Destry Rides Again (1939)
Destry Rides Again is on every list of canonical Hollywood comedies. A lot has been written about its peripheries. How it influenced the comedy Westerns that came after it, most notably Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles. How it saved Marlene Dietrich’s career. The steamy romance between Dietrich and Jimmy Stewart during filming. Producer Joe Pasternak’s and…
Charley’s Aunt (1941)
MGM’s 1941 version of Charley’s Aunt shouldn’t be a neglected gem. It was very popular when it was released. It made the studio a lot of money. The play on which it is based has been one of the most popular farces in modern history. Wikipedia tells me that it has been performed continuously all…
His Butler’s Sister (1943)
For most film historians, the “continental style” of Hollywood comedies in the Interwar period was represented by Ernst Lubitsch and his circle at Paramount Studios, and later by the Jeanette Macdonald-Nelson Eddy operetta kitschfests at MGM. What this received knowledge ignores are the Deanna Durbin musicals at Universal Studios, produced and written by the circle…
Maisie Was A Lady (1941)
Maisie Was a Lady, the fourth film in the MAISIE franchise, is the best made of the nine MAISIE films. (I take a stab at describing the MAISIE series here.) Cinematically, it’s the most polished. Its script is the tightest (the MAISIE dream-team of Mary McCall, Jr. and Betty Reinhardt was joined by Capra-BFF Myles…
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