Stand-In (1937)
- General info
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- Synopsis:
- Stuffy, bookish Atterbury Dodd (Leslie Howard) goes from Wall Street's balance sheets to Hollywood's scandal sheets in this rollicking look at Tinseltown's heyday! Sent to take over the reins of floundering Colossal Studios, Dodd finds the film community eyeing him with thinly-veiled amusement. Uncovering a conspiracy to scuttle the studio, he enlists the aid of an unlikely pair of allies: cynical, gin-soaked, and big-hearted producer Douglas Quintain ("Casablanca's" Humphrey Bogart) and Lester Plum ("Grease's" Joan Blondell), the sexy stand-in for an incredibly untalented screen siren!
- Actors:
- Leslie Howard, Joan Blondell, Humphrey Bogart, Alan Mowbray, Marla Shelton, C. Henry Gordon, Jack Carson, Tully Marshall, J.C. Nugent, William V. Mong, Art Baker, Ralph Brooks, Florie Caprino, Marianne Edwards, Jinx Falkenburg, Jim Farley, Pat Flaherty, Charles K. French, John George, Pat Gleason
- Directors:
- Tay Garnett
- Producers:
- Walter Wanger
- Writers:
- Clarence Budington Kelland, Gene Towne, C. Graham Baker
- Aka:
- Den fantastiske Mr. Dodd
- Genres:
- Classics, Comedy, Romance
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Reviews (1) of Stand-In
Political Comedy - Stand-In review by Steve
This is one of those pictures where Hollywood satirises itself. A humourless, straight-arrow East Coast accountancy wonk (Leslie Howard) runs a small, loss making production company through his number crunching logistics. But all his investigations into standard practice meet the noncommittal response of 'well that's the movie business'.
The naive mathematician falls in love with the movies during the shooting of a jungle picture, with its alcoholic producer (Humphrey Bogart), the temperamental Russian director (Alan Mowbrey) and a cute stand-in (Joan Blondell). He discovers that the bosses are deliberately losing money as the studio is worth more to them bankrupt. Sounds familiar?
But this will put thousands out of work… And so we realise this is a low budget riff on a Frank Capra new deal comedy. Howard faces the angry mob and insists capital and labour can work together. The Hollywood insider stuff is fun, and the politics works fairly well too.
The problem is that Tay Garnett is a journeyman director, and no Capra. And the script needs a rewrite. Howard is likeable as the artless genius who finds his soul through working for the people. But the support is second rate. Even (a pre-stardom) Bogart makes little impression. It’s an interesting film, but still a screwball comedy without many laughs.