NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH. Paramount Pictures, 1941. Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Edward Arnold, Leif Erickson, Helen Vinson, Willie Best. Director: Elliott Nugent.

   A funny movie needs a funny premise, I’d have to say and I hope you agree, but is a funny premise enough to make a funny movie?

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH Bob Hope

   Bob Hope, playing Steve Bennett, a new partner in an investment firm, is inveigled into making a $10,000 wager that he can tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, for the next 24 hours. The rest of the movie, given this rather belabored but still promising beginning, is unfortunately about as predictable as (in general) the rest of movies come.

   The three men who are betting against Bob are not above low and mean-minded activities to protect their wager, as you might expect. On the other hand, the money Bob is putting up is not really his to bet, but that of Gwen Saunders (Paulette Goddard), or really the charity she is desperately trying to raise $40,000 for — and you can see how desperate she is, giving the money to someone like Bob Hope with a request to “double it for her overnight.”

   As if this were not enough, a showgirl trying to raise money for her Broadway-bound play is also involved. And of course Bob and Paulette Goddard fall in love, even though she already has a strapping young boy friend, one of the idle rich, and one of the guys who made the bet with Bob.

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH Bob Hope

   But need I tell you more? I’ve already called the plot predictable, and from here on, you’re on your own. What kind of idiot situations could you think of? Most of them (I’ll wager) will be in here.

   Is the movie funny? Bob Hope made me laugh, but between you and me, nobody else did, with the possible exception of Willie Best, who plays Bob’s personal valet in what’s really a rather demeaning role. (You could say that at least it was a role, which all too few blacks had in movies made in 1941, but it is highly unlikely that roles such as this did anything to improve the lives of blacks in this country.)

   Paulette Goddard, however, is bright and spritely and sparkling in this movie, and if somebody can tell me why her career went downhill after this, and not onward and upward, I’d surely appreciate learning about it.

— Reprinted from Mystery*File #35, November 1993, revised but not substantially.



[UPDATE] 11-05-10.   This movie was recently released on DVD in a box set called Bob Hope’s “Thanks for the Memories Collection,” and I’ve just put it into my Amazon shopping cart.

   Arguing with myself on the merits of an old film I saw (and taped) on TV this many years ago is probably futile, but I have a feeling that if I watched again, I might enjoy it a lot more than I did this first time around. Comedy and humor are funny things (and you can quote me on that).

   As for Paulette Goddard, I didn’t have the luxury of the Internet to help me out when I first wrote this review. Even so, while pointing out that she was nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for So Proudly We Hail! in 1943, IMDB only says that “her star faded in the late 1940s […] and she was dropped by Paramount in 1949,” when she was still only 39.

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH Bob Hope