Thank You, Jeeves!

Thank You, Jeeves!
January 1, 1937
Twentieth-Century Fox
Comedy, Mystery
VHS
C+

The only things that this movie has in common with the Wodehouse 1934 novel of the same name are the main characters, the situation of Bertie Wooster playing a musical instrument and annoying the neighbors (thus planning a visit to the country), and unfortunately racism.  (http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/05/1934-1989-harper-row-edition-p.html)  This time Bertie has a rather elaborate drum-set, but before he can leave town, a mysterious blonde arrives on his doorstep, pretending to know him.  (I don't know if the writers get any points for being canonically compliant that Bertie doesn't have a brother.)  Soon he's tangled in a tedious mystery that not only is very un-Wodehouse but doesn't even work on its own terms.  (Why, if Marjorie is on the run, would she trust a stranger she meets at a inn?  Why are there torture devices in the basement?  Why are we misled into thinking that her cousin is her boyfriend, when there's no pay-off to this?)  The movie is not quite an hour long but still drags.

Along the way to the inn, shortly before a not bad chase scene, Bertie and Jeeves pick up a "colored" Dixieland saxophonist played by poor Willie Best, who in his earliest film roles was known as "Sleep 'n' Eat." (http://celluloidslammer.blogspot.com/2009/02/willie-best-life-remembered.html)  Here his character is "Drowsy," which isn't much better.  It's a very stereotypical part and adds nothing to either the plot or the humor of the movie.  (However, the scene of Jeeves conducting him in a rendition of "The March of the Hussars" almost works.)  Arthur Treacher, who would go on to the Wooster-less Step Lively, Jeeves and similar valet-or-butler roles, is somewhat well-cast, in that he's got Jeeves's dignity, but he's a much more peppery and brawny Jeeves than in the books.  David Niven is, as he almost always is, charming in his first major role, although he's too bright for Bertie, and the print-Jeeves would never stand for that mustache.  Niven and Treacher have a nice rapport, as when they sing together in the car, and I wish there had been more of them together.  The film doesn't hold a candle to the 1990s British television series with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, but it's not without interest, for the casting and other reasons.

The American boy who annoys Jeeves is played by Gene Reynolds (looking much younger than his thirteen years), and he went on to be a writer for My Three Sons, M*A*S*H, and other TV shows.  Joseph North, who plays a butler here, would be another butler in The Bank Dick.