Hat Check Girl

For Bob Lipton who wrote review in 2014: Bob, how did you come to viewing this movie? The Ginger Rogers world has been looking for this "lost" film for years. It was discovered, restored and viewed a couple years ago, with viewings at the Turner Classic Film Festival in Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Since then it has seemingly again been buried. If you reviewed this, surely you saw copy of the film. We'd love to know more about it! Thanks!!

Sally Eilers is a good girl making her way as a hat check girl in a posh Manhattan night club. When she and drunken millionaire Ben Lyons meet and eventually fall in love, the plot gets very complicated.

Visually this is a striking pre-code B movie. Director Sidney Lanfield is aided immeasurably by Glen MacWilliams' fast-moving camera and Paul Weatherwax' editing -- striking and inventive in the current style. However, there is far too much story and the leads speak their snappy dialogue as if they are reciting tired catchphrases and being judged on their accuracy. Monroe Owsley has a great role as the editor/publisher of a gossip magazine with a sideline in blackmail, but there's far too much going on. Characters and subplots appear and disappear in order to speed things along.

It's still very watchable. The scenes of drunken revelry look like people are smashed. However, there isn't enough talent on top of this production to make it memorable.

May 4, 2018: I see a question as to where I saw this film. It was at New York's Museum of Modern Art.