" Hi, Nellie." At the Regal ANY journalist who is
inclined to bewail his lot ought to see this film—or almost any film about newspaper life in America. When the opening scene reveals one of those huge untidy rooms, full of desks and noise and typewriters and tobacco- smoke, one knows pretty well what to expect. Men with hats pushed on to the back of their heads are shouting down telephones ; the City Editor is ordering a special edition ; news has just arrived of a daring bank fraud or perhaps of some huge municipal scandal. The office atmosphere will be fiercely competitive, complicated by feuds and jealousies between members of the staff, who usually include a woman reporter with a striking command of pungent back-chat. So it is in Hi, Nellie, which I went to see largely because the cast is headed by Paul Muni, who may be remembered for his graphic performance as the chain-gang prisoner in that fine film, I Am a Fugitive.
Muni, an Austrian who made his name at the Yiddish Art Theatre in New York, is a specialist in strong character parts and usually chooses his films with some care. This time he has not chosen so well, and the rough comedy in Hi, Nellie hardly suits his tersely vigorous style. He is tlic managing editor of a New York newspaper who gets into trouble with the proprietor for refusing to feature a story which throws suspicion on a vanished bank president. As a punishment, he is set to run the "heart-throbs" feature which gives advice to lovelorn maidens, and eventually it is one of these tearful inquirers who unwittingly gives him a clue to the banker's whereabouts. The chase leads through an undertaker's parlour to a night-club, and finally to a cemetery where gangsters have buried the banker under a false name. The film aims at little more than familiar melodrama ; but the plot moves swiftly and the production is thoroughly
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