NIGHT LIFE OF THE GODS. Universal, 1935. Alan Mowbray, Florine McKinney, Peggy Shannon, Richard Carle, Theresa Maxwell Conover, Phillips Smalley , Wesley Barry. Based on the novel by Thorne Smith. Director: Lowell Sherman.

   Speaking of the Obscure and Bizarre, I had the good fortune to run across a tape of Night Life of the Gods, a long-lost comedy based on a book by Thorne Smith, from a studio that was never much good at comedy.

   Despite the typical Universal clumsiness — or maybe because of it — Night Life captures the flavor of Smith’s unique style quite nicely. The plot (something about a scientist who can turn people into statues and statues into people) lurches forward in typical Smith fashion towards nowhere in particular as our hero-scientist (Alan Mowbray) contends with insipid relatives, a loving secretary, a host of soliloquizing drop-ins and amorous women, all of whom, in typical Smith-fashion, seem to be pursuing plots in books of their own.

   The result is hardly Great Comedy (Thorne Smith was always more whimsical than humorous), but it’s an effective translation of Smith’s peculiar ethos from page to film.

   As for the actor playing the lead — in a flattering wig with his chins taped up — Alan Mowbray was always one of my favorite Unknowns. He generally played pompous, rather dull Englishmen (no one who sees him in THE KING AND I will ever remember him), and if you recall him at all, it’s probably as the Shakespearean ham in a couple of John Ford Westerns, but he was by all accounts a witty and charming man off-screen — he was one of the loyal coterie of friends who looked after John Barrymore in his later years — and his film career included highlights like the rakehell Cpt. Crawley in Becky Sharp, a bizarre Butler in the Topper films, The Devil once and George Washington twice.

WALTZ OF THE TOREADORS. Independent Artists, 1962. Peter Sellers, Dany Robin, Margaret Leighton, John Fraser, Cyril Cusack. Based on the play The Waltz of the Toreadors by Jean Anouilh. Director: John Guillermin.

   I don’t know if I’m alone in the US in this regard or not, but looking back through the IMDB credits for Peter Sellers, the first movie that he was in that I remember seeing was The Pink Panther, which came out in 1963. (I’ve never seen Lolita, which was also a 1962 release, so it looks as though I’m wrong. It’s a certainty that there were a few people who came in ahead of me.)

   Then came Dr. Strangelove (1964), which I loved with a passion and could not figure out why none of my college housemates agreed with me. Sellers had been around a while before Waltz of the Toreadors, of course, but I seldom watched British films back then, mostly because I needed subtitles to understand them.

   And yes, of course I’m exaggerating, but you know what I mean. They recently had an all-day extravaganza of Peter Sellers movies on Turner Classic Movies, and I taped most of them, telling myself that I couldn’t go wrong. Since I don’t lie to myself — well, hardly ever — I was right.

   In Waltz of the Toreadors he plays a retired British officer around the end of the 19th century who has a problem. His wife being a nagging invalid, he has nothing to look forward to in that regard, but even worse, the true love of his life (the beautiful Dany Robin), with whom he has had an unconsummated love affair for 17 years, is coming from France, where he first met her, to take, she believes, her rightful place in his life.

   The first half of this movie is then a comedy, with much mugging and horseplay and missed connections, male-female wise, or maybe that should be the first two-thirds. But quietly, it seems, and without much fanfare, the tone of the tale becomes more and more serious, and anyone who expected a happy (or happier) Hollywood ending in which all sides reconcile and make up and find true love — I think they’re going to be disappointed. Unmet expectations, and all that.

   Given that the ending is at least somewhat more serious than the rest of the movie, then I think that there at least two problems. Why on earth, one might ask, does Ghislaine (Dany Robin) waste 17 years of her life pining for this general who is hardly worth crossing the street for, one realizes in retrospect, that retrospect being confirmed by the second problem, that General Leo Fitzjohn (that’s Sellers) has no intention of changing his view of the world (and his place in it, including his incredibly womanizing ways), will not change and does not change? Not a budge, not an inch, even when given a truckload of opportunities to do so.

