... and by that I mean that from its beginnings, radio was very strict about the public persona of its radio stars, regardless of what they did in private. The year this film was made - 1933 - was the last full year in Hollywood where anything goes, although these films look like family fare by today's standards.In this environment, Ginger Rogers is given a dynamite role that really shows her flair for comedy. She plays Glory Eden, "The Purity Girl", the face - and voice - of the Ipsy-Wipsy Wash Cloth radio show. However, in private, the purity girl is the last thing she wants to be. Glory wants to go to Harlem night clubs, smoke, drink, eat rich food, and most of all have some male companionship. So the sponsors decide to appease her and meet her half way. They start a contest looking for the "ideal Anglo Saxon" - the film's words, not mine. They come up with a real naïve hayseed (Norman Foster as Jim Davey). He's a farmer from Kentucky who actually believes Glory's public image is real. He returns to New York with the show's sponsor and now Glory can go out to more public places since she has an "official" male escort.The one drawback to the film is you never see any real relationship form between the two. It's just suddenly there. Jim just asks Glory to marry him, she agrees - obviously from the heart, because she gives him a passionate kiss. Ipsy Wipsy head Samuel 'Sam' Ipswich claims he'll wait until after the wedding and as a PR stunt have Glory sign her new contract.But things run amok. After the wedding Jim sees Glory's true colors and they are scarlet not pure white. He decides to kidnap her and take her back to Kentucky to make a "good woman" out of her. There is an absolutely hilarious wedding night scene once Jim has her back in Kentucky that I will just let you watch. Let's just say that these two are absolutely perfect together in this scene that could have not been possible after the production code a year later.So now two competitors are looking for Glory - they think she's been kidnapped - and both want her to sign with them. At first they don't know where she's gone. How does this work out? I'll let you watch and find out.This film would have been good with just Norman Foster and Ginger Rogers. It is made great by all of the character actors running around busily in the background. Zasu Pitts is a dizzy reporter, Gregory Ratoff as Samuel Ipswich was born to play the over excited boss who is destined to die of a heart attack and loves firing people, Allen Jenkins and Frank McHugh are the assistants to their frantic bosses, and Edgar Kennedy is Ipswich's competition, trying to track down Glory so he can sign her to his own radio program.Best line of the film goes to Jim - "Please God, don't let her die! She's wicked, but I love her." Questions never resolved - Will Glory's maid get her own radio career? And what DID happen between Franklin Pangborn's character and Zasu Pitts when she found him in the closet without his pants? Enjoy this little piece of RKO zaniness. I know I did.

I'd been looking forward to this RKO programmer because it's by Maurine Watkins, a pretty smart writer who also was responsible for the play "Chicago," which became the movie "Roxie Hart," then the musical "Chicago." So she clearly knows about the value of publicity and the hypocritical nature of advertising and sponsorship. But those satirical targets are swiped at very broadly in this one, which keeps parading the name of the sponsor--Ippsie Wippsie--as if it were in itself hilarious. They're sponsoring a singing sweetheart, a dubbed Ginger Rogers, who personifies wholesome values and, predictably, is really the opposite of those values. I find Ginger's outbursts and shifts of mood unpersuasive and a little tedious, and she's surrounded by a supporting cast of Warners and RKO players who do what they always do--a simpering ZaSu Pitts, genial Frank McHugh, Brooklyn-streetwise Allen Jenkins, sputtering-in-a-foreign-accent Gregory Ratoff, swishy Franklin Pangborn, etc. Her leading man, Norman Foster, as a Kentucky farm boy who successfully woos her, is no great shakes, and Ms. Watkins also asks us to believe that a short time with him in the mountains would turn Ginger from a grasping spoiled brat who can't cook into a darling, kitchen-trained little wifey. The plot reversals are quick and unconvincing, and the bashing of the advertising industry is positively sledgehammer.

Amusing rather than funny, the programmer makes good use of a budding Ginger Rogers as radio's Purity Girl. And, boy, her image better stay "pure" otherwise the nitwit sponsors of her radio show will make life miserable. Already they rule over what she can do and not do, and that means absolutely no men. But Ginger (Glory Eden-- catch that loaded name) being Ginger, she rebels, proving that hormones won't be denied. Picking a man's name at random from her many fans, she comes up with a Kentucky hayseed, who proves to be a lot more than she bargained for.Note how the screenplay refuses to make fun of the simple Kentucky life Glory settles into with new husband Jim (Foster). There she seems quite content being a dutiful housewife, even after the sophistication of the big city. Maybe that's not too plausible, but at least rural audiences are not offended. Besides, Jim shows a deeper understanding by insisting she act out her talent by returning to the city with him in tow. Because of feuding sponsors, she gets her old show back, but this time with a husband and minus the "purity" burden. Now she can be herself.If there's a message, it's that only artificial constructs like the Purity Girl are unrewarding. On the other hand, life in the city or in the sticks can be equally rewarding as long as it's a natural fit for the person. It's interesting, at the same time, to gage the movie's attitude toward uptown Harlem. With its exotic rhythms and sounds, Harlem comes off as an ambiguous place for a white person, especially for Glory who seems naturally attracted. Anyway, Rogers makes the whole movie come alive, along with a humorous supporting cast that includes some pretty undisguised gay types. On the other hand, Foster's pretty stiff in his role, but I expect he's supposed to be. All in all, the visuals may creak a bit, but the pre- Code movie's still an amusing jape with a rather thoughtful subtext.

I saw this with another RKO Ginger Rogers film from the same year.Even though these are targeted as light entertainment, I am amazed at how fresh they feel and how experimental the structure is.That lightness is often attributed to the lack of the Hayes Code, which lowered its dark curtain the following year. Its clear in retrospect that this was a bad thing, that it wounded an entire society, and would have destroyed it altogether had we not encountered a similar more obvious evil. And went to war.But how does one know what is right around the corner? How does one celebrate the freedoms that are about to be taken away? Its a haunting thing in the background of this, as part of the joke is that this perfect man is "the purest of Anglo-Saxons." Another part of the joke is that sweetness, goodness and happiness is contrasted with black jive, sex and Harlem, all of which are "fun."The structure of the thing is pretty sophisticated. Many films from these four years 1930- 33 were similarly adventuresome in their structure. Its a show about sex and domestic values within which is a show (a radio show) about sex and domestic values. (The domestic hook is literally a dishrag.) Around this show are a collection of nattering men trying to engineer romance and predictably failing. If you study the narrative structure of date movies, you'll be familiar with tricks about how to reflect the viewer in the story. Its rather novel and somewhat perfect here.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.