The New Pictures, Aug. 18, 1941

Ringside Maisie (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is a slight opus about a prize fighter (Robert Sterling) who wants to get into a business that smells good (groceries) and a manager (George Murphy) who makes him fight until he goes blind. It would not be much of a picture without Maisie (Ann Sothern), the Brooklyn Bonfire with a heart as big as a whale. Maisie makes it go.

Whether she is jitterbugging with gangling Roy Lester (see cut), her “waltzing mouse,” or paying off an insistent suitor (“Listen, tall, dark and bad-mannered!”), Maisie The Taxi Dancer is delightful to look at. One part Jean Harlow, one part Mae West, she is an honest and fetching carbon copy of a type of U.S. female to be found at Coney Island on any hot summer Sunday.

Ringside Maisie is the fifth of M.G.M.’s Maisie series. The first (Maisie) was bought for Jean Harlow, shelved when she died. Miss Sothern got the part two years ago because she was inexpensive and because she looked to Producer J. Walter Ruben like what he was looking for. Result: a fiscal triumph for M.G.M., stardom for Ann Sothern.

Ann Sothern is a pretty, well-shaped, hardboiled, slangy blonde (peroxide) who has been around sufficiently to know who and what is strictly from Dixie. Born Harriette Lake in 1909 at Valley City, N.D., she was tapped for M.G.M. just 21 years later. Among her assets at that time were considerable talent at the piano, a well-developed lyric soprano, three years at the University of Washington, and a onetime concert-singing mother, Mrs. Annette Yde-Lake, a Hollywood voice teacher.

Closest Ann came to the screen at Metro was lending her voice to the sound track of a dog comedy. She posed for innumerable publicity stills (says she: “damnedest leg art you ever saw”), inadvertently landed a part in the chorus of the Broadway musical Smiles, played innumerable simpering glamor-girl parts for Columbia and RKO, in 1937 was out of work. Nice handling of a part as a dumb stenographer in Trade Winds, after a year’s separation from the cinema, brought her to the attention of Producer Ruben.

Miss Sothern has an intuitive understanding of the adroitly dumb Maisie. But she is leary of becoming too closely identified with the character. Says she: “I love Maisie, but I’m damned if I want to be Maisie forever. . . . When people on the street holler at you, ‘Hi there, Maisie!’, you begin to wonder whether you’re Ann Sothern or just that nice bag Maisie.”

Even the U.S. Post Office knows who Maisie is. Fan letters addressed simply “Maisie, U.S.A.” go straight to the Sothern household—a two-story colonial house in Beverly Hills complete with husband (Band Leader Roger Pryor), whose legs, boasts Ann, are prettier than Dietrich’s.

Eupeptic Ann Sothern, who feels naked without earrings and calls most people “darling” because she is weak on names, will be given a chance to outgrow Maisie. Scheduled for fall release is an elaborate musical, Lady Be Good, in which she plays a lead. Ahead of her are two more, Panama Hattie and Du Barry Was a Lady; then a shot at Spencer Tracy in a picture not yet titled.

This horrendous schedule, with three more Maisies larded in, does not faze Miss Sothern. Says she: “For years I’ve been begging for a decent leading man in a solid picture. Always I’ve had to carry a small-time male lead. . . . Well, things are going to change. After Tracy I’m going to do Come and Get It with Clark Gable. Hot dog!”

Charley’s Aunt (20th Century-Fox) is one of the most successful trust funds ever written. Since its first performance in London in 1892, this unsinkable farce has earned some $25,000,000 in royalties for Author Brandon Thomas and his heirs. It has been translated into 18 languages (including Esperanto) and has been played oftener than any other drama except Hamlet, which had a three-century start.

So it is not extraordinary that Jack Benny, radio’s best-paid comic, should turn up in the role of Lord Fancourt Babberley, the young Oxonian who agrees to help one of his pals out of a sentimental dilemma by impersonating his aunt. Aunt Benny, the female impersonator, looks and acts exactly like Comic Benny, the cigar-chewing gagman. Without Benny, Charley’s Aunt would have been funnier; and vice versa.

It cost 2Oth Century-Fox $125,000 to lease Charley’s Aunt from the Thomas estate, and the transaction will undoubtedly be worth the money. Apparently anyone could play its leading role and get away with it. Now that Benny has turned the trick, Donald Duck may well be next.