Whoa, Nellie!

Paul Muni was the Star of the Month some months back, before my old DVR died. But TCM ran another day of Muni's movies last month, which gave me the chance to watch Hi, Nellie!, which is available on DVD courtesy of one of Warner Bros. "Forbidden Hollywood" box sets.

I knew the story of Hi, Nellie! already, mostly because this is the first version of a movie Warner Bros. made four times betwen 1934 and 1949, and I'd already seen two of the remakes. Muni stars as Brad, which you'd think isn't a name somebody who looks like Muni would have, until it's revealed that "Brad" is short for his surname Bradshaw. Brad is managing editor at a big city newspaper, who has a bit of a maverick way of doing things that's going to get in trouble.

One of the big stories going on involves the failure of the Labor Bank -- after all, there is a depression going on. Canfield, one of the bank managers, has disappeared, as has a large amount of the bank deposits. So everybody naturally puts two and two together and fiures that Canfield has absconded with the money. Well, everybody but Brad, who believes that Canfield is an honest guy and that something else must have gone wrong what with all the political corruption in the city. However, news eventually comes out that there were illicit withdrawals made with the money going to Canfield. Game, set, and match.

Brad's boss, the publisher, is pissed with Brad for making his newspaper a laughingstock, and wants to demote Brad. Brad would rather just quit, until he realizes that there's a clause in his contract that if he quits, he doesn't get to keep the nice big paycheck. So Brad comes back and reluctantly decides to keep his job, except that his position is no longer going to be as managing editor, but as... the writer of the "Heartthrobs" column, an advice to the lovelorn column whose writer has always gone under the nom de plume Nellie.

The current Nellie, Gerry Krale (Glenda Farrell) is thrilled to be off the beat and back to serious reporting, while Brad is pissed. He's got one ally in Shammy (Ned Sparks), who is feeding him information from other parts of the newsroom, but there's no real way for Brad to do real journalism.

Things perk up, however, when a young woman comes in looking for help in patching up a dispute between her fiancé and her father. Shammy has come up with an address where Canfield had supposedly been seen, while the address that this young woman gives Nellie is the same address. So now Brad can legitimately go there and do some poking around into the Canfield case, while pretending to try to patch up a love match. Brad discovers that there's some sort of money laundering going on for phony funerals, and that might just have something to do with the Canfield disappearance. The game is back on!

A lot of sources list Hi, Nellie! as a comedy, but I found it to be more of a programmer drama with some comic elements, with the two remakes I've seen being lighter. Not that this is a heavy drama, mind you, since its 75-minute programmer length doesn't allow for a prestige level of depth. Still, everybody comes off as quite professional. The story and performances both work, and the movie most definitely succeeds in entertaining as much as other Warner Bros. programmers of the era.

Hi, Nellie is definitely worth a watch.