Pretty Good

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Hollywood was always suspicious of madcap comedians, and often burdened their films with mindless plots, subplots, silly love stories, and mediocre songs. This is a perfect example of the Twentieth Century Fox B unit busily churning out wartime entertainment for a less than demanding audience. L & H are not wasted, but under used. Even in as improbable story as this one, studio cowardice and lack of imagination cannot totally subvert the genius of two great comedians who could make even second-rate comic ideas seem better than they really were. Vivian Blaine, forever remembered as Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, debuts here as that stock character, the pretty spunky damsel in distress, a carbon copy of another FOX contract player, Alice Faye. She gets to sing three ordinary, completely forgettable tunes in excellent voice. Many similarly attractive young women like her were wasted like this during the studio days. Vivian had to good sense to go back to Broadway and to the stardom she deserved.

Sometimes even an out of their prime Laurel and Hardy flick can fill the bill, like it did this morning on the Fox Movie Channel. I haven't seen one of their features in a while so this was a welcome treat. Yet even though they're both top billed in the credits, you somehow get the feeling that they have a support role in this story about con men out-conning each other with the boys as willing partners. As the story progresses, a host of characters slip in and out of the action, and one of the puzzlers is how a couple of the original grifters named Corcoran (Robert Emmett Keane) and his wife Dorcas (Lee Patrick) simply drop out of the picture, even though Corcoran was a partner of the main villain Bennett (Douglas Fowley). Oh well, not to worry too much about figuring that out.In some respects it appears that Twentieth Century Fox was attempting to follow the Universal formula of Abbott and Costello's successful early films by supplying a host of musical numbers performed by the pretty Vivian Blaine. Her character is Miss Susan Cowan, who's aunt had been swindled using the old bait and switch envelope trick. Rounding out the main quartet, Robert Bailey portrays another grifter named Chester Wright, and when he's stricken by Miss Cowan's looks and charm, he's a goner. If there were only enough pretty women in the world, maybe there wouldn't be any bad guys.You know, I've been thinking about that gas pill gimmick. Recall how Ollie was offering the bargain price of one dollar for the five gallon pills and two bucks for ten gallons - that would have worked out to twenty cents a gallon to manufacture gasoline out of water. Well I recall buying gas at twenty eight cents a gallon when I first started driving in 1967, so I just looked it up, and a gallon of gas in 1943 cost about ten cents. I wonder what they were thinking when they put the script together.Anyway, as con man Chester puts it - "Money lost through larceny can often be recovered the same way". And so it goes, as Stan impersonates the dowager Aunt Emily Cartwright, and pulls off the envelope switcheroo against the bad guys. If you're attentive, you'll catch a quick line from Stanley stating "I feel so gay" when he first puts on women's clothing. It kind of makes me wonder what he'd say if he were around today.

Stan & Ollie are travelling musicians who run out of gas in the middle of nowhere and are helped out by a travelling salesman, Chester (Bob Bailey). He gives them one of his gas pills to put in their car and they decide to go into business combining their music act with selling these pills. When they try their luck in the next town, Chester meets Susan (Vivian Blaine) and she joins the gang. The plot then changes direction as we learn that Susan's aunt has had $10,000 dollars stolen by crooks. Chester, Susan, Stan & Ollie are determined to get the money back and the film follows their efforts to do this as Stan & Ollie pose as different characters at a hotel, while Susan takes a job as a singer at a club.There are some funny scenes and Vivian Blaine sings 3 songs. Its all completely unbelievable nonsense but at the end of the film you feel that you have been entertained.

"Jitterbugs" (20th Century-Fox, 1943) features the comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as themselves who meet up with an enterprising man (Robert Bailey) who has a formula that changes water into gasoline, and later all getting involved with swindlers. The movie is an update remake to an old Fox film, "Arizona to Broadway" (1933) with James Dunn and Joan Bennett, with this comedy given the Laurel and Hardy treatment. I have fond memories of this particular movie mainly because it is the film that introduced me to Stan and Ollie way back when I was a fourth grader in 1969. Since then, I've wanted to see their other movies. I would later be in for a treat when I got to watch the comedies Stan and Ollie did for Hal Roach in the 1930s. It's a pity they didn't get the freedom to be creative at 20th Century-Fox as they were for Roach. "Jitterbugs" co-stars Vivian Blaine, who sings like Fox's own Alice Faye in a deep and throaty manner, but has a personality all her own. A likable screen personality, she adds something to this comedy without being a dull romantic interest supporter. She sings "The Moon Kissed the Mississippi" and "I Gotta See for Myself" (good lively tune). Directed by Malcolm St.Clair, with Douglas Fowley, Lee Patrick and Noel Madison in support. Laurel disguised as "Aunt Emily" and Hardy's Southern gentleman interpretation as "Colonel Bixby" are one of the comedy highlights here. To date this is the only Laurel and Hardy/ 20th-Fox movie to air on American Movie Classics. It premiered on that cable station February 7, 1997. It's nice having it brought back once in a while since it's not, as of this writing, available on video cassette.(**)