"STAND-IN."

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 82, 7 April 1938, Page 14

"STAND-IN."

Comedy for the State.

Hollywood has been the satirical target of experts. Now Hollywood goes in for fooling itself,'and the cinema city proves it has a sense of humour. Walter Wanger is that brilliant young producer whose pictures have a way of being off the beaten track, and as was to be expected his "Stand-In," the screen version of the "Saturday Evening Post" story, which commences screening at the State Theatre tomorrow, makes all the previous efforts look meek and mild. Leslie Howard and Joan Blondell head as handsome a roster of players as ever flashed on a screen, including Humphrey Bogart. Alan Mowbray, Maria Shelton, C. Henry Gordon, and Jack Carson. The story, which was prepared for the screen in the best style of that madcap writing team Gene Towne and Graham Baker, burlesques all the familiar Hollywood foibles and fallacies. The glamour star, the temperamental foreign director, the genius producer, the sharp-shooting Press agent—they re all here. The hitherto very romantic Leslie Howard takes to comedy—and like a duck to water—as Atterbury Dodd, the shy, humourless, bespectacled young banker, who is sent to Hollywood to take over the 10,000,000----dollar Colossal studio and run it according to the science: of mathematics. Joan Blondell is at her best in the title role as Lester "Sugar" Plum, the "stand-in'^ who helps Howard figure out Hollywood.