Themes: Writer's Life, Faltering Friendships, Success is the Best Revenge
Main Cast: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Marie Wilson, Ralph Bellamy, Frank McHugh
Release Year: 1938
Country: US
Run Time: 86 minutes
Plot
Once a staple of summer stock and community theatres, Bella and Samuel Spewack's Broadway farce Boy Meets Girl dates rather badly when seen today. The 1938 movie version is also a bit mildewed, though it is saved by the dynamo-like energy of James Cagney and Pat O'Brien. The stars are cast as Robert Law and J.C. Benson, a pair of iconoclastic Hollywood screenwriters based upon Ben Hecht and Charlie McArthur. Cynically declaring that every film can be boiled down to "Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl", Law and Benson drive their studio-executive bosses crazy with their zany irreverence. Their pet target is bigwig C. Elliot Friday (Ralph Bellamy), a delicious take-off of 20th Century-Fox prexy Darryl F. Zanuck. Friday orders the boys to concoct a screenplay for cowboy star Larry Toms (Dick Foran), whose popularity is on the wane. Upon making the acquaintance of pregnant, unmaried waitress Susie (Marie Wilson), Law and Benson hit upon a brilliant scheme: they'll transform Susie's baby into a child star and team the kid with Toms in his latest epic ("based on an original story by William Shakespeare"). Complication piles upon complication, reaching a high point of hilarity when the baby gives Larry Toms the measles. Ronald Reagan appears briefly as a radio announcer covering the Hollywood premiere of Law and Bensen's newest masterpiece. Boy Meets Girl was originally conceived as a Marion Davies vehicle, with the comedy team of Olsen & Johnson playing the screenwriters, but things changed radically (and for the better) when Davies' sponsor William Randolph Hearst huffily pulled his Cosmopolitan Pictures unit off the Warner Bros. lot. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
"Rapid fire" might have been coined with Boy Meets Girl in mind, at least whenever James Cagney and Pat O'Brien are on the scene. The dialogue flies so fast and furious at these times that it becomes a triumph just to keep up with what is being said. If all this speed was in the service of a first-class screwball comedy script, Boy would have been a gem to rival classics like His Girl Friday or Bringing Up Baby. Unfortunately, while it's a very enjoyable movie, Boy just doesn't belong in that pantheon. The jokes simply aren't as funny, the humor overall is more scattershot, the plotting isn't sufficiently sharp and focused, and even the satire doesn't cut quite as deeply as it thinks it does. Cagney and O'Brien are aces, of course, a pair of dynamos always on the edge of exploding, and Ralph Bellamy is at his befuddled best. Marie Wilson has a certain amount of charm, although her voice gets quite annoying as the film progresses. Lloyd Bacon's direction keeps things moving, although occasionally things get a bit too frenetic, but he handles the satirical moments with a pleasing insider's view. If Boy ends up generating a lot of noise over very little, it's still entertaining. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Esdras Hartley - Art Director, Milo Anderson - Costume Designer, Lloyd Bacon - Director, William Holmes - Editor, Leo F. Forbstein - Musical Direction/Supervision, M. K. Jerome - Songwriter, Jack Scholl - Songwriter, Perc Westmore - Makeup, Sol Polito - Cinematographer, George Abbott - Producer, Sam Bischoff - Producer, Hal B. Wallis - Producer, Dolph Thomas - Sound/Sound Designer, Bella Spewack - Screenwriter, Samuel Spewack - Screenwriter