   English 101. How did this person’s character change during the course of this book? (Answer. Not at all. He’s as solid as brick.) I hated English 101, so maybe (an understatement) I’m still exaggerating.

   On the other hand — and of course, there always is one — that’s the point, I believe, right there in the nut of the shell. What could be sadder than someone who doesn’t change? Or maybe the key word here is “can’t.”

  HELLO, FRISCO, HELLO. 20th Century Fox, 1943, Alice Faye, John Payne, Jack Oakie, Lynn Bari, Laird Cregar, June Havoc, Ward Bond. Dances staged by Val Raset and Hermes Pan; musical sequences supervised by Fanchon. “You’ll Never Know,” music and lyrics by Mack Gordon & Harry Warren. Director: H. Bruce Humberstone. Shown at Cinevent 41, Columbus OH, May 2009.

    “You’ll Never Know” won the Oscar for best song and the movie was Fox’s biggest hit of 1943. John Payne is Johnny Cornell, hot-shot small-time musical promoter, whose greatest asset is his long-suffering girlfriend and talented performer Trudy Evans (Alice Faye), with Dan Daley (Jack Oakie) and Beulah Clancy (June Havoc) filling out the quartet of long-time friends and fellow vaudevillians whose stories are the core of this sumptuous, plushy musical.

    Lynn Bari is the society dame who can offer Johnny everything he’s always wanted, wealth and position, everything but love, and without giving away any more of the plot, I’m sure you can tell how the film will end.

    I always liked Alice Faye, but I was never a great fan of the Fox musicals, which failed to satisfy me in the way the Astaire-Rogers and MGM musicals did.

    The movie made me wish that I had not missed the screening earlier that day of Nice Girl? (Universal, 1941), with a cast that included Deanna Durbin, Franchot Tone, Walter Brennan, Robert Stack, Robert Benchley, and Helen Broderick, a comedy with music that, by all the accounts I heard of it, had the charm and light touch that Hello, Frisco, Hello, for all its top-flight production values and talented cast, showed no trace of.

    And if you say that I’m comparing apples and oranges, you’re probably right. Let’s just say that I prefer the pungent taste of apples to the pulpy texture of oranges.

THE DIVORCE OF LADY X. United Artists (UK/US), 1938. Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Binnie Barnes, Morton Selten. Director: Tim Whelan.

   The print of this film I recently watched on TCM must be a new one, or that is to say, one that’s been remastered, cleaned up and refreshed, since the colors in this early Technicolor comedy romance are vivid and bright — they’re really quite spectacular if not dazzling — while many of the comments that have been left on IMDB are complaints about the poor quality of the color, pale and not only faded, but fading in and out.

   They all seemed to like the movie itself, however, and so did I, up to a point, and I’ll get back to that in a paragraph or so. It all begins in a London pea soup of a fog, and the crowd who’ve been attending a masquerade ball at a hotel are forced to stay there all night — without rooms for everyone, amusingly enough.

   The amusement grows even more so when a young minx of a lady (not a contradiction) inveigles her way into the suite that a barrister named Everard Logan (Laurence Olivier) had claimed for himself earlier in the evening and is unwilling to share it with any of the others who have found themselves fogged in.

   Not only that, but Leslie Steele (that’s her name), played by Merle Oberon, as you must have guessed, takes over Logan’s bed as well. Since this movie was made in 1938, you needn’t even begin to worry that something untoward happens. Logan sleeps on a mattress on the floor outside the bedroom in the suite, and one can easily imagine that the door between was locked.

   Any other imagining would be left to the viewer, but those would be thoughts of what might have been only — you can take it from me: there is no hanky-panky that goes on in this film.

   The cinema was different in 1938 than it is today, and it is all very amusing how cleverly Leslie Steele outwits her slow-witted male counterpart in this movie to take over his bed so neatly and slyly (and so innocently) as this.

