Hot News Margie

During Saturday's Wallace Beery marathon on TCM, they showed a short called Hot News Margie, from 1931. The one-sentence synopsis sounded interesting: a tabloid reporter gets the story on whether a college football star is married. The movie is certainly silly. Marjorie Beebe stars as Margie, and to get the story she goes undercover as a player on the football team! This completely strains credulity, especially as she's trying to run down the field alongside the target of her story, a football quarterback named "Babe Booth", which seems pretty clearly a reference to baseball player Babe Ruth and his outsized celebrity status.

Hot News Margie is a one-reeler from Vitaphone, which strikes me as uncommon, at least when it comes to the comedy shorts they were making by this time. Certainly in later years they were putting out a lot of two-reelers. But a full two reels would be a bit too long for this one, which is really a one-joke plot. At least, until the stunning ending.

I have to admit to never having heard of Marjorie Beebe before seeing this short. It doesn't seem to be on DVD as an extra to anything; it would probably fit in with one or another of the newsroom comedies that the Warner Archive could put out. Someplace like a Torchy movie would be good for it, for example. But, somebody put it up on Youtube: