Blind Date

A mild but decent low-class soaper, well directed by under-rated B director Roy William Neill -- best remembered, these days, for the Sherlock Holmes series starring Rathbone and Bruce that he directed a decade later. There is a spiffy cast in this piece and they give good performances.

It is interesting to compare this Columbia Picture with its Pre-Code contemporaries from the majors and contrast its constant moral tone with the sexier stuff produced by, say, Lubitsch at Paramount. Part of the reason, doubtless, is that a minor studio like Columbia didn't have leverage against the increasingly powerful Production Code that would swamp the sex comedy even at the Majors by the end of the year. But the most of it, I don't doubt, is that the Majors had an eye on the big cities and European markets, while Columbia still was concentrating on the smaller US cities and rural markets.