   The second half of the movie, while still amusing, is an anti-climax from here on, at least in comparison. Logan, as it so happens, is a divorce attorney … Wait, wait. I forgot to tell you this. In the morning, Logan discovers that he has fallen in love with the mischievous young lady who took over his accommodations, but she skips out without even telling him her name.

   To get back to the divorce proceedings, Logan’s very next client is a gentleman (Ralph Richardson) who wants a divorce from his wife because — you’re ready for this, aren’t you? — she stayed overnight in that same hotel the exact night before in the rooms of another man.

   Logan, of course, jumps to the immediate conclusion that the other man is none other than himself.

   A merry mixup up like this in Part Two could have as amusing as the clever shenanigans in Part One, but dragging the charade out for far too long, as it’s done here, eventually begins to feel cruel and mean-spirited.

   This is only one person’s point of view, you understand — mine, that is — and I seem to be in the minority on this, so by all means, if you’d like to see two great stars in fine action, romantic comedy style, even if it turns into a frothy mess — relatively speaking — then by all means, put this one on your list of movies to see as soon as you can.

   Be sure to watch the restored print, though. It really is an eye-catcher.

   And do you know what? I’m even willing to bet that I’ll like the entire movie more myself, the next time I watch it!

LOVE IS A BALL. United Artists, 1963. Released in the UK as All This and Money Too. Glenn Ford, Hope Lange, Charles Boyer, Ricardo Montalban, Telly Savalas, Ruth McDevitt, Ulla Jacobsson, Laurence Hardy. Based on the novel The Grand Duke and Mr. Pimm by Lindsay Hardy. Directed by David Swift.

   This handsome little romantic comedy is beautifully shot on the Riviera in gorgeous color and Cinemascope, with a professional cast all elevating the slight story with good performances.

   John Lathrop Davis (Ford) is a Riviera boat bum, or he would be if he could get his boat in the water. He used to drive Formula One race cars, but now his only ambition is to raise enough money to get his boat afloat and eat regularly, which is where M. Etienne Pimm (Boyer) comes in.

   The ensuing light-hearted con game squeaks it by on Mystery*File — but only just.

   Mr. Pimm is a matchmaker. He marries minor European royalty to well-to-do Americans taking the tour and doing the Riviera for the summer.

   His latest target is one Millicent (Millie) Mehaffey (Lange, and why the name in the film is changed from the books Anabell “Madcap” Mahaffey is one of those mysteries that will never be solved), very rich and very American and very much under the watchful eye of uncle Telly Savalas. The minor nobleman in question is Duke Gaspard Ducluzeau (Montalban).

   And the duke — Grand Duke no less — has almost everything but money. He’s handsome and gentle, and a complete and utter klutz.

   Ford is hired to turn the clueless duke into the suave gentleman he is supposed to be, along with a team of experts. Ford is to teach him to ride, drive, and behave as a sportsman. No easy job. The duke is an accident waiting to occur.

   And then the worst happens. Their in-man at the Mehaffeys gets hurt, and they need a man on the inside if Pimm’s plans are to work. So Davis is voted in to do the job as the new chauffeur — which throws him head long into the arms of Millie, who is as much of a write-off as the Duke, a tomboy fascinated by racing cars and engines and about as demure as a long distance trucker — something her uncle (Savalas) is trying to do something about — like marrying his very rich niece to a Grand Duke.

   If you can’t guess where this is going you have never seen a movie, much less a romantic comedy.

   There is nothing special here. It looks wonderful, and if the great cast tries a bit too hard once in a while, the movie still has sparkle and wit. Montalban is fine in the comedy role, a reminder that he was always at ease and personable in this kind of froth, and Ford’s world weary frustration is perfect for the bemused Davis. No one but Cary Grant did frustration as well on screen. Boyer is his charming self, and Savalas was always at his best in comedy, where his overplaying is usually a plus and not a minus.

