This being a diluted Mae West vehicle (following the introduction of the Production Code in 1934, she was forced to tone down her trademark racy material), it cannot help but be much less sparkling than her earlier vehicles but, even so, it is not a bad film in itself. However, I must say that Henry Hathaway (renowned, then as now, more for his prowess at action sequences than for his comedy timing) is an odd choice for director, especially since he had just made the one-of-a-kind romantic fantasy PETER IBBETSON the previous year!
The thing starts promisingly enough with an ingenious opening sequence in which the events of a film being shown in a movie-house are intercut with the audience swooning over its leading lady (guess who?); the typically witty repartee (as usual, the work of Mae West herself) ensues when, through the efforts of her scheming manager Warren William, the movie star is stranded in the country and has to rest at a household full of simple film-struck folk. Predictably, West falls for the only handsome man around - a small-time inventor played by a rather stolid Randolph Scott – who has himself sets his sights on revolutionizing talking pictures…and West is only too willing to place her Hollywood connections – and more – at his service!
Among the other inhabitants of the household are Isabel Jewell – imitating Marlene Dietrich in THE BLUE ANGEL (1930) and, as a riposte to which, West utters some unflattering remark about the German siren; in fact, unusually for a West film, the other females in the cast (which includes Alice Brady and Elizabeth Patterson) are given rather meaty roles. Among the other guests is bad-tempered professor Etienne Girardot (who was so memorable in Howard Hawks’ TWENTIETH CENTURY [1934]), whom West also manages to win over with false promises of a Hollywood career; the cringe-inducing negro stereotype Nicodemus as would-be comic relief is regrettable, however.
