Bottoms Up

By VARIETY STAFF

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Fox. Director David Butler; Producer B. G. DeSylva; Screenplay B. G. DeSylva, David Butler, Sid Silvers; Camera Arthur Miller; Editor Irene Morra; Music Constantin Bakaleinikoff; Art Director Gordon Wiles, Russell Patterson
 
Spencer Tracy
John Boles
'Pat' Paterson
Herbert Mundin
Sid Silvers
Thelma Todd
 

Bottoms Up is tiptop. It's good cinematic fare from every angle, particularly the elements of comedy and plot, of which aspects most filmusicals are singularly devoid

Story, while light in spots, is sufficiently coherent to shape up as a mild form of the Once in a Lifetime school of Hollywood-kidding. That it's all humanly handled makes these elements the more arresting.

'Pat' Paterson, a Fox importee from England, is assigned the Hollywood Cinderella role. John Boles is the film star whom she has secretly idolized. Through a combination of circumstances the three sympathetic sharpshooters - Spencer Tracy, Herbert Mundin and Sid Silvers - contrive to scale the Hollywood heights.

Thelma Todd as an established Hollywood satellite falls for the carefully contrived ruse that Mundin is an English lord, incognito; that Paterson is his daughter; with Tracy and Silvers abetting the entire structure, culminating in a contract for the girl, plus employment for all of them.

The picture is chiefly Tracy, Paterson, Boles, Mundin and Silvers, the latter two carrying the comedy and almost wholly and to more than average good effect. It's a personal triumph for Silvers who, while one of the script collaborators, didn't have to rely solely on the lines accorded himself for good impression.

(B&W) Extract of a review from 1934. Running time: 85 MIN.