   Lindsay Hardy, who wrote the book, might be better known to readers here for two good thrillers he penned about Major Gregory George Athelston Keen (of the Special Service of Home Security, aka MI5), Requiem for a Redhead and The Nightshade Ring. The two books were well done, and it is a shame there aren’t more.

   But this is a charming little film, nothing major, but an easy time passer, and beautiful eye candy.

Note: I don’t know if Laurence Hardy is any relation to Lindsay Hardy. He plays the role of Priory, one of the team hired by Pimm to educate the duke.

TCM Alert: Scheduled to be shown next on Monday, September 14, at 4:15 AM. Set your timers now!

THE PRINCESS COMES ACROSS. 1936. Carol Lombard, Fred MacMurray, Douglas Dumbrille, Alison Skipworth, William Frawley, Sig Ruman, Porter Hall, Misha Auer. Screen story: Philip MacDonald, based on the novel The Duchess by Louis Lucien Rogger. (The latter may not exist in book form.) Director: William K. Howard.

   Why they insisted on putting Carol Lombard in dramas is one of the great unexplained mysteries of Hollywood. She was born for screwball comedy, and graces some of the highpoints of the genre from Hawks’ Twentieth Century to Wellman’s Nothing Sacred, to the divine Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not To Be.

   The Princess Comes Across isn’t quite in that illustrious company, but it’s close. The title alone is worth the price of admission.

   Lombard is a would-be actress, Wanda Nash of Brooklyn, who went to Europe and got nowhere. She plans to cash in and hit New York big, though, by pretending to be a mysterious princess, Olga of Sweden, a Garbo-like figure sure to have the press in a frenzy by the time she hits New York.

   What she hadn’t counted on was a romantic bandleader in the person of Fred MacMurray as King Mantell, and murder on the ship home. The result is a delightful comedy-mystery that sometimes gets lost among the surfeit of films in that genre from the same era.

   Lombard made several films with MacMurray, and allegedly complained she wasn’t getting bigger stars as leading men, but the two are a good team, and if Fred was still a fairly minor leading man at this time, he wasn’t that far off from the films that would propel his career to major star status.

   He has an easy-to-take quality that made him ideal for these roles that could have been either dull or strident in lesser hands. MacMurray manages to hit all the right notes, and compliments Lombard as well as bigger name leads like Cary Grant, John Barrymore, or her husband Clark Gable. He was one if the stalwarts of the screwball comedy genre in his own light.

   The voyage is a hardly a vacation for anyone. There’s a blackmailer on board targeting Wanda and others, a killer who has taken the identity of one of the other passengers, and to add insult to injury, a convention of international detectives headed for New York.

   Poor Wanda couldn’t have picked a worst boat for her trip. Then too she is falling for bandleader MacMurray, the last thing she needs in her life — a musician.

   Of course with a mix like that, it’s only a matter of time until a body shows up and sets those nosy professional sleuths to sleuthing, and when their attention turns to Princess Wanda and King Mantell, they have no choice but to turn detective themselves to unveil the real blackmailer and killer.

   Dumbrille and Ruman are among the police officers, Inspector Lorel and Steindorf. The set-up reminded me a little of C. Daly King’s novel Obelists at Sea, in which a convention of psychiatrists on a cruise all play detective while New York police Captain Michael Lord keeps his silence and tracks down the killer.

   Like all good screwball comedies, the lines flow fast and furious, and the mystery is played for laughs, but with some genuinely spooky moments at night in the inevitable fog as Lombard tries to elude the killer.

   Everyone is at the top of their form, and despite all a list of six screenwriters (four credited, two not, including J. B. Priestley), the script holds together extremely well, thanks to Philip MacDonald’s succinct adaptation of Rogger’s novel. (If you ever wondered exactly what the screen story was in relation to the screenplay, this is a good example where a strong story holds together all the disparate contributions of an army of screenwriters.)

