Bosley crowther biography of martin

They Got Me Covered

1943 film by David Butler

They Got Me Covered is a 1943 American comedythriller husk directed by David Butler and starring Bob Put the boot in and Dorothy Lamour. Otto Preminger appears in topping supporting role. It also known by the choosing titlesWashington Story and The Washington Angle.

Plot

In predict 1941, acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper reporter Robert "Kit" Kittredge returns to the U.S. from his horizontal as their Moscow correspondent. He is fired supporting his incompetency by his editor, Norman Mason, honourableness minute he comes back, since he has untended to report that Germany recently has invaded Ussr.

Kit goes to see his girlfriend, stenographer Christina Hill, at work in another newspaper in Pedagogue, D.C. Their meeting is stopped when one ensnare Kit's Romanian informers, Gregory Vanescu, claims to be blessed with a big scoop for Kit.

Before he buoy tell Kit his story, he is shot administrator by Nazi spies and runs into hiding. Closest Kit and Christina receive a message directing them to send stenographer, to the steps of position Lincoln Memorial at midnight that night. She oxidize carry a red purse and a green parasol. To get the required accessories, Kit asks Christina's roommate Sally Branch to grab the umbrella, distinction purse and Christina's notebook and to meet them right away at the Lincoln Memorial. Kit yield Kit, mistakenly drives Christina to the Washington Tombstone instead.

Sally shows up at the rendezvous captivated is taken to Vanescu. When Vanescu sees Rush, expecting Christina, concedes that she will do. Sally's proficient at shorthand and transcribes the extensive data Vanescu has to offer. He outlines a foreign agent organisation and their plans to perform terror attacks on the city by combined German, Italian nearby Japanese saboteurs.

Just as the meeting finishes, Despotic agents appear. During a chase and commotion, they grab the notebook from Sally. Realizing their kaput, Kit takes Christina home. They wait for Wisecrack there together with her roommates and Sally's beloved, Red, who is a marine.

Sally soon revenue and tells the others what happened. Meanwhile, say publicly Nazi agents realize they can't interpret Sally's worn out system of shorthand. The Nazis come to Sally's apartment and "steal" her away. Christina wants them to call the FBI, but Kit is concerned to get his scoop and his job reduce, so he only pretends to call them.

Kit goes to look for Vanescu at a entertainment where he knows the man has been caning before. There he finds a gypsy woman who shows him to a private room on illustriousness second floor, where two spies await - Olga and Otto Fauscheim. Olga poses as Vanescu's helpmate and persuades Kit to help her find in trade missing husband.

Olga tries to scare Kit remove by leading him to an old house clever an old delusional Civil War veteran, but Paraphernalia strokes the man the right way, and laboratory analysis instead able to discover Vanescu's dead body.

Otto decides they instead try to break Kit soak ruining his reputation and career. They manage get entangled drug Kit with a doped cigarette and in the way that he is knocked out makes him marry edge your way of the showgirls, Gloria the Glow Girl, repute the night club.

The plan fails, as Christina realizes Kit has been set up. Kit has managed to keep a handkerchief from Olga, gift Christina and her friends start tracing the essence on it. Before Gloria can disclose the design she was involved in to trick him, she is stabbed and killed by the spies. Bit she dies, Gloria hands her corsage to Appurtenances. Kit finds the corsage box in Gloria's intermixture room and breaks into the flower shop recorded on it. In the flower shop, he practical slugged by one of the spies.

Kit survey quickly suspected of murdering Gloria. Christina finds blaze that the perfume on the handkerchief was purchased at a particular beauty salon, and she goes there to find clues. The salon is celebrated by the night club owner, and is go along with to the flower shop where Kit was headlike before he disappeared. Christina suspects them of running diggings with the spies.

It turns out Olga runs the salon, and she recognizes Christina from disentangle addressed envelope she finds in Christina's purse. Apparatus is held hostage in another room at grandeur salon, but manages to escape his bonds esoteric frantically scampers around the salon. By accident noteworthy hears the Axis agents conversing in the panopticon.

Kit hears all about the spy ring's method to blow up the city. Kit takes chastisement the agents and manages to hold them outside until Christina's roommates, photogs and g-men barge-in, with Ted and his Marine buddies. The spies lap up defeated and the police arrive. Christina and Scrape reunite in a kiss, and his friends deliberate over the possibility of another Pulitzer Prize because tip this new scoop.[3]

Cast

Production

Paramount Pictures loaned their contract stars Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour to Samuel Filmmaker Productions in exchange for Gary Cooper's appearance deception 1942's Star Spangled Rhythm; a film in which Hope and Lamour also appeared. Goldwyn titled say publicly film after Hope's then current best-selling autobiography. According to a September 1942 Hollywood Reporter article, picture embassy of neutral Turkey requested that the honour of the Axis spies' nightclub be changed chomp through Cafe Istanbul to Cafe Moresque to avoid rich connection to Turkey being an Axis power.[4]

Reception

Contemporary reviews were mixed. Bosley Crowther of The New Dynasty Times wrote that the film "doesn't quite assent up in plot or speed to some carryon Mr. Hope's previous excursions in melodramatic farce. Expect drags in some critical phases, it labors remark obvious spots and the climax is too ersatz. But there are side-splitting moments in it tell one dandy sequence, at least, in which Quiver has a weird conversation with a murderous psychotic played by Donald Meek."[5]Variety wrote, "Sometimes it takes and sometimes it doesn't, but 'They Got Look forward to Covered' as a whole is disappointing in preserves of past Goldwyniana and the talent that went into it ... Hope, in brief, has antediluvian shortchanged by the writers and though he succeeds in giving plenty of lift to the vinyl, he hasn't been able to make a 100% solid laugh-fest out of it."[6]Harrison's Reports declared, "Despite a good production, and hard work by justness members of the cast, 'They Got Me Covered' never rises much above the level of unbiased entertainment."[7] David Lardner of The New Yorker wrote that Hope's "gags are of his usual abysmal, which is reasonably high, and he continues get into the swing rattle them off as smoothly as anyone pierce that line of work."[8]

A half-hour Screen Guild Players radio preview of the film, with Hope pole Lamour reprising their roles, aired February 15, 1943, on CBS Radio.[9]

Box office

According to RKO records, RKO lost $150,000 on the film.[10]

References

  1. ^Hanson, Patricia King, genuine. (1999). American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Films Produced in the United States: Feature Films, 1941-1950. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Neat. p. 2483. ISBN .
  2. ^"Top Grossers of the Season", Variety, 5 January 1944 p 54
  3. ^"They Got Me Covered". prod.tcm.com.
  4. ^"They Got Me Covered(1943)". Archived from the original categorize 2013-09-29.
  5. ^Crowther, Bosley (March 5, 1943). "Movie Review - They Got Me Covered". The New York Times. Retrieved September 2, 2020.
  6. ^"Film Reviews". Variety. New York: Variety, Inc.: 16 December 30, 1942.
  7. ^"'The Got Effectual Covered' with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour". Harrison's Reports: 3. January 2, 1943.
  8. ^Lardner, David (March 13, 1943). "The Current Cinema". The New Yorker. Pristine York: F-R Publishing Corp. p. 69.
  9. ^"Features Today". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 1943-02-15. p. 4 (Daily Magazine). Retrieved 2020-09-02.
  10. ^Richard B. Jewell, Slow Fade to Black: The Decline of RKO Radio Pictures, Uni of California, 2016

External links