Posted: Thu., Dec. 31, 1936, 11:00pm PT

Artists and Models

By Variety Staff

Paramount. Director Raoul Walsh; Producer Lewis E. Gensler; Writer Walter DeLeon, Francis Martin; Camera Victor Milner Editor Ellsworth Hoagland

Jack Benny Ida Lupino Richard Arlen Gail Patrick Ben Blue Judy Canova

Artists and Models holds enough variety, comedy, color, spec, flash, dash and novelty for a couple of pictures. It's so replete with a cavalcade of radio, nitery, vaudeville and revuesque ingredients that it's much to the credit of all concerned that this madcap musical [story by Sig Herzig and Gene Thackrey, adapted by Eve Greene and Harlan Ware] shapes up as well as it does.

There are a couple of misguided sequences, one of which is that 'Public Melody Number One' sequence, done in a frankly Harlem setting, with Louis Armstrong tooting his trumpet against a pseudo-musical gangster idea. While Martha Raye is under cork, this intermingling of the races isn't wise, especially as she lets herself go into the extremest manifestations of Harlemania torso-twisting and gyrations.

Jack Benny, Ida Lupino, Richard Arlen and Gail Patrick are chiefly responsible for holding the film together. This is Benny's first solo starrer and it's also a departure for him in that he's assigned the major romantic interest.

Benny is cast as the advertising agency head. Arlen is his biggest (and practically only) account. Lupino is a professional model who, because she's a p.m., is at first snubbed by Arlen for a ritzy ad campaign. Lupino hies to Miami posing as a socialite, in order to impress that being a pro model isn't a liability.

1937: Nomination: Best Song ('Whispers in the Dark')

(B&W) Extract of a review from 1937. Running time: 95 MIN.