   We can be fairy certain it is MacDonald who keeps the mystery element in focus, while the comedy spins off of it. That said, I’d love to know what British novelist J. B. Priestley’s contribution was. He was no stranger to mystery and suspense or comedy in books or plays.

   The comedy mystery was a specialty of this era: The Thin Man, Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back, The Mad Miss Manton, Arsenic and Old Lace, Whistling in the Dark, Slightly Larcenous, Grand Central Murder to name just a few, and it mixes well with the screwball school.

   The high point was likely W. S. Van Dyke’s It’s A Wonderful World and George Marshall’s antic Murder, He Says, but Princess is no slouch, and Lombard and MacMurray are both genuinely attractive and believable.

   Somehow this one has been neglected, but it doesn’t deserve that fate. It’s one of the brightest moments of the comedy mystery film at a time when these were being made with all the skills the studio system could bring to bear. The Princess Comes Across, and delivers, a jewel of a comedy mystery.

      

SKINNER’S DRESS SUIT. Universal, 1926; Reginald Denny, Laura La Plante, Ben Hendricks, Jr., E. J. Ratcliffe, Arthur Lake, Hedda Hopper. Director: William A. Seiter. Shown at Cinevent 41, Columbus OH, May 2009.

   Skinner and Honey (Denny and La Plante) are a young married couple, with Skinner’s office job bringing in a salary that’s not up to Honey’s expectations of her husband’s worth. Egged on by his ambitious wife, Skinner finally works himself up to asking his boss for a raise.

   Although the request is refused, Skinner finds himself incapable of confessing the failure to his wife, who immediately assumes he has the raise and starts spending down their savings on the expectation of the increased income.

   Denny and La Plante gave such charming performances that it was difficult for me to find his wimpiness and her pushy nature distasteful. As their financial difficulties mount, an invitation to a fancy party proves to be their salvation, a plot turn fueled by their skill at the Charleston that leads to a dancing sequence that lifts this expertly directed and played comedy to new levels of effervescence.

WHO WAS THAT LADY? Columbia, 1960. Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, Dean Martin, James Whitmore, John McIntire, Barbara Nichols, Joi Lansing, Simon Oakland, Larry Storch. Screenplay: Norman Krasna, based on his play. Director: George Sidney.

   Some days nothing goes right.

   It’s one of those days for Tony Curtis, who teaches chemistry at Columbia in New York. A beautiful student waltzes in to thank him for a make-up test, and gets a little over enthusiastic just as his wife, Janet Leigh comes in. Janet stomps out, and Tony is in hot water. All over a make-up test.

   All this is shown in the opening titles without a word of dialogue. It doesn’t really need dialogue. We get the point immediately, and the title song, catchily sung by Dean Martin fills us in on anything else we don’t know.

   This is a sex farce, American screwball style.

   So what would you do? Well, you probably wouldn’t call your overly imaginative bachelor buddy Dean Martin who writes for television and has a wonderfully twisted imagination.

   How does Curtis explain his innocent kiss? Why of course, tell your wife you are a an FBI agent and the student was a foreign exchange student and a spy. You even go to CBS where Dean works and have FBI badges made and guns from the prop department.

   Just what any sensible husband would do.

   Of course, whenever the prop department at CBS makes a phony FBI badge, they notify the Bureau so it lands on local agent-in-charge John McIntire’s desk, and he passes it on to weary James Whitmore.

   Meanwhile Dean and Tony have sprung the story on Janet, who is one of her less bright moments buys the story. (In fairness almost no one in this film is an intellectual giant.) Dean, though, has plans. He has a date with a sister act of exotic dancers — Barbara Nichols and Joi Lansing — and he needs a wingman. Tony is elected. And Janet even pushes him to go — it’s his duty.

   Whitmore shows up at Tony and Janet’s apartment just as a panicked Janet discovers Tony had gone on his mission without his gun. Whitmore sees his daughter in her and decides to throw a scare in the boys without arresting them or revealing the truth to her.

