“HI DIDDLE DIDDLE”

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 199, 20 May 1944, Page 8

“HI DIDDLE DIDDLE”

Andrew Stone is one of that rare and happy baud of independent producers to whom lllmgoers’ thanks are due lor many of the unusual and eminently successful pictures of our time. Orson Welles could not find any of the big studios willing to him and his ideas; neither, at the beginning, could Alfred HitchcocK rally any aid to hia own cause. But, in a way, Stone lias been bolder than any of them. Look at hf s star material: he has had the courage to take Martha Scott out of drama and put her luto a typically hectic Broadway comedy; brought the tempestuous, temperamental Pola Negri back to the screen after a 12 years’ absence; and put them both in a film with the equally mercurial Billie Burke ami Adolpli Menjoii. And then, working on Jhe wholly true premise that today’s filmgoers don't want “significant” films—they only want tn be amused—he has proceeded to make “Hi Diddle Diddle” (State), a film which hasn’t one scene which is meant to be taken seriously.

The comedy situations are built, cardlike. In anticipation of the next scene which will whirl them away in laughter and nonsense. Mrs. Prescott (Billie Burke) Is twittering cheerfully over the marriage of her daughter, Jane (Martha Scott) to Sonny Phyffe. of the U.S. Navy. He arrives with his father. Colonel Hector Phyffe (Alolph Menjou) and his wedding gifts—flowers and a magnificent diamond clip. (The latter has been "borrowed” by the colonel from his wife's dressingroom, for she is Madame Genya Smetana (Pola Negri), the famous opera singer). In the meantime the Prescott fortune has shrunk unpleasantly, thanks to the activities of Jane’s former fiance. But the airyfairy Colonel Phyffe sets to work to regain the money and enlists the help of Leslie Quayle, a torch singer and an old friend of his. Finally, at the 59 Club, where the money is to be won back from the roulette wheel, the warring, misunderstanding parties—Phyffe and his son, Mrs. Preecott and her daughter, the opera singer and her manager, the ex-fiance, the torch singer and the crooked manager of the club, all mix .it to the fullest comedy extent. “Hi Diddle Diddle” is swift-paced nonsense—and Pola Negri lends it a sort of historical interest, too.