he particularly despised this film. From his point of view I can see why.

Still Hi, Nellie! is not all that bad, though I think Muni was definitely a second choice. James Cagney must have been doing something else at the time. The film has the feel of a project meant for Cagney.

Knowing that and knowing how much he wanted to do much more serious parts Muni pulls out all the stops and hams it up to beat the Philharmonic. I guess he had to have some fun.

Muni is your hardboiled editor of a city newspaper, a very typical part for the Thirties. But when he uncharacteristically soft pedals a story about a bank folding and a prominent civic leader disappearing, he gets himself demoted. Publisher Berton Churchill can't fire him because of a contract, but instead demotes him to the writer of the advice to the lovelorn column. That's a source of great amusement to all those who were under him before, especially Glenda Farrell who was writing that column and wanted a chance for some hard hitting journalism.

But Paul is nothing else if not resourceful and when a chance sob sister letter comes to his attention that might give him a lead on that story that he got in a sling over, he runs with it.

Warner Brothers and director Mervyn LeRoy gave Paul a really good cast to support him with Donald Meek playing the world's oldest office boy, Douglass Dumbrille as the editor who succeeds Muni, and Robert Barrat as the political boss of the city and ultimate villain of the piece.

It's not Zola, or Pasteur, but Hi, Nellie is not half bad as entertainment. Just not up to Paul Muni's exacting standards.

You know instantly from the moment you see that WB shield and hear Leo Forbstein's jaunty music that you're going to enjoy this. It's one of those typical Warner Brothers fun, upbeat stories about "ordinary people" who first encounter misfortune then work out how to make it better. In this type of picture you're not going to get anxious or worried because you just know that everything's going to work out fine for them in the end. This was exactly what was needed to cheer up the audiences of The Great Depression and this one is still as entertaining today. There's nothing really special about this but as a cinematic equivalent to eating a box of chocolates, it's brilliant and guaranteed to keep you smiling all the way through.

Why HI NELLIE is still so watchable now is because it is made so well. One of Warner's top directors, Mervyn LeRoy could turn his hand to anything and rarely made anything you would not want to see. To those of us familiar with old Warner movies, there's a few familiar faces here including the usually sombre and serious Paul Muni who is never, ever associated with light comedy. However, if you have no idea who Paul Muni was and stumble upon this, you would simply think that he'd being doing these types of light comedy roles all his life - he is absolutely superb!

There's really nothing bad to say about this - as an example of this chewing gum for the masses type of entertainment, this is just right. The story, the script, the acting and the atmosphere are all spot on. If there were any vacancies at that newspaper office I would probably apply! Maybe Glenda Farrell should have had a meatier role (like she did in MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM) since at the start of the picture she's a real go-getter reporter not afraid to get her hands dirty but towards the end, she seems to defer all the important stuff to the men - oh well, it was the thirties.

Paul Muni plays a newspaper editor who refuses to run a story accusing a missing man of embezzlement without proof. All the other papers in town run the story and Muni, who's under contract, is subsequently demoted to the lonely hearts column. There he writes advice to the lovelorn under the name of Nellie Nelson. While working on the column he unexpectedly gets a lead that may solve the case of the missing man and get him his editor job back.

Fun, well-paced WB crime drama with touches of comedy. Muni's terrific and is backed up by a great cast, including the always enjoyable Glenda Farrell, Douglas Dumbrille, Donald Meek, Berton Churchill, and many more fine character actors. Ned Sparks, master of the deadpan delivery, steals every scene he's in. Remade several times but this is the best.

Bette Davis is quoted as once saying that the great character actor Paul Muni tried to hide himself under all kinds of makeup, so that no one would ever know who he was or what he looked like. Well, in many of his early films, the real Muni is quite visible. Here, Warner's one time "resident thespian" does a slick turn as the managing editor of a big city newspaper. He gets demoted to writing an advice to the lovelorn column and spends the rest of the film trying to get the goods on a gang of hoods, hoping it will get him his old managing editor's job back. Glenda Farrell plays his female antagonist while sour face Ned Sparks is along for the ride as a city beat reporter. A solid role for Muni, with lots of comedy, which he pulls off well. I suppose the comedy was a welcome change from his usual heavy drama, falling somewhere between "I Was a Fugitive From a Chain Gang", "Scarface" and "Louis Pasteur." Watch and enjoy Muni's talents. His 5 Oscar nominations should speak for themselves, but it seems, over 30 years after his death, he's not as well remembered as several of his contemporaries, which is a shame.