Smartest Girl in Town

Ann Southern enjoys being a model and getting to wear rich clothing, but she hates turning it back in. She decides she's going to marry a rich man. When she's shooting a layout on a yacht, she concludes that Gene Raymond is, like her, a model earning a good $10 a day. He's actually the yacht's owner, a man constantly having to pay women for pursuing them. He decides he's going to win her by the force of his personality.

Raymond is in his rich, handsome guy mode here, and that's not my favorite characterizaton, but Miss Sothern is a delight at her most cynical. Under the direction of Joseph Santley, there are some nice comedy sequences, and the whole thing looks like it was shot on the sets for an Astaire-Rogers movie, and it has the character actors to prove it. Eric Blore is Raymond's manservant, Helen Broderick is Miss Sothern's scornful sister, and Erik Rhodes her fractured-Italian suitor. It's clearly all formula all the time, but the wry tone that everyone takes -- except for Raymond -- makes it fun.

"The Smartest Girl in Town" is a typical 1936 film with a typical plot. A wealthy man (Gene Raymond) falls for a model named Cookie (Ann Sothern) who mistakes him for a model. He has his butler (Erik Blore) call Cookie's booker and claim he's from an advertising agency so he can book her again and get close to her during the shoot. Meanwhile, Cookie's sister (Helen Broderick) is trying to marry her off to a supposedly rich foreigner (Erik Rhodes) whom Cookie not only doesn't love but can't understand.

The actors are all good - Helen Broderick always had great line delivery, and Eric Blore is in his usual role. Ann Sothern is beautiful and Gene Raymond is charming. It just doesn't add up to much with its very thin plot. I assume this was a B film since it only ran an hour. It's cute, but nothing special.

This is a very lightweight film from RKO that has many of the same things you'd find in a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film--but also without the same quality or fun. Plus, there is a serious problem with one of the characters that makes it hard to rate this one higher.

Ann Sothern plays a model who has decided that she needs to get married--and not for love but money. It just happens that a rich guy is instantly smitten with her (you're never sure why) and after ignoring him for much of the film, Ann decides she can allow herself to marry a poor guy--and they marry. Sounds romantic, no? NO! But the film has Helen Broderick and Eric Blore and a lot of the plot you'd expect in such a thing. But my problem is that Raymond's character seemed a bit daffy falling for her so quickly and she just seemed like a scheming gold-digger--not exactly an endearing quality.

Despite a charming and capable cast, this movie was really bad.

The story had a fair-to-middling premise, but the final script was just muddled and silly.

The whole things seems to be based on "Hmmmm. We've got to crank out some film to fill some theaters."

Ann Sothern has long been one of my favorites (I guess I have several), and she is delightful to watch and lovely to look at. She is always charming, even downright adorable.

Gene Raymond is a good-looking and talented guy who seems to be little known these days, and I don't understand why.

Unfortunately, the production is slap-dash and fairly senseless and ultimately not a lot of fun. Except to see Ann Sothern.

Ann Sothern and Gene Raymond are the handsome young leads who are bound to get together eventually in this good-natured, slightly manic comedy.

Sothern plays a model determined to find and marry a rich man. She meets handsome millionaire Raymond during a modeling job on his yacht - but mistakenly assumes he is the male model supposed to meet her there. Raymond (immediately smitten, of course) quickly gathers that it will be more fun if she thinks he is a peer rather than a millionaire, and he begins an elaborate scheme to win her heart as a poor working sap.

A big part of Raymond's scheme is enlisting his valet, Eric Blore, to pretend to switch roles with him. Blore is hilarious as the scandalized employee gradually leaning into his assumed role as boss instead of servant. Helen Broderick is equally good as Sothern's tart-tongued sister and manager. Erik Rhodes has a couple of extremely goofy scenes as a baron with money who would be an eligible suitor for Sothern if he could just stop talking about birds and eggs all the time.

The plot holds hardly any surprises, but there is a neat scene where Sothern washes Raymond's wild mop of hair in her bathroom sink, realizing as she does so that he has become more than just a co-worker. And despite the standard plot, clever dialog and enthusiastic performances throughout make this one lots of fun.