User Reviews

This is the first movie I have ever found on IMDb which has neither a plot description nor any reviews. Surprising since this is a rather charming comedy and is lots of fun. Is it a screwball comedy? Maybe not in the classic sense but it has its moments. What you get is many of the best character actors of the 1930s doing what they did best. I watched it to see Ruth Warren who was always a treat. As a bonus, this is one of only five films made by the wonderful Peggy Conklin. I was unfamiliar with her work but am now a fan. She reminds me of Patricia Farr. One item that is hard to get past is Miss Conklin being married to Edward Everett Horton in this outing. She was 30 and looked to be 20 and he was 50 and could pass for 60! Well, it was Hollywood and we have seen this situation before. Watch this if you get the chance, it is worth your time.

Following the scorning advice of mother-in-law Elizabeth Patterson, Edward Everett Horton asks for a raise and gets fired. He, Patterson and his wife, Peggy Conklin get tipsy, and while the ladies sleep it off, Horton straightens the house. In marches Peggy's rich aunt, Laura Hope Crewes, who mistakes him for the houseman. Horton plays along; they have never met, and Miss Crewes advised against the marriage. She is taken with the respectful servant, and when she takes her niece along with her, she offers Horton a job as a handyman. He accepts.

It's from a play by Claire Kummer. Despite the screenplay co-scripted by Dore Schary, and direction by Joseph Santell, it remains a three-set stage play. The performers are engaging; Miss Conklin has a distinctive voice, and the other performers are accomplished farceurs. The lines are amusing, even if the situations are standard. Cinematographer James van Trees keeps changing the camera position in an effort to lend some cinematic movement to the effort, but the score by Heinz Roemfeld is poor, and the effort winds up looking slightly less visually interesting than a three-camera set-up in a 1950s TV situation comedy.