   That’s going to cost him.

   Before the evening is over, Whitmore has taken a bullet and Leigh has blabbed to the press how her husband was hunting spies.

   It’s been one of those days. And it’s about to get worse.

   Because the CIA, more than a little miffed that the FBI is running a spy op without them, shows up. Seems the boys have drawn out an actual KGB cell. Now the FBI has to keep quiet and use the boys to draw out the real spies.

   They should have known better.

   Which is how the boys end up kidnapped by Russian spies Simon Oakland and Larry Storch, drugged, and locked in the sub basement of the Empire State Building — which they mistake for a Russian sub and proceed to sink while singing patriotic songs.

   Which explains why it is snowing on some floors of the building and sweltering on others, not to mention the geyser spouting from the roof. And they thought the cleanup after King Kong was rough.

   In the wrong hands, this kind of froth can go horribly wrong, but when everyone involved is a seasoned pro, and sheer charm and skill compete with fast quips and sheer nonsense, the result is a souffle of a movie, smart, silly, and great fun.

   Don’t tune this one in looking for great art, but if belly laughs are the mood you are in, this is the perfect film. When you watch today’s latest comedy fall flat on its face at the mall and see ham-handed performances and obvious direction, you can appreciate how hard this is to do, and wonder that in this period it was done so well so often.

   At the time this must have seemed just another playful comedy from a team of pros. Today it seems like art.

   Dying is easy, comedy is hard. But if you do it right, it looks easy. And isn’t that the trick in farce, not to let the audience see how hard the actors are working to make it all seamless and easy?

   On that level, this one is the highest of art.

TCM Alert:    Monday, July 6.   6:00 PM.    Who Was That Lady? (1960)
   A cheating husband convinces his wife his flirtations are actually spy missions. Cast: Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, Dean Martin. Dir: George Sidney. BW-114 mins, TV-G, Letterbox Format.

RINGS ON HER FINGERS. 20th Century-Fox, 1942. Gene Tierney, Henry Fonda, Laird Cregar, Spring Byington, John Shepperd (Shepperd Strudwick), Frank Orth, Henry Stephenson. Director: Rouben Mamoulian.

   Gene Tierney was as beautiful an actress as Hollywood ever produced, wasn’t she?

   In the scene in this mostly light-hearted movie in which she’s trying to attract Henry Fonda’s attention, dressed in a single piece bathing suit and stretched out on a blanket along the shore, he’s so distracted he can hardly talk, and who can blame him?

   Over the span of her career, Gene Tierney didn’t do too many romantic comedies – most of her films seems to be straight dramas (Dragonwyck, The Razor’s Edge) or crime films with a strong noirish flavor (Laura, of course, and Night and the City) – but she acquits herself well in Rings on Her Fingers, making me wish she’d done more movies in the same vein.

   Looking through her list of films, I see only That Wonderful Urge (1948), a remake of Love Is News (1937), with Tyrone Power in both, as a movie that’s in any sense comparable to Rings on Her Fingers.

   In a way, you might call this film a “re-imagining” of The Lady Eve (1941), in which Henry Fonda played against Barbara Stanwyck. The gimmick here is that Henry Fonda’s character is poor, not rich, and when Gene Tierney’s character is part of a flim-flam which fleeces him of $15,000 hard-earned dollars, it’s easy to see that the two of them will get together, but how will she keep her part of the swindle a secret from him?

   Not that she’s a bad girl, only a shop girl easily tempted by glamor and easy riches, and taken in by the real pair of crooks, Laird Cregar and (believe it or not) Spring Byington. And what a mis-matched pair they are: Cregar was a giant of a man in size (but nimble enough on his feet), and Byington was tiny and nearly swallowed up on the screen in comparison.

   Is this a screwball comedy? I’ve asked myself that, and when I did, I didn’t get an immediate response, mostly because, like “noir film,” I don’t know that I have an exact definition of screwball comedy in mind.

