User Reviews

When Tim Ryan's leading lady walks out in a small hillbilly town, the leading lady he selects -- at gunpoint -- is dumb bell Irene Ryan.

I imagine some people decry hillbilly humor as stereotypical and they would be right, but Tim & Irene have a lot of fun with all the tropes, and play them to the hilt, ending this short movie with a rendition of "She'll Be Coming 'Round The Mountain".

The two of them would divorce in 1942, and Tim would die in 1956 at the age of 57. Irene would go on to greater fame as "Granny" on THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, which would run from 1962-1971. She died in 1973, age 70.

In the 1930s, the stage comedy team of Tim Ryan and Irene Noblette ended up making about a dozen short comedies for Educational Pictures. In real life, he pair were married...and Irene Ryan remained a relatively obscure actress before her breakout role as Granny on "The Beverly Hillbillies". "One Big Happy Family" is the team's first film appearance.

When the story begins, you learn that "One Big Happy Family" is the name of a Broadway show. However, behind the scenes the cast is anything BUT a big, happy family. The stars decide to walk just before the show begins....leaving the director in a pinch. So, he tells his assistant to go out on the street and try to find some pretty girls to star in the show.... TONIGHT!!

The assistant ends up locating a motley group of girls...none of which are the beauties the director wanted. One of them is Irene Noblette, who plays her usual dopey self (sort of like a Gracie Allen-type). She is supposed to star opposite Tim Ryan, who works to prepare her for the show. It also turns out that her entire extended hillbilly family have bought all the tickets to the show on opening night! As for the show, it's a VERY old fashioned melodrama--the type with a slimy mustachioed villain and a poor damsel. It's awful...but her family thinks it's amazing!

In this short, Irene sings....awfully. This is funny, as I've heard her sing in another short and she actually had a decent voice. Apparently her schtick was singing awfully.

So is the film any good? Well, I did enjoy it much more than two other Ryan shorts I watched this morning. The other films tended to be even broader and sillier...too much so for my taste. However, "One Big Happy Family" works a bit better since the play IS supposed to be broad and silly...whereas the other films I saw were supposed to be happening in real life to real people...and that just didn't work as well. Overall, an interesting film debut for Irene...and because she became so beloved later, it is interesting and worth seeing...though the spitting gag did wear a bit thin as the film progressed.