February 4 movie: Naughty but Nice. Dick Powell plays a priggish small-town college music professor who gets seduced by that devil swing music. Powell gets a few funny scenes, but isn't really used to his full potential. (A movie about songwriting, and he only sings once!) For me the ensemble cast was best thing about this movie, especially Helen Broderick (Ginger's best friend in Top Hat) as Powell's wild and crazy hep cat aunt. Her best scene is when Powell first meets her. She hosts a jazz party and jams with the band, first on trombone and then on drums! Other standouts include Maxie Rosembloom as Broderick's butler, an ex-boxer named "Killer," Ann Sheridan as a scheming singer, Zasu Pitts as a daffy maiden aunt, and Allen Jenkins as an incompetent lyricist given to malapropisms.
Apparently in 1939, "panties" meant "short pants." This movie includes the line "You'd think that Donald still wore panties and a Buster Brown haircut!" Which was intended to mean, stop treating Donald like a child, but sounds very different now.
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