Fantastic!

There's a good chance the film will make you laugh out loud, but if it doesn't, there's an even better chance it will make you openly sob.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

. . . about 25 minutes into STAND-IN. The title of Leslie Howard's next novel "Picturization"--GONE WITH THE WIND--already has been trotted out by another character at this point in STAND-IN. Based upon Flint's on-going United Autor Workers' Sit-Down strike of 1936-37, STAND-IN depicts Mr. Howard's character as a One Per Center defecting to The People, rather than as a Plantation Master fighting to preserve Slavery, as he morphed into for GWTW. Though Mr. Gable is nowhere to be seen in STAND-IN, Leslie's "Duke Mantee" buddy from THE PETRIED FOREST (Humphrey Bogart) shows up here unarmed, at the mercy of Mr. Howard's new-found Ju Jitsu skills. Also in the background is the Pettypacker Family, led by a patriarch who's a dead ringer for Leatherface's grandpa in A TEXA$ CHAINSAW MASSACRE. But most viewers of GWTW will be thrilled to see Joan Blondell throw the Namby Pamby slave-driving Ashley over her shoulder and onto his rump several times in STAND-IN.

Worth it for the boarding house and its inmates alone, this is a glorious satire on '30s Hollywood. Leslie Howard is at his comic best (see also 'It's Love I'm After'), vague and unworldly. The supporting cast is excellent. Joan Blondell is gorgeous and *funny*. Humphrey Bogart, Howard's good mate and progege - Howard insisted that Bogart got the convict role in Petrified Forest in the film, having appreciated acting with him in the play, and that was his big break in films. And Bogart acknowledged the friendship by calling his first child Lesley (she was a girl). Alan Mowbray and Jack Conway also add to the fun.A sharp commentary on the wonderful world of B movies!

"Stand-In" gave Bogart his first real chance to play comedy as it matched him once again with Leslie Howard, "The Petrified Forest" co-star, in a gentle and moderate tale of an efficiency expert (Howard) who is sent to Hollywood to save a stumbling studio from potential ruin… Howard is appropriately stuffy as he enlisted the aid of former child star Joan Blondell to teach him the more practical side of movie-making… Bogart drew his share of laughs... He plays a producer-editor who had taken to the bottle after an unsuccessful romance with one of the studio's stars, but moves to action when Howard uses him to rescue a movie "bomb" and turn it into a success big enough to save the studio

From the moment you see an epic movie about gorillas, or performing seals in a boarding house, or horrendously untalented little kids with showbiz mommas, you know you have a marvellous Follywood spoof.This little-mentioned or cited comedy pits snappy Joan Blondell against – of all people – versatile Leslie Howard, in a studio-set tale of corruption, change, and romance. You'll also find Humphrey Bogart in one of his climbing-up-the ladder roles as a crusty, hard-drinking backroom man.Blondell plays the ‘stand-in' of the title, that is, the girl who burns under the lights while the leading lady gets pampered and the shot gets set up. Howard is an accountant, transported into a world he doesn't initially appreciated, to discover the reason for the studio's cash-flow problems.Do you know how it ends yet? This was the film that persuaded me of Howard's incredible gift for getting laughs as well as his dramatic skills, and I've been a fan ever since. Blondell and Bogart are also terrific, and this is a minor, but hugely enjoyable, 30s gem.