You're Telling Me!

You're Telling Me!
May 18, 1934
Paramount
Comedy
DVD
C+

Slow and meandering though this movie is, it did make me chuckle a couple times.  I was more interested in the characters besides the W.C. Fields "hero" Sam Bisbee, particularly Joan Marsh as Sam's daughter Pauline and Adrienne Ames as the Princess.  I also liked seeing the small-town gossip, although there's no real pay-off.  I definitely could've done without the tedious golf game, which goes on for several minutes but never gets beyond the first swing.

I'm limited in the number of tags I can put on a post, so here are some people who would go on to appear in other Fields films:  Eddie Baker, Dorothy Bay, Nora Cecil, Dell Henderson (as Del), James B. "Pop" Kenton, Edward LeSaint, Robert McKenzie, and Josephine Whittell.

Also, Frank O'Connor had already appeared in International House.  Florence Enright, who plays Mrs. Kelly here, was the seamstress in Little Women.  George McQuarrie was the first judge, Frederick Sullivan the second judge, in Duck Soup.  Edmund Mortimer was in Design for Living and Flying Down to Rio.  And, yes, that's a pre-Flash-Gordon Buster Crabbe as Pauline's boyfriend.

Although this isn't a Marx Brothers movie, it is a Paramount '30s comedy, so I should explain the title.  Bisbee doesn't realize that his friend is a real princess, and he says they really put one over on his town.  She replies, "You're telling me!"

Little Women (1933)

Little Women
Nov. 24, 1933
RKO
Drama, Comedy, Historical
VHS
B-

While this is a reasonably faithful adaptation of the classic children's novel (http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/02/little-women.html), I have to say that having watched it twice in the last couple months, it feels incomplete.  The problem is that it's too much of a Katharine Hepburn vehicle.  Yes, she's well cast as Jo and does a great job, and yes, the book is more about Jo than the other three sisters.  Nonetheless, I think there should've been more about the other sisters, especially Amy.  Ironically, when we don't see more sides of her, Beth, and Meg, it actually shortchanges Jo's characterization, because we don't get as much of a sense of what her sisters mean to her.  I was surprised though on this viewing how good Paul Lukas is as Prof. Bhaer, giving what's the most natural performance in the film.

You may wonder why I didn't tag any of the performers besides Nydia Westman, who has a small comic role as a maid.  Well, she's actually the only one I know for a fact I have in another of my movies.  I like Hepburn, but not enough to collect her films.

I'll probably say more about this version of the story when I get up to the Winona Ryder version in 1994.