First a Girl **** (1935, Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale, Anna Lee, Griffith Jones) – Classic Movie Review 6532

Jessie Matthews lights up director Victor Saville’s delightful 1935 musical comedy, the first remake of Reinhold Schünzel’s 1933 German film Viktor und Viktoria, which was eventually to wind up as Julie Andrews’s property as Victor Victoria (1982).

Matthews plays the sweet shop delivery girl Elizabeth, who becomes a star after she is persuaded by the flop drag artiste Victor (Sonny Hale) to masquerade as him when he gets a female part in a music-hall number. So Elizabeth makes her long dreamed-of music-hall debut as a man posing as a woman. But, of course, complications arise.

Alfred Drayton plays influential talent agent McLintock, who hires Elizabeth under her stage name of Mr Victoria and launches her career. Then cross-dressing sexual complications arise on the French Riviera with Princess Mironoff (Anna Lee) and her handsome young lover (Griffith Jones) Robert, after he makes friends with Mr Victoria/ Elizabeth.

First a Girl: Jessie Matthews is ideal.

First a Girl is pleasing, frothy, lighthearted, innocent transvestite fun, all a bit simple-minded and tatty-looking like an end of the pier panto on celluloid, but pleasantly so. It is a pity that the material couldn’t have been taken a bit further because extremely likeable Jessie Matthews is ideal in an expert and exuberant performance.

She memorably sings the hit song, the haunting and lovely ‘Everything’s in Rhythm with My Heart’ written by Maurice Sigler, Al Goodhart and Al Hoffman. The climax number in a gigantic birdcage was filmed at night oustside at the Gaumont-British studio’s 70-acre back lot at Northolt. north west London.

Also in the cast are Eddie Gray, Constance Godridge, Martita Hunt, Donald Stewart. It is written by Marjorie Gaffney, shot in black and white by Glen MacWilliams and produced by Michael Balcon.

This plaque is on the wall of The Blue Posts public house in Berwick Street, Soho, and recognises that Jessie Matthews was born in Berwick Street in 1907.

Matthews and Hale were married from 24 January 1931 to 3 July 1944 when they divorced. They had one child. Matthews came from a poor family in London’s Soho, became a big stage and film star in the Thirties, but wound up buried in an unmarked grave.

Victor’s Bronx cocktail is a Martini with gin, red Martini, dry Martini and orange juice, but no olives.  It was ranked number three in The World’s 10 Most Famous Cocktails in 1934. It is one of five cocktails named after one of New York City’s five boroughs. Invented in Philadelphia, it was discovered there in 1905 by Bronx restaurateur Joseph Sormani. According to Noël Coward, ‘A perfect Martini should be made by filling a glass with gin, then waving it in the general direction of Italy.’

The Bronx cocktail.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6532

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