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Top of the Town (Universal) is an example of the peanut-on-a-pyramid school of cinema. The peanut is a story about a struggling young orchestra leader (George Murphy) and a stage-struck heiress (Doris Nolan) who, when he makes it plain to her that she is a failure as a chorus girl, retaliates by hiring him to put on a show in her skyscraper night club. The pyramid is the irrelevantly impressive edifice of songs, dances and specialty acts supporting this picayune and wrinkled anecdote. On a broad base of music by Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson, Universal's first splurge in musicomedy since its reorganization superimposes tap dancing by George Murphy, who apes Fred Astaire, and by eleven-year-old Peggy Ryan, who apes Eleanor Powell; singing by Gertrude Niesen, imported from radio; clowning by The Three Sailors, imported from vaudeville; Scotch dialect by Ella Logan, who also sings, dances and makes faces; and specialty bits by Mischa Auer, Gregory Ratoff, Hugh Herbert, Henry Armetta. The climax occurs in the night club when patrons and performers mingle in a musical mob scene which for pure size is the most ambitious of the season. Best song: Top of the Town.
When Love Is Young (Universal). The best the class prophets could do for Wanda Werner (Virginia Bruce) of Wendensville, when their forecastings were made public at the commencement dance in the high-school gym, was that she would win the prize at the State fair for the biggest pumpkin. They did not mean to be unkind, but Wanda went home crying. She wanted no fame as a pumpkin grower, dreamed of singing opera.
In New York, the singing teacher told her frankly that if she liked to sing just for her own amusement, he would take her money. When she met Andy (Kent Taylor), a fresh pressagent, he was so rude she cried. To make amends he tried to exploit her farm background by having her drive a flock of geese across Broadway at the afternoon rush hour. For the first time in cinema history, newspapers treated this publicity stunt as wary metropolitan editors actually do treat such affairs— labeling it publicity and publishing it for its amusement value. Thereafter the story, scanning Wanda's eventual appearance in a show, her disillusioned return to Wendensville, follows established lines of Cinderella fables but manages to keep out of the dullard class. Designed for neighborhood houses rather than Academy Awards, When Love Is Young is a neatly streamlined little double-biller.