Dear S/A Cole,

     I couldn't resist writing a letter to the editor to share a
recent experience with you.  My daughter knows that I think much of
the programming on TV is not worth the time to watch or listen to
so she brought me an old-time movie to play on our VCR.  When I say
old-time, I mean from the 1930's, because that is when I was
produced and sometimes I feel old.  This movie, I believe, catches
the mood of us who are over 50. It is a clever situation  with
music, dancing, happy times, a twist in the plot, people pretending
to be someone they really aren't, love and trust, friendship, some
double dealing, humor, and actors who are not listed on the front
page of People Magazine.

     I'm not going to keep it from you any longer:  the music is
SULLIVAN'S and the songs sung are from various favorite operas. 
Yes, GILBERT is represented there too. People just don't sing out
while they serve dinner in a restaurant any more and the music I
might hear on the street today hurts my ears and turns my
disposition.  I enjoyed seeing and hearing Tenor Richard Tucker in
this film even though he made his entrance on a load of garbage.

     I am sure I will enjoy seeing this movie more than once so it
is a good addition to our home film library. Did you think I was
going to close and not tell you the name of the film?  I couldn't
do that:  it is The Girl Said No (1937). It had an alternate title
of With Words and Music.  I like the pretty face of Irene Hervey
and the smart-know-it-all manner of Robert Armstrong.  Andrew Stone
produced and directed it.  I think my daughter made a wise choice
and I thank her. 

     The film is about a bookie (Robert Armstrong) who bets a
couple of his friends he could spend the evening with a particular
taxi dancer (Irene Hervey) for less than $10.00.  The girl is very
pretty, very smart, and very sneaky; and through one trick and
another ends up taking the fellow for his entire bank roll.  His
friends had given him ten-to-one odds, so the gambling debt amounts
to $1000.  Still smarting from being made to look like a chump the
night before, the bookie decides he's going to make the girl pay
that debt by tricking her as badly as she tricked him.

     The bookie has among his clients some theater producers and
managers, so he decides to convince the girl that he is an agent
who can put her name in lights within two months for an initial fee
(that amounts to the $1000) and a percentage of her earnings once
she is a star.  The bookie's plan is to get her into a show for one
night, get the $1000, then drop her like a hot potato and get a big
laugh out of having tricked a tricky character like her.  He does
put on a good pretence for her, and, after some cajoling, she
agrees and begins to take the required private singing, dancing,
and acting lessons.  Unbeknownst to her, the teachers are kicking
back half of what she pays them to the bookie and his friends, to
go toward the gambling debt.

     Now, here is where the G&S comes in.  The bookie and his
friends frequent a restaurant called "The Buttercup Caf", which is
run by the former patriarchs of a light opera company that had, in
its day, specialized in performing the G&S Operas.  Their name is
the Hathaways, which doesn't make any difference to the story as
such, but it will make keeping the characters straight easier.  The
Hathaways are now considered a bunch of has-beens.  As a matter of
fact, the film opens with the former performers (now waitresses and
short-order cooks) singing "A Magnet Hung in a Hardware Shop" along
with a radio.  But back to the story.  One night, toward the end of
the two months, the bookie and his friends stop by the caf in time
to see the Hathaways rehearsing "My Eyes are Fully Open" from
Ruddigore.  The bookie has an idea:  if he borrowed a theater and
convinced the Hathaways to put on a show, he could get the dancer
into that show, and get his money and big laugh.  The Hathaways
need little persuasion to come out of retirement, and they start
rounding up their company for a production of Mikado.

     The plot starts to thicken at this point.  The bookie has told
the Hathaways that the girl is backing the show, and that in order
to impress her, he has told her the Hathaways are living at the
Ritz Hotel after returning from a continental tour.  When he and
the girl meet the Hathaways at the Ritz, is he surprised when he
learns they are living at the Ritz!  They didn't think it was right
to deceive the girl.  The bookie is even more surprised and alarmed
when he learns the girl has quit her job at the dance hall.  She no
longer wants to be the kind of person she had been, and besides,
she's going into show business (as far as she knows) and won't need
the job.  Later that evening, when the Hathaways and their company
give the (now former) dancer a G&S concert at the restaurant, the
bookie is horrified to learn that, not only had the Hathaways sold
the caf in order to pay for their rooms at the Ritz, but all the
members of their company had quit their jobs in order to go back
into show business!  The joke is starting to get out of hand, and
the fact that he is a complete heel is beginning to dawn on the
bookie.

     The show soon opens, to an audience consisting of everybody
the bookie's friends could coerce into coming.  They have been
instructed to applaud everything whether they like it or not. 
Judging from their expressions after "A Wand'ring Minstrel", they
aren't liking it.  The Hathaways, however, think they're making a
big hit, and tell the bookie what a hero he is for helping them so. 
The girl is as happy as the rest of them, and cheerfully gives him
the rest of the $1000.  As one of the girl's friends comments, the
bookie looks like 20,000 years in Sing Sing.

     In the meantime, the theater owner's lawyer (who isn't in on
the joke) has found out the show is going on, and has threatened to
call the police.  The bookie's friends want to take the money and
run, but the bookie won't leave.  Finally, when they can hear the
police sirens coming, the bookie dashes onstage and confesses the
plot:  that the whole thing was a cruel practical joke and that
he's nothing but a louse.  When he invites the cast to say so, the
girl tells him that anyone who can stand up and take his medicine
like he has is a pretty big man.

     The police arrive, but instead of being there to arrest
anyone, they are an escort for one of the bookie's theatrical
producer clients.  He wants to buy a horse the bookie had a lead
on.  With the commission, the bookie could back the show himself,
but the producer tells him nobody wants to hear this old stuff. 
Well, who should respond to that remark but the city's top
theatrical critics, who, much to the bookie's surprise, were in the
audience.  They greatly enjoyed the show, and think the bookie
ought to be commended for bringing the Hathaways (and presumably
traditional G&S) back.  The show goes on to a gleeful ending:  Yum-
Yum gets Nanki-Poo, Ko-Ko gets Katisha, and the Bookie gets the
Girl (who, contrary to the title of the film, does say "yes").  I
greatly enjoyed it, and I bet other MGS members would enjoy it,
too.
                                        Happily yours,
                                        Mrs. Carol Lee Cole      
     

{I seem to remember from the talk Mikado expert Ralph MacPhail Jr.
gave at the Basingstoke! conference last year on the various
versions of The Mikado that were on Broadway, that the late 1930's
saw a rash of non-traditional Mikados.  He would know for sure,
but, perhaps the producers of this film were putting in their
comments on the value of traditional G&S performance.  Oh, well, it
doesn't make any difference:  it's a fun film either way.  Ed.}

[This article appeared in Issue 28 (December 1990) of Precious
Nonsense, the newsletter of the Midwestern Gilbert & Sullivan
Society.  Posted by permission of Sarah Cole, Society Secre-
tary/Archivist.  For information on Society membership write to: 
The Midwestern Gilbert & Sullivan Society, c/o Miss Sarah Cole, 613
W. State St., North Aurora, IL 60542-1538.]