Barbara Stanwyck helps Gary Cooper with his work in this
movie about hiding the truth. Cooper is a professor in a group of men who make
their home in a large library where they continue their efforts to complete a
new encyclopedia. Cooper’s plan is to update the listing of slang words
commonly used by the working class.
He meets with a newspaper boy, a garbage man, and others to find
out what “today’s slang” is. The garbage man is the first to make Cooper aware
that his ability to understand current slang is quite lacking. The newsboy Cooper
chooses to listen to is nervous about
Cooper hanging around. When Cooper asks him to show up the next day to help
with the slang project, the boy asks Cooper, “Who are you anyway, Father
Flannagan?”
The police are looking for Stanwyck in her usual places
because of her gangster boyfriend, played by Dana Andrews. When street-smart
Stanwyck appears at Cooper’s door, she hides the fact that she’s wanted by the
police, but makes him believe that she wants to educate the professors. Since
Stanwyck is connected to a mobster, she gets the professors mixed up in a
situation beyond their experience.
Howard Hawks directed this film with all its humorous
awkwardness and romantic tension. The clothes were designed by Edith Head. Henry
Travers played one of the professors. We know him from his role as Clarence the
angel in It’s A Wonderful Life.
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