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Producer John Considine violated another taboo by building the story around a tap dancer, Eleanor Powell, instead of the usual soprano. Miss Powell plays the part of Irene Foster, an upState girl who goes to Manhattan to get a job with Bob Gordon (Robert Taylor), a musical comedy producer who was her high-school sweetheart. Gordon's enemy, Columnist Bert Keeler (Jack Benny), has invented a French actress, La Belle Arlette. To confuse Gordon, who refuses to give her a job, Irene steps into the fictitious identity. The rest of her stepping, which occupies considerable footage, confirms her status as the world's greatest female tap dancer. The picture includes the best specialty acts procurable: Robert Wildhack in his discourse on snoring, with examples; Frances Langford singing the show's best song, You Are My Lucky Star; June Knight and Nick Long Jr. introducing a new dance, Broadway Rhythm; Vilma & Buddy Ebsen dancing & singing On a Sunday Afternoon. Other good songs: Sing Before Breakfast, I've Got a Feelin' You're Foolin', Broadway Rhythm.
The Return of Peter Grimm (RKO). Lionel Barrymore is the cantankerous florist who, feeling a cold breath on his cheek, hastily completes arrangements to perpetuate the two projects dearest to his heart: his nurseries, and the happiness of his ward, Helen Mack. When, after death, he discovers that his plans will result only in decimating the first and stultifying the second he comes back. He has trouble getting through to the living at first, finally finds a doorway open to him—the mind of a child (George Breakston) who is slipping over into his world. Through that youngster he saves the nurseries, keeps Allen Vincent, a nephew with unpleasant characteristics, from marrying Miss Mack, and brings to light an old seduction.
All performances in The Return of Peter Grimm are good and its general tone, despite the camera's inability to produce the incorporeal except in smeared dissolves, has the quiet literate authority that Producer Kenneth Macgowan usually gets into his output.
There is one ghost that stamps itself unforgettably on The Return of Peter Grimm: the shaggy white-haired shade of the late David Belasco, its original author, director and producer. When in 1911 Belasco turned out this play, he put so much of himself into it that he used to confide to friends: "Like Shakespeare, this, I think, will live forever." Defying two theatrical decades, The Return of Peter Grimm continues to fulfill its author's boast.
The Goose and the Gander (Warner). A lady (Kay Francis) decides to inveigle her divorced husband's second wife and the man (George Brent) with whom she is misbehaving to a mountain lodge, have the husband discover them there. The plan works perfectly until a pair of jewel thieves appear at the lodge also, hide their swag in a fireplace.
Thereafter, the comedy in The Goose and the Gander consists of the efforts of the guests at the lodge to conceal their identities. The picture's suspense is contributed by the jewel thieves' attempts to retrieve their swag. Its charm resides in the fact that George Brent can wrinkle his nose whereas Kay Francis cannot pronounce "r." Good shot: a bedazzled police chief (Spencer Charters) trying to make the company at the lodge explain what they are up to.