Boy Meets Girl

Prankster screenwriters Robert Law (James Cagney) and J.C. Benson (Pat O'Brien) are struggling with a script. Robert is tired of writing trash. Western star Larry Toms is tired of the two writers. They pitch the standard to producer C.F. Friday. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl. Flighty pregnant waitress Susie Seabrook faints in Friday's office. The boys take on the job of being the baby's Godfathers and come up with a new idea for the cowboy movie.

The screwball comedy from the writing duo has some good humor. At least, they bring plenty of energy and that's enough to raise the comedic level. I like that they randomly lead a revolt of the native Indian actors. The rest is less fun. I do like the dimwitted Susie sometimes. I don't care that much about any of the characters. The movie should really center on the two writers rather be scattered around the various characters. Overall, there are a few little chuckles in this screwball comedy.

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.

I didn't find this to be a hilarious comedy, but it's entertaining and has some good performances. Cagney of course is excellent, and Marie Wilson is particularly charming as the naive mother of Happy, Hollywood's newborn sensation. The dialogue is extremely fast (for a challenge, try keeping up with it with your closed-captioning on.) The plot is perhaps a bit silly by today's standards, but good performances make this a worthwhile film. Look out for "in-jokes" about the movie industry, a future American president in a small role, and a lot of trumpets (or are they trombones?) Personally this film never made me laugh out loud, but it made me smile a lot.

That is the philosophy of J. Carlyle Benson (Pat O'Brien), fast talking screen writing hack at Monumental Pictures, a Hollywood dream creating factory run by C. Elliott Friday (Ralph Bellamy). Benson constantly insists that is the simple formula for every film script he and his partner Robert Law (James Cagney) do at Monumental. It must work because they are more than tolerated by the pretentious, "intellectual" Friday, who spends most of his time trying to salvage a movie set in Britain (at one point making the grandiloquent comment, "I'm trying to save "Young England"!"). Friday's intellectual triteness is easily shown - he so misunderstands just what a "trumpet" is, that he ends up making his sentinels blow some preposterous looking trombone while wearing beefeater costumes.

Pat O'Brien and James Cagney formed one of the most legendary friendships in Hollywood history, lasting from the 1930s until the 1980s. It was the backbone of what was called the "Irish Mafia" (O'Brien, Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Frank McHugh, Lynn Overman). They co-starred in many films, most notably ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES, TORRID ZONE, THE FIGHTING 69TH, and this, their only real comedy together (the other films have comic moments, but are basically dramatic). BOY MEETS GIRL was a farce about Hollywood film making by Samuel and Bella Spivak, that was a Broadway hit. It translate well to the screen, as it follows the antics of O'Brien and Cagney as frustrated writers turned into meaningless hacks. In fact, despite the financial benefits for surrendering their talents, it takes a toll on the men. Cagney feels disgusted at the loss of his real writing talent (he almost got the Pulitzer Prize). O'Brien finds his marriage suffering due to his feelings, and his wife eventually walks out on him.

So they take their revenge on several targets, most notably Mr. Friday, but also the Dick Foran, a popular cowboy star at the lot, and his obnoxious agent Frank McHugh (one of the few McHugh - Cagney films where McHugh is not a close friend of Cagney's). Then they meet an employee of the studio (Marie Wilson), who has a baby but no living husband. Wilson's baby is quite adorable, so Benson and Law create a series of films involving the baby in the old west, and so force Foran into a co-starring position that he resents. Lest you think this is extreme, the 1930s saw many film series in which children or babies dominate. Shirley Temple is the best known example, but Jane Withers was the central figure in several movies, as was young Jackie Cooper, and even the Dionne Quintuplets. Further, there was a silent film called "Three Godfathers" that John Ford directed (he would later remake it with John Wayne, Harry Carey Jr., and Pedro Armendariz), in which the western heroes give their all for a baby that is left with them.

The speed of the farce is matched by the delivery of lines by both it's Irish-American stars. O'Brien had learned to deliver lines snappily early on, and his speed is infectious on Cagney. But they can slow down for effect, especially as they give capsule descriptions of their gooey plots (at one moment, Cagney reveals the obvious point - when badman Foran is about to hide his loot from a robbery, he looks down at the place he chose, and "What do you think he finds? A Baabee!" dramatizes Jimmy). He also tries to make up dialog to explain the missing father of the baby, by suggesting that he may not have died on the Morro Castle (burned in 1934).

If the situation seems somewhat more dated today because screen writing is recognize (when well done) as the equivalent of a good novel, short story, essay, or play, the movie's gusto and humor still work quite well. So while not a film meriting a "10" it still gets a "9".

Not in plot. In style where it counts. The dialogue comes really thick and fast. Pat O'Brien plays smooth Hildy Johnson again, only this time he's called J. Carlyle Benson, screenwriter. He runs rings around Ralph Bellamy who is bemusedly befuddled once more, as he was about to be shortly in "His Girl Friday", the remake of "The Front Page". "Boy Meets Girl" can hold its head up high in the company of either of those films. There are crazy laughs and movie industry in-jokes aplenty.

There's a swipe at Canadians! There's a swipe at Mark Hellinger!! There's a swipe at Marcel Proust!!! "Lui-même!" as pretentious droppers of French phrases like Ralph Bellamy would say.

Pat O'Brien does a pratfall! In the part of conniving Walter Burns, you've got Jimmy Cagney who naturally has no trouble keeping up with Pat. Jimmy's real-life buddy Frank McHugh plays their nemesis, Rossetti, the agent.

There are good, well-written parts here even for minor characters like those played by Marie Wilson and Bruce Lester.

Because the movie is littered with gags of all kinds, I just assume that the "errors" I see are only more in-jokes. Two characters discuss Errol Flynn and agree that he really is English. Wrong! We know he's actually Australian. But it's just another joke, in disguise. Doubly ironic is the fact that the English character in the scene is played by a South African. There's a joke about exactly this sort of thing in a different scene! Art imitates life imitating art imitating life. Or something. A cowboy movie gets produced during the course of the film. It's called "Golden Nuggets" on the poster, then "Golden Nugget" a minute later in the movie trailer. A mistake? Or just another swipe, this time at more typical slipshod Hollywood productions?

A film by and about screenwriters making fun of themselves, and everyone else while they're at it. A really funny, fast-moving story and a tangled plot. An ironic title. This is no simple "boy meets girl" movie.