MY SISTER EILEEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 204, 21 May 1943, Page 10

MY SISTER EILEEN

(Columbia)

OW here is Miss Rosalind Russell, streamlined as ever, stepping down from the company director’s pedestal and out of the feathered

slippers she affected in Take a Letter Darling, to walk about New York in a business-like suit trying to sell her stories to editors, while Janet Blair, as her sister Eileen, fascinates young men in drug stores and the vestibules of theatre managers’ sanctums. And I have to say that I much prefer this slightly harassed edition of Miss Russell to the extremely de luxe one of Take a Letter, Darling. We meet the sisters Ruth (mad about

writing), and Eileen (mad about acting), as Ruth is writing up a_ beautiful account of Ejileen’s performance in the local drama festival, to take place around the time when the fourth edition is selling like silk stockings on the street. But the trouble is that the editor’s daughter plays Eileen’s part instead: Ruth gets the sack; Eileen weeps through her insulted make-up; and with grandmother’s encouragement ("Ruth wants to write; she ought to be where magazines and publishers are"), they leave to conquer New York. And if it hadn’t been for the coincidence that in New York there was a magazine called "The Manhatter" sluggishly boring its way to dusty bankruptcy, with only Editor Brian Aherne aware that it could be Saved by Real Live Stories about Real Live People, New York would probably have conquered the sisters. But they don’t have to go home after all, Because sister Eileen is recognised fc the brilliant actress she says she is (and is not)? Oh, no. Because Miss Russell writes one of those Real Stories about looking for jobs in New York, living in a basement, eating spaghetti (she says she’s put on three pounds in a month, but really, you wouldn’t notice it), and dealing with the stray people collected by the irresistible Eileen. The story is called My Sister Eileen, and Mr, Aherne likes it and gets the sack for liking it, but he publishes it just the same as a last fling before his sack is closed. Then his sack his opened again because "The Manhatter" sells awfully (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) fast with this live new story in it (Circulation Managers please note), and all ends well. A good team, Mr. Aherne and Miss Russell; especially, of course, Miss Russell. Not that*I’d suggest that My Sister Eileen is a landmark among comedies, another Mr. Deeds Goes to Town or anything like that to blow me down. But I laughed and the audience laughed, and our little man was very glad to give it a clap for being a trouble chaser.