Curtain Call

I mentioned earlier this week that I recorded quite a few of the B movies that were part of TCM's spotlight on B movies back in July. I still have quite a few of them to go to, and the next one to get a post is 1940's Curtain Call.

The movie starts off in Medbury, one of those small towns that populated Hollywood movies of the era. Helen Middleton (Barbara Read) is the adult daughter in a family with her parents and a kid brother. She's also got a boyfriend Ted (John Archer) who would like to marry her, if only he could get the money to do so. Thankfully he thinks he's about to get a promotion that might enable that marriage.

Helen has also been busy working on a play that she thinks is the greatest thing since sliced bread. And wouldn't you know it, but the paper announces the arrival of one Donald Avery (Alan Mowbray). He's a noted New York theater director who comes to the Medbury area every off-season on a hunting trip. The locals all toady up to Donald since they like the idea of having a big celebrity-type person in their midst and want him to partake of their theater culture, such as it is. Helen even tries to show her play to Avery. That's not how it works; get an agent please.

But big-city theater life isn't the be-all and end-all that some folks in places like Medbury think it is. Right now, Avery and his producer partner Jeff Crandall (Donald MacBride) a huge problem with their big star, Charlotte Morley (Helen Vinson). Her contract is almost up and she'd like to sign with a new producer, but she still has to do one more play with Avery and Crandall before she can sign with anybody else. She's money in the bank, which is why she's got clout and why Avery and Crandall don't want her to jump ship.

Crandall comes up with a "brilliant" idea. The contract says Charlotte has to do the play the producers assign to her, so go look for the absolutely worst play they can find, and make Charlotte do it. When she realizes how bad it is and will want to do something else, Crandall will agree on conditin that Morley sign a new contract with them. They've found a truly awful play to assign, The End of Anything, which is the play that young Helen was working on back in Medbury and tried to show to Avery.

But two big complications happen. One is that Helen shows up after getting the check for the rights to the play. She's got stars in her eyes, and is excited that her play is getting produced. Worse, however, is that Charlotte reads the play and thinks it's the best thing she's read in a long time! So now Avery and Crandall have to figure out some way to get Charlotte off the play and keep Helen happy while other people try to put ideas in Helen's little head.

RKO, which produced Curtain Call, wasn't the biggest studio, and this sort of comedy with a pretention of being highbrow wasn't really their forte. Having said that, Curtain Call isn't bad by the standards of B movies. And it's not like you'll waste that much of your time by watching it. There are much worse ways to spend 65 minutes.