Reine de beauté

Pat O'Brien once said, "I don't just want to be a fast-talking Charlie all my life." That's exactly what he is in "Page Miss Glory"--a flimflam man who is always looking for an angle. As Click Wiley, he pairs up with Eddie Olson (Frank McHugh), a photographer whose lens is in hock. They are about to be ejected from the hotel where they have been squatting when a new scheme falls into their laps.

Marion Davies plays a naive rube (Loretta) who comes to New York City. Her search for the perfect guy mostly centers around celebrity crushes, like the daring self-promoting stunt pilot, Bingo Nelson (Dick Powell). Davies' performance is the highlight of the film, but it is worth seeing the film just for the bevy of talented supporting actors.

This light-weight comedy clocks in at 93 minutes, and it feels like an adaptation of a play (which it is), but its screwball story serves up plenty of fun and feels like a cultural artifact from the mid- thirties.

Like "Front Page Woman," this is a comedy I'd never heard of and only discovered because of TCM. Fast paced dialogue played with relentless Looney Tunes energy make this a sharp spoof of media manipulation and public gullibility that holds up well nearly 70 years later. Marion Davies inhabits her slow witted small town girl thrust into the limelight. Dick Powell parodies himself as the Hero of the Air who falls in love with her picture and proposes before they've ever met. Pat O'Brien and Frank McHugh share a wonderful rapport as the con artists behind it all. Only Mary Astor seems wasted as she has little to do though she does it with elan. Treads similar territory to `Nothing Sacred' or more recent offerings like `Simone' and `Wag the Dog.' Highly recommended.

"PAGE MISS GLORY" A pleasant surprise viewing, we stumbled over this movie this morning on TCM (Turner Classic Movies). Our Satellite Service (DISH) provided its very brief introduction; noting that Marion Davies was in the Cast, we stayed on and viewed the entire show.

I was raised in a family that did not admire Marion Davies nor, for that matter, W.R. (William Randolph Hearst). In fact, our family took its orders from the Legion of Decency listings; watching a condemned film could book you a ticket to H*E*L*L. Thus, I was amply supplied with bias and prejudice against the STAR of this movie. SURPRISE! Hey, I think she is acting! Just this week, I had read about the Production Code that governed what we the public could see - for example, the principals in a bedroom scene needed to keep at least one foot on the floor at all times. The article discussed the effect of the code upon how women were to be portrayed - before 1934, when the Code went into effect, women could be "sultry", "naughty", or whatever. After, however, the woman had to be relegated to unimportant and uninspiring roles; a rule, per the article, that led to popular male roles and the rise of male stars.

MARION DAVIES was relatively unknown to me for the aforesaid reasons - for once, my "Videohound" was mute on the movie but did show that she had two other movies released on Video.

So, we watched. We were seeing a CODE movie. A Cinderella story, she played an overly dumb blonde hotel room maid who (unwittingly)influenced a couple of promoters' efforts to create a pinup of the "the perfect" candidate for a beauty contest. The pinup is a composite of attractive parts of attractive women. Guess who looked like the imaginary pinup? We enjoyed the movie from start to finish and got a lot of good laughs - you would enjoy it. The only problem I had was the role played by Mary Astor - perhaps her sympathetic support lent stature to the movie but Astor's female role acted depressed and confused - not too dangerous to the men's silly schemes.

I was sure that W.R. had meddled with the whole thing until I looked up "Page Miss Glory" in IMDb. From there, came most of the facts quoted above. It turns out that Davies' accomplishments included Movie Scripts and she produced a dozen movies. In all she acted in 48 movies from 1917 to 1937. Since "Page Miss Glory" was her 45th, it is a mature effort.

While my first impression of the movie was that it was corny, I soon saw the excessive exaggeration made for a fun movie. The country girl was the ultimate hick, the hero was the absolute best flier in the world, and Barton MacLane was at his evil best.

Enjoyed it.

PAGE MISS GLORY (Warner Brothers, 1935), a Cosmopolitan production directed by Mervyn LeRoy, stars Marion Davies, formerly of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, making her Warner Brothers debut. PAGE MISS GLORY may not be the greatest comedy ever made, but much better than the four feature films that were to follow in general. What makes PAGE MISS GLORY succeed is its presence of the studio's own huge assortment of stock players, especially the third-billed crooner by the name of Dick Powel, having a very busy year for himself with six movie releases for 1935 alone.

Plot summary: Loretta (Marion Davies) is a country girl from Red Hook arriving in New York City's busy Grand Central train terminal where, after given some guidance from Mr. Kimball (Harry Beresford), a traveler's aide, and only $27 to her name, comes to the Park Regis Hotel where she interviews herself to Mr. Yates (Berton Churchill), the assistant hotel manager, for a job. Loretta becomes the hotel's chambermaid and teams with Betty (Patsy Kelly) cleaning rooms and assisting guests. Her first good deed goes to Chick Wiley (Pat O'Brien), a promoter, and Ed Olsen (Frank McHugh), his assistant, of Room 1762, down on their luck and four weeks behind their bill. Believing they are hungry, Loretta offers them a rejected meal from one of the other guests which turns out to be dog food. Gladys (Mary Astor), a hard-working secretary and Ed's love interest, tries her best to assist in their lack of creativity to get themselves back into business. Upon reading a full page ad in a magazine for the submission of a photograph for the most beautiful girl in the world, Ed schemes up a publicity stunt by sending a composite photo of a fictional girl he names "Dawn Glory" in hope of winning the $2500 grand prize. Much to everyone's surprise, Chick wins, but is unable to produce the girl he's promoting to Slattery Hawkshaw (Lyle Talbot), a reporter for the Express insisting on an interview with Chick's Wonder Girl. It is only when Loretta, after beautifying herself at the beauty parlor, puts on the Miss Glory Silhouette Dress does the homely chambermaid become the new American Beauty. As fate would have it, Loretta, known to all as Miss Glory, is proposed marriage by Bingo Nelson (Dick Powell) over the radio only after having seen her photograph but never met her personally (except earlier at the hotel as a chambermaid). Though Loretta is madly in love with Bingo, her life gets a turnaround when she's abducted by hired thugs, Petey (Allen Jenkins) and Blackie (Barton MacLane), out for some ransom money.

Also in the large assortment of Warners stock players are Joseph Cawthorn and Al Shean playing a couple of heavily accented rival businessmen; Lionel Stander (Nick, a Russian accented wrestler employed in the hotel baggage room); Hobart Cavanaugh (Kimball); and in smaller roles, Helen Lowell, E.E. Clive, Gavin Gordon, Irving Bacon and Jonathan Hale. Very much a straightforward comedy, the title song of "Page Miss Glory" (by Al Dubin and Harry Warren) is first heard briefly by an uncredited vocalist at a night club before Miss Glory has her daydreaming fantasy moment staring directly into the picture frame of Bingo (Powell) to come to life and sing the song directly to her.

Though PAGE MISS GLORY gets off to a great start, it grows tiresome by the time it reaches its 93 minute conclusion. As usual, the cast does its best in what they do, namely Pat O'Brien as a scheming promoter; Dick Powell appearing in pilot's uniform throughout the story; the serious-minded Mary Astor, among the many others in this all-star cast. In conclusion, PAGE MISS GLORY very much belongs to Marion Davies alone. She's has some very fine moments, especially during the first half of the story during her amusingly fish-out-of-water hillbilly type in the big city to unexpectedly become an American Beauty.

Never distributed to home video, PAGE MISS GLORY had its moments of glory when first broadcast on Turner Network Television (1989) before becoming a more permanent fixture on Turner Classic Movies cable channel. (***)