   But I guess I know one when I see one, and at the moment I’m inclined to say No as far as Rings on Her Fingers is concerned. The romantic problems are a little too real, with too much of an edge to them (how does she keep him finding out that she was part of the con game that took him in?), and there doesn’t seem to be the kind of goofy wackiness that I associate with other screwball comedies of the 1940s.

   As for Henry Fonda, he’s perfect for the part, naive but noble, and what a way to make a living: kissing Gene Tierney.

CAPTAIN APPLEJACK. Warner Brothers, 1931. Mary Brian, John Halliday, Kay Strozzi, Alec B. Francis, Louise Closser Hale. Based on the play of the same title by Walter C. Hackett. Director: Hobart Henley.

   As a play, Captain Applejack opened on Broadway at the Cort Theatre on December 30, 1921, and ran for 195 performances.

   The story was soon thereafter the basis for a silent film, although why they changed the name to Strangers of the Night (Louis B. Meyer, 1923) I do not know. The main players in the cast were Matt Moore as Ambrose Applejohn, Enid Bennett as his ward Poppy, and Barbara La Marr as the vampish Anna Valeska, who in one evening gives Ambrose the thrill of several lifetimes.

   None of the actors’ names in the paragraph above mean anything to me, I apologize for saying, and in fact, the first three names I’ve listed for this 1931 sound remake meant just about as little when I started watching this movie last night. I’ll get back to them shortly.

   It’s one of those old British mansion movies, built upon the edge of the cliff – the mansion, that is – and the one night that the owner Ambrose Applejohn (John Halliday) will remember forever is a dark and stormy one.

   It begins with Ambrose telling his Aunt Agatha (Louise Closser Hale) and his ward Poppy (Mary Brian) that he’s selling the house and striking out on a tour of the world on a quest for adventure and excitement.

   Little does he know … there’s a knock on the door. Enter the beautifully exotic Madame Anna Valeska (Kay Strozzi), seeking not only shelter from the storm, but from the villain of the piece, a chap by the name of Ivan Borolsky. Adventure has fallen into Ambrose’s lap, and he doesn’t even have to leave home.

   Of course he is neither as brave and stalwart as he says he is, or would like to be, and if I haven’t told you that this is a comedy, I am right now, and even alone in the room I was in, I laughed out loud several times.

   Any movie with a butler named Lush (Alec B. Francis) has to be a comedy, wouldn’t you agree? Nor is Madame Valeska the only one to knock on the door. Soon there is a whole household full of guests, some welcome, some not. Did I mention that Polly is jealous of Madame Valeska? I have now.

   Without telling you more than I should, there is a reason for all of the guests and intruders, and the reason has to do with the fact that Ambrose Applejohn is a direct descendant of a cruel pirate named Captain Applejack. There is also a map of sorts.

   This is a very entertaining film, albeit noticeably stagey, with a bit of advice that anyone younger than 40 or 50 will probably be bored to abstract fidgetry. That this is a pre-Code film should also be mentioned, with blouses cut lower than they might have been a few years later, and a pair of male hands that do not always stay out of bounds where they belong.

   The photo of John Halliday may have come from the film. If not, it’s very close. His career extended from 1911 to 1941, with perhaps his best-remembered role being that of Katharine Hepburn’s father in The Philadelphia Story (1940).

   Mary Brian’s wholesome good looks once graced the cover of Picture Play, as you’ve already seen somewhere up above. She started her film-making days playing Wendy Darling in a 1924 silent version of Peter Pan; her final performances were as Corliss Archer’s mother in the 1954 TV sitcom series.

   As for Kay Strozzi, in spite of her beautifully exotic appearance (early 1930s style), she made only one other movie, a Bette Davis film called Ex-Wife (1933). Otherwise she seems to have been a Broadway performer, which I can understand, and a soap opera star on the radio, which I don’t.