Artists & Models (1937)

Though there is a storyline, of sorts, running through this feature, it’s really a sort of loosely compèred (by Jack Benny) collection of theatrical presentations based around the woes of an advertising executive. “Mac” (that’s Benny) needs to secure a lucrative contract from the faintly libertine millionaire “Townsend” (Richard Arlen) if he is to stop his business going kerplunk. That success will all depend on his finding the right “face” to front the campaign. He favours a professional, his client doesn’t. Plan? Well the solution appears to be in the hands of Ida Lupino. She is professional model “Paula Sewell” who is going to orchestrate things so she bumps into “Townsend” as the exciting new amateur prospect “Paula Monterey”. Now given the man hasn’t met her before, he only has to be convinced that she is the woman for him, then he tells “Mac” who gives the job to a woman called “Paula” - who just happens to be his fiancée, anyway, and so gets the million dollar contract and all in everyone’s garden is rosey! What chance? Well the story all treads fairly predictable lines from here on out, and if that were all then maybe it would have worked a bit more coherently. The problem is that the propensity of musical numbers appear to have little, if anything, to do with the story and for the most part aren’t really very good. That said. I did quite enjoy Judy Canova’s bubble bath serenade and, indeed, she does rather amiably chivvy things alongs when things get a bit slow with a few other numbers, one of which has the most obvious example of hosepipe rain I’ve ever seen. Louis Armstrong brings up the rear with the Howard Arlen and Ted Koehler song he shares with Martha Raye, and that saves the best til last. It’s odd to consider that people would have gone to the cinema to see this rather than the theatre, because aside from that thinnest of plots - a theatre production is what this really is.