Young Man of Manhattan

Claudette Colbert, a year into talkies, plays a newspaperwoman whose career overtakes her husband’s; Norman Foster is the sportswriter who would rather drink with the boys than read her column. Monta Bell, who had worked for Chaplin and directed Garbo, keeps the press-box talk quick and lets the marriage scenes run long and quiet. Charlie Ruggles is the colleague who is never sober and never wrong. Watch for Ginger Rogers in her first feature, eighteen, as a flapper with one line to start a career on: “Cigarette me, big boy.” The line outlived the picture.