THANKS FOR EVERYTHING. 20th Century Fox, 1938. Jack Haley, Jack Oakie, Adolphe Menjou, Arleen Whelan, Binnie Barnes, Tony Martin, George Barbier, Warren Hymer, Renie Riano. Songs: Mack Gordon and Harry Revel; photography: Lucien Andriot. Director: William A. Seiter. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

   In this engaging satire of American mores, Jack Haley is a small-town nobody who wins first prize in a national radio contest in which his answers to 100 questions on his preferences for a variety of products establish him as “Mr. Average American.”

   However, Menjou, head of the company that promoted the contest, in collaboration with his flunky (played by jack Oakie), concocts a scheme to disqualify Haley and then hire him at a small salary to test products for their appeal to the average man, a ploy that’s an over-the-top success for Menjou and his newly-formed company, Guidance Inc.

   As you might suspect, the plan begins to unravel, with Menjou and Oakie forced to increasingly desperate measures to keep Haley in the dark, leading to an attempt to make Haley declare himself for or against going to war that culminates in the simulation of an enemy attack on New York City.

   This pushes Haley into the war camp but also precipitates a series of escalating farcical scenes that lead to a triumph for Haley that is an uncanny foreshadowing of Preston Sturges’ Hail the Conquering Hero.

   The film has real comic bite, and the cast is uniformly superb, with a stand-out performance by Renie Riano as Haley’s stand-in telephone girl friend.