User Reviews

The creators of this war era movie version of the old stage chestnut must have been on laughing gas as they directed this then watched the rushes, because the humor is so forced you can't imagine how they'd think this was funny stone cold sober. You spend more time shaking your head at the audacity of it all then laughing, moments of which are few and far between. There's no sensible premise to this plot of a married scientist (Dennis O'Keefe) desperate to get back a garter from an old flame in order to utilize it as evidence in court. Why? Simply to clear his reputation and prevent all these couples at a weekend retreat from finding out the truth. Huh? Yep, that's the plot, if that even makes sense, in a nutshell, which is where these characters and the writers who updated them from the original play belong. Maybe in its original stage form (and silent version) there was sense to it, but all that is absent here and the result is a comedy of groans, not errors.

Yes, the cast tries their best to make steak out of hamburger helper. O'Keefe as the nerdy scientist (with muscles like Errol Flynn) gets to wiggle his ears (presumably a symbol of both lying and excitement), and Marie McDonald does absolutely nothing but bellow her lines as if she assumed the audience was deaf.

Yes, she'll turn over the garter, we learn, but with conditions, and then all of a sudden, she won't, simply to teach him a lesson. Binnie Barnes plays a meddlesome busybody who does nothing but shout nasty comments about everybody at the country home. There's just no valid motivation for anything going on here,the comedy taking farce to the level of boredom, and the conflict so obviously pointless. Classic movie buffs should see this once (as it is an extremely rare find), then move onto a Myrna Loy/William Powell film who even in their weakest comedies had moments of greatness. This has none.

Along with Tod Slaughter capturing the macabre Victorian melodramas on '30's film for your delectation in 2014, UA, while not exactly tiny, distributed both this film and 'Up In Mabel's Room', two fast-paced delights based on 20 year-old plays. Racy plots will have you doing double-takes and a favorite actor, Dennis O'Keefe, keeps the outrageous b*****s in his life in line as best he can, because he sincerely wants his marriage to succeed, despite his prior oats-sowing. You'll wriggle along with him as he gets himself in deeper and deeper. I sincerely enjoy a versatile actor such as O'Keefe, who sang and danced and could act the B-movie hero, as well as offer a solid noir performance in his films. This movie is lots of fun, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.