STAND-IN (1937) B/W 90m dir: Tay Garnett

w/Leslie Howard, Joan Blondell, Humphrey Bogart, Alan Mowbray, Marla Shelton, C. Henry Gordon

From Variety's contemporary review of the film: "Hollywood studios and the people who make films receive some good-natured ribbing in Stand-In. It leans far to the comedy side, and is good entertainment, chiefly because Leslie Howard and Joan Blondell mix up some very funny roughhouse with a dash of solid logic.

"Howard is a bespectacled representative of New York bankers who control a Hollywood film production company. Howard comes west with a briefcase, a college education, high respect for balance sheets and a total ignorance of motion pictures. He volunteers to straighten out the production difficulties and save Colossal Films for the stockholders.

"Blondell, who is a stand-in for the big star, takes him to one side and gives him the lowdown on what it's all about. With Blondell as his secretary, Howard tackles the job as if he were running a shipbuilding plant. Finally, when things go from bad to worse, he bucks up and pulls the studio out of its difficulties.

"Film is from a Sat Eve Post story by Clarence Budington Kelland (author of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town), and a screenscript possessing much originality by Gene Towne and Graham Baker.

"Humphrey Bogart plays a producer who turns teetotaler; Alan Mowbray does a foreign director; Marla Shelton is a vampy film star; and C. Henry Gordon is a menacing stock jobber who tries to get control of the studio."