Hi, Nellie! (1934) - full review!
Directed by Irving G. Thalberg Award winner Mervyn LeRoy, and featuring a screenplay co-written by Abem Finkel (Sergeant York (1941)), this crime comedy-drama was later remade with Ronald Reagan as Love is in the Air (1937), then again with George Brent in You Can't Escape Forever (1942), and finally as The House Across the Street (1949) with Wayne Morris. This one stars Paul Muni, who would win an Oscar on his fourth (of six) Best Actor nomination(s) the following year playing the title character in The Story of Louis Pasteur (1935).
Sam Bradshaw (Muni) is the managing editor of the newspaper run by John Graham (Berton Churchill). He'd bumped reporter Gerry Krale (Glenda Farrell) down to the "Dear Abby"-type job that no one wants when she made a mistake, falling asleep and missing a big story, some time earlier (before the film begins). The paper's lovelorn columnist uses the byline "Nellie Nelson", so Gerry's peers yell "Hi, Nellie!", ridiculing her, every time she passes through the newsroom. Hobart Cavanaugh plays "Fully" Fullerton, a reporter who is rejected every time he asks Gerry for a date. Donald Meek plays "Durky" Durkin, an office boy for the past 40 years. When two stories break at the same time, one about the disappearance of a bank executive and another about that same bank going bankrupt, the assistant editor Dawes (Douglass Dumbrille) is ready to link the two with big headlines on the front page. Sam, however, stops it saying he doesn't run that kind of story without supporting facts, besides, he says "the guy's always been on the level". Every other paper apparently does, so Sam is "called to the mat" by his boss Graham, who's just finished meeting with O'Connell (Edward Ellis). Thanks to Sam's lawyer (Frank Reicher), Graham can't fire him. So, his publisher reassigns Sam to the Nellie Nelson job.
Disgruntled, Sam starts drinking and is all but finished after a couple of months of barely doing the new column. However, Gerry catches up with him at a bar and tells him he's got no guts. Out to prove her wrong, Sam starts doing the heartthrob job in earnest. During this time he meets Rosa Marinello (Dorothy Le Baire), a woman whose undertaker father has refused to give her permission to marry. After three months, Sam is called into his publisher's office again. Thinking he's about to get his old job back, Sam is shocked to learn that, because his "Nellie" column has increased the paper's circulation, Graham wants him to keep doing it. Upset, he returns to his office where Shammy (Ned Sparks), one of the paper's investigators, tells Sam he's got a lead in the disappearance of the bank executive - an address from his wife (Marjorie Gateson). Sam notices that the address Shammy gives him happens to match one that Miss Marinello gave him. John Qualen appears, uncredited, as the janitor of an empty apartment. This eventually leads the two of them to visit Mr. Marinello (George Humbert), where they trap him into revealing that there's been a phony burial, and then follow the panicked man to the "Merry Go Round" club, which happens to be owned by suspected crime boss Beau Brownell (Robert Barrat). Once inside the club, the two also see O'Connell.
The whole scheme starts to unravel, with Sam bluffing his way into getting a confirmation from Brownell to what he suspects has happened, after he'd roused a drunken bank cashier (George Meeker), that Shammy had recognized, in his office. Then it's a race against time, with the newspaper men calling in their "troops" and the "gangster" his. Guess who wins and guess who then gets assigned the heartthrob column?
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