November 7, 1952
Fox
Comedy, Sci-Fi
DVD
C-
At the time I reviewed the Marx Brothers' 1931 movie, I didn't yet own this one. A friend gave it to me recently, and I just now watched it for the first time in about thirty years. I consider the film a disappointment, and I won't be keeping it. How did so many great talents produce such mediocre results? I mostly blame the inane script by I.A.L. Diamond (Some Like It Hot), Charles Lederer (His Girl Friday, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), and Ben Hecht (Front Page, which inspired His Girl Friday), as it would've embarrassed Sherwood Schwartz. At least Schwartz knew how to make crap fun, while Howard Hawks (the director and also opening narrator) just seems to have told everyone, especially leads Grant and Rogers, to act big and frantically, after the sedate beginning. Poor Marilyn is stuck playing a simple (in every sense) curvy blonde, without the nuances she'd have in Gentlemen Prefer and Some Like, and none of the dizzy charm of her small plum of a role in All About Eve. (As for Hugh Marlowe, he's no great shakes as an actor anyway, but at least in Eve he had more appealing things to do than get "scalped" by Grant and a gang of children.) I'd recommend the Merlin Jones movies over this misfire, because even the monkey is pathetic here. Still, I won't give it a lower grade, since it's not terrible, just meh.
Kathleen Freeman and Forbes Murray were in Singin' in the Rain. Melinda Plowman was Susie Kettle in Ma and Pa Kettle. George Eldredge was in MaPK at the Fair. Esther Dale, here playing Ginger's mother, is Birdie Hicks in the MaPK series. Faire Binney would be in MaPK at Waikiki. Roger Moore (no, not that Roger Moore) would be in Gentlemen Prefer, as would Charles Coburn, Henri Letondal, and gravel-voiced little George Winslow.
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