Love on Toast

Love on Toast
Love on Toast
	Film poster
Directed by	Ewald André Dupont
Screenplay by	Richard Connell; Doris Malloy; Jane Storm
Produced by	Emanuel Cohen
Starring	Stella Adler; John Payne; Grant Richards; Kathryn Kane
Cinematography	Charles Edgar Schoenbaum
Edited by	Ray Curtiss
Music by	George Stoll
Production; company	Emanuel Cohen Productions
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	December 3, 1937;
Running time	65 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Love on Toast is a 1937 American comedy film directed by Ewald André Dupont. It was John Payne's fourth film and acting teacher Stella Adler’s first of only three.

Plot

Linda Craven (Stella Adler), the press agent for a soup company, is tasked with hiring a "Mr. Manhattan" and "Miss Brooklyn" for an ad campaign. A singing soda jerk named Bill Adams (John Payne) is selected as Mr. Manhattan, after which he helps to select Polly Marr (Kathryn "Sugar" Kane) as Miss Brooklyn. Marr proves to be brash and troublesome, but along the way Adams falls in love with Craven.^[1]

Cast

Stella Adler (credited as Stella Ardler) as Linda Craven
John Payne as Bill Adams
Grant Richards as Clark Sanford
Kathryn Kane as Polly Marr
Benny Baker as Egbert
Isabell Jewell as Belle Huntley
Luis Alberni as Joe Piso

Critical reception

A contemporary review in Variety described the film as a "slapsticky comedy" that "might have been far more impressive if farcical scenes had been built up instead of falling for the temptation to toss pastry and inject roughhouse methods," and noted that Adler "looks well despite faulty makeup but fits into the cinema acting scene whenever given opportunity [and who] shines despite the grotesque hokum," and "lavish sets and costly costuming is background for [this] mawkish fable [...] direction of E.A. Dupont is neither even nor effective."^[2]