WHAT’S A STAND-IN?

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 June 1938, Page 10

WHAT’S A STAND-IN?

What's a Stand-in?

Officially, of course, this Hollywood studio job means taking the star’s place while scenes are being lined up and lighted. But on the set of Walter Wanger's “Stand-In,” comedy of life in the film capital adapted from Clarence Buddington Kelland's story, here are some of the definitions: —Leslie Howard: “Stand-ins get all the hot lights and none of the spot lights.” Joan Blondell, who plays one: “When a star thinks she’s too inspired to perspire, the stand-in does it for her.”

Tay Garnett, director: “The stand-in is the target for everything but the cameras—-the only shooting that counts.”

Humphrey Bogart: “A stand-in is the wallflower who sits out all the dances when the music starts.” Alan Mowbray: “You’ve got to have somebody to make you feel important on the set, so we have stand-ins.” This hilarious Gene Towne-Graham Baker screen version of the popular Saturday Evening Post story casts Leslie Howard in the comedy role of Atterbury Dodd, a timid young banker

who knows everything about figures but nothing about fun and goes to Hollywood to take over a £2,000,000 film studio and attempts to run it by science of mathematics. Joan Blondell, as Lester “Sugar" Plum, the “Stand-In” of the title falls in love with this strange fallow, and, with the aid of Humphrey Bogart, playing a genius producer, helps him foil a crowd of villains who are conspiring to get possession of the studio. These include C. Henry Gordon. Alan Mowbray, Marla Shelton and Jack Carson.