SOURCE: An essay in The Nation, New York, Vol. 132, No. 3419, January 7, 1931, pp. 24-5.

In the following essay, Broun offers his appraisal of Fields's performance in the film Ballyhoo.

To me this seems a year in which the musical comedies distinctly show the way to so-called legitimate attractions. My quarrel with that word "legitimate" is deep and of long standing. I have never been able to understand why entertainment becomes more important simply because no one sings. In recent years I begin to sense a new point of view among critics. When I held a reviewer's post on a morning paper, it was practically treason not to choose a comedy or a farce if it happened to open on the same night as a musical show. Now there are heretics who abandon the old principle. It would be folly to do otherwise.

For instance, there came a night not...