Boy Meets Girl

Cagney was always trying to break away from his tough guy image, and is obviously relishing this FAST paced screwball comedy (think THE FRONT PAGE/HIS GIRL Friday) about two zany screenwriters. He mugs, he shouts, he dances, he wise-cracks, acts fey-you name it, he does a million bits of business here. Not until ONE,TWO,THREE 25 years later will you see Cagney in this mode again. FRONT PAGE vet Pat O'Brian easily keeps up the pace, but he's playing the "straight" funny man here. Ralph Bellamy is a riot as the idiot producer (college-man) as is Dick Foran, who sends up his own cowboy image (who knew Foran was this good?). At times the pace gets away from the actors and certain scenes are TOO frenetic, and laughs are lost, but generally this is such an off-beat surprise, that despite an ugly, washed out print that makes the film feel even older and less stellar, there is enough entertainment here for those who can plug into the farcical tone of a film that pulls the pants of Hollywood down.

James Cagney and Pat O'Brien made their second of two films adapted from Broadway plays, the first being Ceiling Zero. Boy Meets Girl, written by the husband and wife team of Samuel and Bella Spewack ran for 664 performances and was directed on Broadway by the great George Abbott.

It would have been nice had Warner Brothers secured the services of Mr. Abbott to direct this film version. But even without his touch Boy Meets Girl nicely adapts from the stage to the screen. The parts of Benson and Law, based loosely on the writing team of Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht, fit Cagney and O'Brien very well indeed.

I've always been of the opinion though it is the strong performances of the supporting cast that make this film. Dick Foran showed what a really good sport he was in satirizing himself essentially. At the time Boy Meets Girl was made, Foran was Warner Brothers B picture singing cowboy star. A whole lot of other players would never have done what Foran did. Too bad they didn't give him a song to sing in this though.

But the performance I really like is that of Ralph Bellamy, the harassed studio executive who is being driven to his wit's end by the antics of Cagney and O'Brien. Forget The Awful Truth, His Girl Friday, or even Sunrise at Campobello, this to me is Ralph Bellamy's career role. What makes it work is that Bellamy does play it so seriously against Cagney and O'Brien.

Frank McHugh, Marie Wilson, and Bruce Lester are involved in this also. And very prominently featured is the 40th President of the United States in one of the first roles that brought him some attention as a radio announcer. Since that's what Ronald Reagan was before coming to Hollywood, no strain here on any acting ability. Still he has some good moments as Cagney hatches a plot that does disrupt his broadcast.

Do you ever think Ralph Bellamy finally did cure all the problems that 'Young England' was facing?

Impressively ludicrous and hyperactive Hollywood self-spoof, Cagney and O'Brien play a pair of screenwriters sponging from a studio too free with its money. Double-talk turns to triple-talk as they do battle with various opposing forces (a hapless cowboy star, a college-educated producer, an effete English extra and even Ronald Reagan) to control a baby-star whose career they created while it was still in the womb; they are only defeated by the Eternal Power of Love as Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Finds Girl Again. Cagney, a genius who always struggled to play anyone who remotely resembled a normal human being, and O'Brien speak so fast that even native speakers of English struggle to follow. They would have given the Marx Brothers a run for their manic money.

Yet the greatest lines (and facial expressions) are reserved for Ralph Bellamy, on top form as the dopey producer (presumably a caricature of some well-known figure). Only Bellamy could spin comic gold from a line like "Good Gad, you've been drinking my milk." "It's 1938" says O'Brien. "I know that," replies Bellamy, "but not everyone's an intellectual."

Boy Meets Girl (1938)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely poor and unfunny spoof of Hollywood has two screenwriters (James Cagney/Pat O'Brien) coming up with a scheme to make their next film a hit. There's a lot of fast talking and some slapstick but I can't help but feel this should have been a film with The Marx Brothers instead. Cagney and O'Brien make a great team in dramas but their comedy act here just doesn't work and it comes off quite forced. The laughs are pushed so hard that it becomes rather annoying very quickly. Ralph Bellamy co-stars in this semi-redo of The Front Page. To date, this is the worst Cagney film I've seen.

Gotta' credit Warner Bros. with a lot of guts for taking its top gangster star, James Cagney, and stiffly heroic Pat O'Brien and teaming them as a pair of screen writing con artists in a zany farce. But thanks to the wordplay of Sam and Bella Spewack, who adapted "Boy Meets Girl" from their Broadway hit, it works beautifully. And often hilariously. The set-up is simple. Challenged to come up with a script for sputtering cowboy star Dick Foran, Cagney and O'Brien are at wits' (or more like halfwits') end until commissary waitress Marie Wilson collapses while serving lunch. Seems she's about to have a baby (sans husband, a surprise given the strength of the Hays Office in 1938 although her slim figure suggests at least some degree of censorship.) The plucky screenwriters build a storyline around the baby who's born shortly thereafter and goes on to become an 8-month old superstar, eclipsing the increasingly furious Foran. There's also Ralph Bellamy as a pretentious mini-mogul, Bruce Lester as a British extra who's not what he seems, Ronald Reagan in a brief bit as a radio announcer, pre-Blondie Penny Singleton seen even more briefly as a manicurist, a squad of angry rock-throwing Indians and a relay team of slide trombonists to add to the comic confusion. All-in-all, a very entertaining movie -- and when Cagney illustrates a story point with an impromptu tap dance, you get a preview of the "Yankee Doodle" dandy he'll play five years later.