Naughty But Nice

Stuffed-shirt music professor Dick Powell goes to New York to have his rhapsody published. Gail Paige promptly converts it into a hit swing number.

Director Ray Enright takes this already-tired musical comedy plot and keeps it moving along with a large cast and well-paced gag structure, but can't disguise the fact that this Code-Compliant great-grandchild of GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 has been scrubbed of all life. Warner Brothers was losing interest in this sort of musical; their interest would not revive until the late 1940s and Doris Day. In the meantime, Powell, in his last role for Warners, isn't even top-billed. That honor is given to Ann Sheridan as the man-hungry singer who stalks him.

Powell was dissatisfied with the roles he was getting. He wanted better writing and a chance to show he wasn't an aging juvenile. He would go to Paramount, where his first movie would be Preston Sturges' CHRISTMAS IN JULY.... then back to the routine. It would be half a dozen years before he would get his chance.