Room Service

Room Service
September 30, 1938
RKO
Comedy
VHS
C

It's not a good sign that William Seiter also directed Roberta, although of course the main problem here is that Morrie Ryskind had to tailor a successful non-Marx play to the Marxes.  Unlike the whimsically titled Paramount movies, this is even more literally titled than the MGM movies, with at least two title-drops in the mostly hotel-set story.  You can make an entertaining movie set in a hotel, but there have got to be more interesting events than here.  (Same Time Next Year succeeds partly by not just saying the word "sex," as Groucho does here, and by covering a much longer span of time.)  Yes, there's a flying turkey and fake suicides and one of the fastest courtships ever (five days, although admittedly Ann Miller is pretty cute).  And, yes, it's nice to see Lucy, no longer blonde, with a more substantial role.  But she and the Marxes seem restrained most of the time.  (Chico hardly seems Italian, or awake.)

I kept thinking the movie might make it to sort of funny, as with the topical references to Gypsy Rose Lee and FDR.  As it is, the frequent exclamation of "JUMPING BUTTERBALLS!!" is unintentionally more amusing than any of the intended gags.  This may well be the Marx movie I own that I've seen the least, and when I got a phone call about half an hour before the ending, I forgot that I hadn't finished watching, until I went through the living room again.  Furthermore, while the music in their MGM movies hasn't been anything amazing so far, it beats two renditions of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."  This film's only for the Marx completist.

Donald MacBride (the "butterballs" shouter) and Bruce Mitchell would go on to The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, Phoebe Campbell and Cliff Herd to Citizen Kane.  Charles Halton, who's "Dr. Glass" here, would appear twenty years later, in his 80s, as the school principal of High School Confidential!, with a pivotal role as the bank examiner of It's a Wonderful Life along the way.

Funnier than the actual movie.

Roberta

Roberta
March 8, 1935
RKO
Romance, Musical
DVD
C+

As with the W. C. Fields films, I got a package of four Fred & Ginger movies, in this case just for Flying Down to Rio.  This film is disappointing, considering one, it's based on a book by Alice Duer Miller (whose Come out of the Kitchen is a fun read:  http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/03/come-out-of-kitchen.html); two, it has some good songs, including the Oscar-nominated "Lovely to Look at"; and three, Fred & Ginger aren't as peripheral as they are in FDtR.  Unfortunately, they're still playing the supporting couple, and this time the main pair are both charm-free: Randolph Scott, coming across as a killjoy Joel McCrea, and Irene Dunne, who ruins "Lovely" and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" by singing in that horrific mid-'30s to early-'40s pseudo-operatic style that too many female singers used in the movies.  Watch this one with your hand on the remote, fast-forwarding till you get to any scene with Fred in it, and even then be prepared for too much Scott and Dunne.  (Ginger has much less to do than Fred.)

OK, and you can keep an eye out for various cameos.   Not only is one of the fashion models Lucille Ball, but William "Fred Mertz" Frawley plays a bartender!  And another fashion model, Wanda Perry, would have a small role in Ball's Mame.  Model Donna Mae Roberts would appear in 1943's The Gang's All Here.  Of the Wabash Indianians, Hal Borne was in Flying Down to Rio, while "tricky-voiced" Candy Candido would do a memorable voiceover as an apple tree in Wizard of Oz.  Rita Gould would appear in The Women.  No one plays Roberta; it's just the name of the design studio Scott's aunt owns.  The fashions range from forgettable to regrettable to acceptable.