It Pays to Advertise

In the year that this was made all of the major studios were busily making over 50 films a year.Some of them masterpieces,some of them still remembered but the majority of them forgotten.This is one such film.I had never heard of it when i purchased a copy.I bought it on the strength of the cast.It is a familiar story.Son of wealthy businessman wants to strike out on his own and prove his worth to his father.It is difficult to believe that the Carole Lombard here is the same woman who only 6 years later would star in such films as Nothing Sacred or Swing High Swing Low.In this film she seems a little gawky and unsure of herself.Norman Foster is not one of my favourite actors and his performance in this film is just as poor as in orher films of the same period.So this film is only of historical interest for watching a nascent Carol Lombard

Brooks only appears in the first six minutes of this screwball comedy and is only competent in a role anyone off the street could have played -eloping couple waylaid by publicity newsmen and involved in a plane farce.

Very short and not really worth anyone's attention.

Rodney Martin (Norman Foster) is a lazy and rich young man whose prospects for the future don't look very good. After all, he's shown no interest in work...only in having fun and spending his father's money. But his father (Eugene Palette) has an underhanded scheme he cooked up with his secretary, Mary (Carole Lombard). She will motivate him to work and be more serious. She does this by pretending to be in love with him, though naturally it soon becomes the real thing. But the plan backfires when the son wants to be TOO successful--and go head-to-head against his father's soap business.

This is a pleasant little comedy and it's worth seeing. However, nothing about it yells 'must-see'. So if you love old films, you'll enjoy the film...otherwise, it's not exactly a classic.

...so don't believe the low rating.

Norman Foster plays Rodney Martin, playboy son to self made man Cyrus Martin (Eugene Palette), head of a soap company. Cyrus has paid 5000 dollars to his secretary, statuesque Mary Grayson (Carole Lombard), to make Rodney fall in love with her and therefore stop his silly publicity stunts that make dad look bad in the papers and go to work. Cyrus promises her another 5000 if the whole thing works out with Rodney being a serious working man.

Cyrus pretends to be outraged by the match, pretends to fire Mary, pretends to cut off Rodney without a cent if he goes through with any marriage to her, but it is all a ruse. But the ruse is about to get out of Cyrus' control.

Rodney meets up with slick publicity man Ambrose Peale (Skeets Gallagher), playing his usual mischievous part. Ambrose suggests they start on an advertising crusade for a product that doesn't even exist yet - "13 soap". It's named by Rodney and the name means "Our soap is an unlucky number for dirt". Rodney is determined to beat dad at his own business. So soon there are jingles, ads, billboards with pretty girls in bathtubs (this is the precode era - anything goes) all over town. But Rodney and Ambrose have spent so much money on making their product a household word they have nothing left to make a product with, much less pay the rent.

Cyrus is angry at the 13 Soap ads everywhere he looks, and a competitor accuses him of making his son's company a front for his own soap and withdraws from their mutual agreement not to get into advertising wars. Worse yet, Mary is falling for Rodney for real.

So Rodney has name recognition and no product and no money. Dad has a product, money, and no ad campaign. How will this all work out? Watch and find the humorous answer.

This is the beginning of Eugene Palette's grumpy roles, a type of character that he made famous in "My Man Godfrey" and "The Lady Eve" - the put upon self made man of industry with daffy relatives that don't know the value of a dollar. If you are expecting Carole Lombard the screwball comedienne to show up here, she has not found that persona yet. As for Skeets Gallagher, he was always fun whenever he showed up in early Paramount roles.

The only reason I can figure that this one doesn't have a higher rating is that the copy in general circulation is a poor print taken from old VHS tapes when it was shown on TV twenty or thirty years ago. That doesn't mean that the film is not clever and well done. I'd recommend it.

Eugene Pallette pays Carole Lombard $5,000. She has gotten his son, Norman Foster, to fall in love with her and go to work. He wants to keep him working, so he offers her an additional $5,000 and 25% of whatever he earns if he's still working in six months. Unfortunately for him, Norman has decided to go into the soap business, reasoning that if Pallette can make money in it, anyone can. Because Pallette and his biggest competitor, Lucien Littlefield have agreed to cut back on advertising, Norman and his press agent pal, Skeets Gallagher decide to go all out advertising their new soap. There's just two problems. They haven't any customers, which is just as well, because they haven't any soap to sell; they've spent all their capital on advertising.

Workhorse director Frank Tuttle has a great set-up for a satirical farce, but the only accomplished farceur in the bunch is Pallette. Gallagher is a distant second because he can talk almost as fast as Glenda Farrell, but Miss Lombard hasn't developed any comedy chops as yet. What's left is far too mannered and standard to be of much interest.

And Louise Brooks. She's in this movie, so she must be mentioned. She appears in the first couple of minutes as a stage dancer with whom Foster is baiting reporters for publicity for a stage show. She gets to show off her legs a couple of times, then disappears.

Tuttle himself would never gain great accomplishment as a comedy director, although he would direct a fair number of them in the course of his career. He was a director who could direct anything competently, although his real strength, it would turn out, was in crime dramas. He was a key man in the rise of film noir in America, directing the 1935 proto-noir version of THE GLASS KEY and Alan Ladd in THIS GUN FOR HIRE. This comedy, however, doesn't quite ring the bell.