"Cigarette me, bigboy": that's Ginger Rogers in her feature film debut, playing theBroadway blonde who helps bust up (but temporarily) the marriage ofClaudette Colbert and Norman Foster. Young Man of Manhattan proved adelightful rediscovery at a recent New York screening, as full ofhumanity and humor as anything from Hollywood's "golden age." (Rogers,in an impatient preamble to her career, sings "I've Got It, But It Don'tDo Me No Good!") Colbert and Foster play two reporters who meet whilecovering the Dempsey-Tunney fight in Philadelphia; across the ropes andthe sweating hulks, it's love at first sight. Their love falls prey tothe cutthroat world of journalism-marvelously recreated by directorMonta Bell, himself a veteran of the city room. Bell's mentors wereChaplin (he was his assistant on A Woman of Paris) and Lubitsch, hismetier the sophisticated social comedy. George Patterson has written forthe Toronto Film Society, "To me he always seemed one of the best andmost individual silent directors, and one notable for his easy, relaxedand naturalistic style, his humorous and compassionate knowledge ofhuman nature, and his disdain for the conventional methods of plotdevelopment or climax building." We'll see more of Monta Bell inJanuary, when William K. Everson will present his The King on MainStreet (1925) and The Worst Woman in Paris? (1933).