COLLEGE HOLIDAY

Jack Benny and Jed Prouty

COLLEGE HOLIDAY (1936). Director: Frank Tuttle.

J. Davis Bowster (Jack Benny) somehow winds up in business with Mr. Smith (Harry Hayden), whose daughter Sylvia (Marsha Hunt), has just encountered a young man, Dick (Lief Erickson), whose name she doesn't know. In the meantime, Carola B. Gaye (Mary Boland) and Professor Hercules Dove (Etienne Girardot) are looking for perfect physical specimens for their eugenics experiments at Cornucopia college and the hotel co-owned by Smith. However, the boys and girls must be kept apart. After appearances by the likes of George Burns and Gracie Allen, Martha Raye, Johnny Downs [Trocadero], and Jed Prouty (of The Jones Family films), as well as a host of male and female dancers, there is a climactic show to save the hotel which involves putting half of the cast in a freezer. Could this movie get any worse? Well, there are blackface numbers as well. For the most part, this is just plain awful. Benny [George Washington Slept Here] seems lost and somewhat disinterested throughout the movie. Marsha Hunt and Lief Erickson make an unlikely musical comedy team.

Verdict: A mish mosh with just a few funny moments. *1/2.

HONOLULU

Robert Young meets Robert Young

HONOLULU (1939). Director: Edward Buzzell.

Movie star Brooks Mason (Robert Young) is constantly besieged by admiring fans who are so aggressive they put him in the hospital. One day, however, it is not Brooks but his double, George Smith (also Young) who is "assaulted" and winds up admitted to emergency. From there he is taken to the home of Brooks Mason, whose butler (Eddie "Rochester" Anderson) thinks he's seeing double. Brooks comes up with a plan. He will return to Honolulu, where George hails from, to take up his quieter life for a spell, while George takes over for him temporarily in New York and Hollywood. The complications are that Brooks -- pretending to be George -- falls for a dancer, Dorothy (Eleanor Powell) on shipboard -- but George already has a fiancee, Cecelia (Rita Johnson of The Naughty Nineties), in Hawaii. While the leads are okay, Gracie Allen [We're Not Dressing] provides the most fun as one of Dorothy's friends [George Burns has much less to do]. Clarence Kolb of My Little Margie plays Cecelia's disapproving [of George] father. Featherweight but harmless.

Verdict: Amiable stuff and nonsense. **1/2.

WE'RE NOT DRESSING

Gracie Allen encounters a lion in the South Pacific!

WE'RE NOT DRESSING (1934). Director: Norman Taurog.

"This is beginning to depress me." -- Uncle Hubert

Wealthy Doris Worthington (Carole Lombard) is taking a cruise on her yacht with a group of friends, two handsome princes (Ray Milland and Jay Henry) who are both courting her, her Uncle Hubert (Leon Errol) and her pal, Edith (Ethel Merman). Doris is attracted to a singing sailor named Stephen (Bing Crosby), but she finds him impertinent and he thinks she's a snob. When the yacht sinks, almost everyone winds up on a deserted island in the south pacific, where the husband and wife team of George and Gracie (George Burns and Gracie Allen) are doing research on the flora and fauna! Stephen declares that everyone has to pitch in and work for their supper, while he and Doris fight their increasing attraction to each other and he sings one catchy number after another ["Love Thy Neighbor;"  "Lovely Little Lady;" "May I"]. This doesn't have much of a plot, and the dialogue and lyrics aren't always winning, but the cast is game, although these will not go down as great performances for either Der Bingle or Lombard. Errol is his usual comical self, Merman is very amusing, and if you like Burns and Allen you'll enjoy their sequences in this movie. This is clearly a "Bing Crosby Picture" with the others sort of along for the ride, but on that level it's easy enough to take, if no world-beater, and it does have its charming and amusing moments.

Verdict: Amiable silliness with pleasant old tunes. **1/2.