Blonde Inspiration

Director: Busby Berkeley
Year Released: 1941
Rating: 3.5

A little-seen gem from the early forties about an aspiring writer who struggles for recognition and, in his naivety, is made a fool of by two shrewd pulp magazine publishers. The rat-a-tat dialogue is witty and the performances are genuinely amusing - the two publishers are straight out of a Hecht-MacArthur collaboration and the writer that everyone looks up to is addicted to Turkish Baths and acts like a crazed Napoleon. The ending is unexpected and bittersweet: the hero gets exactly what he wants though not in the way he (or we) predict.