El club 400

George Murphy is a fine photographer, but he'd rather be taking pictures of anything but what he's paid for. When he snaps a photo of Anne Shirley falling in the mud, she loses her job, and to make it up, he has to promote her sister a meeting with Alan Mowbray, playing model magnate John Robert Powers. After the usual comic lies, he succeeds, and since she's Carole Landis, she's in. But Murphy can't make up his mind which girl he prefers.

Sometimes life is tough like that, I'm told. It's a fairly elaborate black-and-white musical comedy that has not aged very well, since the fame of Powers' modelling agency has faded over the years. It's unclear to me why they borrowed George Murphy from MGM without giving him much dancing to do. The in-movie music is provided by Benny Goodman and orchestra -- with a fine version of "I Know That You Know" -- and Dennis Day threatens to sing a couple of times. Really, it looks like they edited this movie down extensively, although at 93 minutes it's still A picture length. Still, what they left is engaging, if not superior.