In the typical 1930s Hollywood-on-Broadway role of inexorable theatre impresario, John Barrymore is relentlessly hammy (very late in the film, wide-eyed and fists clenched he booms "...and don't overact!"). Much to my surprise, the manic shtick was never not funny.
It's not just a lone spotlight affair. Hawks, Hecht and MacArthur's welcome riff on the backstage plot, which is really done away with in twenty minutes, gives us Carole Lombard pirouetting from weepy a-ma-teuur to ferocious diva, and increasingly funny…