CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

Jacomedi A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

MartinHafer Through much of the 1930s and into the 40s, Jean Arthur was a big box office draw and a very popular actress. However, if you watch 1929's "The Saturday Night Kid", you'll see nothing that would indicate she would ever be a star. In fact, she's just awful! While IMDB says that the director hated Clara Bow's voice, it's practically gorgeous compared to Arthur's very high-pitched whining...and she whines through most of the picture. I can only assume that the director was somehow also at fault, as Ms. Arthur became an accomplished and likable actress....but here you just want to see someone slap her character and yell "Shut up!".The film is about a couple of sisters. The older sister, Mayme (Clara Bow), is the responsible one who takes care of her younger sister, Janie (Jean Arthur). However, Janie is an adult and Mayme too often makes excuses for her. In fact, she helps enable Janie...and as a result, Janie is a sneaky god-awful creature...one who whines incessantly and who is so transparent...too transparent that you wonder how ANYONE would put up with her.This is the problem with the film....Janie is such a whiner and is so obvious that it really destroys the movie. Clara Bow, despite some complaints about her acting, was actually just fine....but Arthur puts on one of the worst performances of her day. Thank goodness she learned to be more subtle, less whiny and truly endearing in future films.

boblipton Oh you kid! But which one? When Clara Bow and Jean Arthur are sisters and Jean Harlow has a small role, it's hard to make up your mind which is the Saturday Night Kid for you.At least we can be sure it's not Edna May Oliver in her first talkie role. In this remake of 1926's LOVE THEM AND LEAVE THEM. Miss Bow and Miss Arthur are sisters who share a room in a boarding house . They're both sweet on fellow lodger James Hall -- who thinks of Clara as his girl -- and they all work at the same department store. When Miss Arthur, who is the pet of the store's formidable Miss Oliver, winds up in charge of the employees' welfare fund, she not only blows it on the horses, she makes a play for Mr. Hall and blames the loss on her sister.There are a lot of problems with this movie. Overlay a nasal dem-dese-dose accent on Miss Arthur's squeaks, and you've got something very annoying; Miss Bow had been stress eating and was a few pounds over zoftig here, and the film was edited down to 64 minutes, so short that a lot of plot points are left hanging. B.P. Schulberg had been complaining for some time that Miss Bow needed better vehicles. Despite a formidable cohort, this was not it for the It Girl.

calvinnme Most of the plot revolves around a New York City department store - "Ginsberg's" - that like so many department stores up until the middle of the 20th century were run by the actual founder of the same name. There is an actual Mr. Ginsberg in the cast. It reminds me a little of "It's a Great Life" made the same year, although the sisters working at Ginsberg's here are hardly the Duncan sisters as far as teamwork and sister love. It does gives you a feel for what a dictatorship these big dynastic department stores were at that time. They apparently paid people a living wage, but a living wage was considered enough to make it sharing a room in a cheap boarding house, as sisters Mayme Barry (Clara Bow) and Janie Barry (Jean Arthur) are doing here.The gist of the story is that Mayme and Janie are clerks at Ginsberg's. Mayme is called "The Saturday Night Kid" because she hardly ever misses going out on a Saturday night - until she meets fellow clerk William Taylor (James Hall). Mayme's personality is defined by loyalty and sensitivity when hurt by those she cares about, although she puts on a hard shell to pretend nothing hurts her. Jean Arthur, as sister Janie is the sneak. She's weak and selfish, and is capable of being a weasel and a liar to get out of a bad situation. She feels bad about it later, she just has no spine or character. Now Mayme has fallen hard for Bill, but after he becomes a floorwalker - a big promotion in those days - he gets snooty with her and hurts her badly. She breaks up with him. Sister Janie has always had a crush on Bill, and although she doesn't outright try and steal him from Mayme, she tells some lies to make herself look good at Mayme's expense, to the point of getting Mayme possibly sent to jail! What do I mean by this and how does all of this work out? Watch and find out.My favorite scene - Mayme is having the gang from work over to her apartment and they have a kind of dining room situation on the roof outside their window with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background. The way the conversation flows between characters is quite mature considering this is the first full year of talking pictures.One more thing, even though to me it was a tie as to whether Clara Bow or Jean Arthur owned this picture - Clara with her wise flapper persona and Jean with this whiny unlikeable character she plays that makes you scratch your head when you think about all of the wise likable parts that were to come, Edna May Oliver sure takes the cake with an early performance as a supervisor at Ginsberg's in this, only her first sound performance. You can really see the comic potential there, and apparently so could RKO, because they snapped her up immediately afterward.

Raymond Valinoti, Jr. In THE SATURDAY NIGHT KID, Clara Bow plays Mayme, a salesgirl who's in love with a fellow clerk named Bill (James Hall). Her sister Janie (Jean Arthur) also has eyes for him and schemes to snare for herself. The scenario is ordinary and the resolution is both banal and predictable. Clara Bow's performance in her third talkie is good, proving she could easily handle sound. Unfortunately, her role is, for the most part, colorless and inhibited. Mayme lacks the free-spiritedness and boldness of such roles like Alverna in MANTRAP and Betty Lou in IT; she's just a blandly virtuous heroine searching for true love. It doesn't help that her leading man Hall is uncharismatic and dull.Occasionally, however, Bow gets to shine. She displays her comedic flair in some funny sequences, particularly a scene where she tries to help the inexperienced Hall in a difficult task without making him look incompetent. Bow also exhibits a flash of her effervescent "It" persona in a flirtatious chasing sequence. And in her big dramatic moments, Clara is persuasive and invigorating, making one regret she rarely had the opportunity for substantial dramatic material.Jean Arthur is delightfully perfidious as Janie. Among the supporting players, Edna May Oliver as Mayme's snooty, imperious supervisor Miss Streeter and Charles Sellon as Lem Woodruff, the fumbling proprietor of the boardinghouse Mayme, Janie, and Bill live in, stand out. In an early film appearance, Jean Harlow has too minute a role to create any impression.Overall, THE SATURDAY NIGHT KID is a pedestrian movie that doesn't take full advantage of Bow's talents. Considering that many of Clara Bow's films are lost or deteriorating, however, one should be grateful that this film has been recently restored.