Smartest Girl in Town
                                                                                                         
Director: Joseph Santley
Year: 1936
Rating: 6.0
It is nice to see Ann Sothern again after finishing the Maisie series a few months back. She became a favorite while watching those. This film was made three years before Maisie and at 57 minutes is clearly a B film for RKO. But it is a bubble of screwball fun with a story that Depression audiences seemed to eat up. Poor girl marries rich guy. But it isn't that simple of course. Throw in two of my favorite RKO character actors and I found this to be a sweet confection. Eric Blore once again plays a butler - he was more times than I can count, but he gets a lot of screen time here with his usual mischievous antics and a glint in his eye. And Erik Rhodes gets to play a foreign Baron with that Italian accent and thin moustache that he perfected in The Gay Divorcee as the gigolo. He was from Oklahoma.



Cookie (Sothern) is a model getting to wear expensive clothes and furs and dreaming of meeting the right guy. If he is rich. Old, fat, addled - as long as he is rich. Her agency pays Blore to use a yacht for a photo shoot. He is getting paid a quick $50 while the owner is away. They are waiting for the male model when the owner (Gene Raymond) shows up. He takes one look at Cookie and falls in love and pretends to be the penniless model. But she wants nothing to do with him. Because he is broke or so she thinks. He has Blore set up a fake advertising agency to hire her to work with him. Meanwhile her older sister (Helen Broderick - mother of Broderick Crawford) is doing all she can to get her sister to marry the wealthy Baron. Light as a feather and on its feet. 57 minutes of a charming Sothern is a treat. A minor joy.