Hot News Margie

Marjorie Beebe has the headline before it happens. When a man jumps out of a window, she tells her editor before the body passes the window. Sent to get a sports story, she says she'll get it if she has to make the whole football team. She joins the huddle, kicks a guard in the keister and invades the locker room for the story!

Warner Brothers' Vitaphone division was being pushed out of feature production, so they were redoubling on the short subjects. Although they are mostly remembered for their musical shorts, they had an active comedy division at this point, with Shemp Howard, and a brief tryout for Roscoe Arbuckle to make a comeback; the shorts were a success, he signed the contract.... and then died in his sleep. With this one, we see that Warners were hiring talent from the flailing comedy shorts producers as fast as they could fire them. Director Alf Goulding had been a fixture at Roach for more than a decade; Marjorie Beebe had been playing at Sennett's studio. Sound, however, had been an immense strain on the smaller studios, while it had been the making of Warner Brothers. They could pick up the discarded talent and push them through their distribution.

It's a chaotic short for my taste, far more intent on getting the gag done than anything else. here's nothing wrong with that, and if that's your taste, I think you'll like this.

Marjorie Beebe is a reporter at a tabloid newspaper. There is a rumor that college football star Babe Booth is secretly married and she sets out to uncover the truth.

I don't know anything about Marjorie Beebe. I haven't even heard of her. From this, she seems to be a very broad sassy comedic actress who is willing to do physical work. I can see a few modern comparisons like Melissa McCarthy although she was probably a lot less successful. I wouldn't say that this is good. It is throwing a lot at the walls and some of it sticks. It has some outrageous stuff. As a short, it packs a lot into a small package.

A Vitaphone Short Subject.

Tabloid snoop sister HOT NEWS MARGIE will go to any length to ensure she gets star football player Babe Booth's admission to a secret marriage.

This exceedingly brief & lively little film wastes no time going for the laughs. Marjorie Beebe gives a very boisterous performance in the title role.

Often overlooked or neglected today, the one and two-reel short subjects were useful to the Studios as important training grounds for new or burgeoning talents, both in front & behind the camera. The dynamics for creating a successful short subject was completely different from that of a feature length film, something like writing a topnotch short story rather than a novel. Economical to produce in terms of both budget & schedule and capable of portraying a wide range of material, short subjects were the perfect complement to the Studios' feature films.

Plot about a lady tabloid newshound is a tossed off framework for rapid fire double entendres and outright outrageous bawdiness. Marjorie Beebe is cute and funny in her wacky pursuit of a scoop. A tidy little primer for modern audiences that remember the 30's for Snow White and Shirley Temple. This script would have Mae West preening with pride.

"Hot News Margie" is frenetic fun.It has to be frenetic with only one reel. It seems too short for those of us used to two reels. Beebe was working for Mack Sennett at the time, and Sennett was on record as saying she had the potential to be the greatest film comedienne of them all. When you think of all the stars Sennett knew (he knew them all) that is praise indeed. I'd encourage anybody who enjoyed "Hot News" to have a look at the two reel stuff Beebe was doing during this period.

In "Doubling in the Quickies" Beebe plays an ingenue come to seek fame and fortune, in Hollywood. In "Cowcatcher's Daughter" she's defying her father, the great Andy Clyde, over who she should marry, and in "A Put-Up Job" she's the young wife having a self-assembly house put up by notorious bunglers Dane And Arthur, but none the less managing a little flirt with Karl Dane.

Three very different characters from the Beebe repertoire. The innocent abroad, albeit the innocent who likes the sound of her own voice, then the impudently charming cowgirl, and then the quieter self-possessed young wife with an eye for a big muscled builder. All funny roles, funny films. Recommended.