(6 of 6)
The trifling story was written and directed by George White, who cast himself in the role of George White, celebrated producer. Mr. White's initial attempt to transmute the warm fleshliness of his revues to the screen suffers the same cold fate as other Hollywood musicomedies. Original ideas such as garden-frocked girls dancing across stepping stones in a pond, or a chorus of 100 carrying assorted dogs in their arms, are made tedious by end less elaborations. Typical shot: miniature chorus girl perched on the rim of a screen-high champagne glass. ¶The Show Off (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). George Kelly's biography of a braggart was voted the best play of 1923 by the Pulitzer Prize play jury. In this modernized cinema version it is likely to recapture much of its old popularity. Though Spencer Tracy at times stoops to tricks for audience sympathy which the late Louis John Bartels spurned, most of the fun of the Kelly crucifixion of J. Aubrey Piper still shines through the Hollywood edition. J. Aubrey Piper attracts the admiration of Amy Fisher (Madge Evans) when, during a rescue, he is accidentally pushed into Manhattan harbor and credited with a lifesaving. He courts her in expensive cars, inspects mansions for a new residence, boasts of his railroad holdings, marries her. The cars were demonstrators and he is a $32.50 railway clerk. Soon in debt, with his salary garnisheed. they move in on the Fisher family, where his asinine laughs, platitudes and backslapping madden his sardonic mother-in-law. J. Aubrey loses his job, wrecks a borrowed car, is cast off by his wife. By stupid luck he muddles out of his despair to remain the same conceited show-off to the end. Good shot: ¶Ma & Pa Fisher after the wedding reading Aubrey's travel folders on Waikiki Beach, the Taj Mahal and the Riviera while the honeymooners embark on the night boat to Albany.