When millionaire society playboy Drogo Gaines (John Hubbard) backs out of his marriage in front of the minister by pretending to be crazy, his society gold digger fiancé has just the answer. She has him committed. He can't talk his way out of this one. He meets fellow patient Colonel Carleton Carroway, of the caraway seeds Carroways (Adolphe Menjou, who is top billed). After several amusing situations involving loony jokes, the two break out. They find themselves in a traveling road show company of good-hearted, small-time entertainers that the local police always want to close. After songs, jokes, romance and an apparent shared taste for salting their apple pie slices, Drogo and road show manager Penguin Moore (Carole Landis) bring the road show to the old manse and find true love. Drogo's money and the Colonel's fast talking save the carnival. Along the way we've had a chance to see the carnival in action, a fine comic riot and some first-class second bananas doing their stuff...people like Patsy Kelly, Charles Butterworth, George E. Stone, Florence Bates...and Menjou. In his day he was a first-class comic actor. Just watch him in Roxie Hart. Unfortunately, there's also some "ya suh, boss," quivering-knees-in-front-of-the-lion, fried-chicken humor involving Willie Best.
Why push on through this pleasant, unexceptional time killer, even if it was co-written, or, more probably, had some of the jokes developed by Harry Langdon? Two words: Hoagy Carmichael. He wrote three songs for this movie. If you're as much a Carmichael fan as I am, you'll know the chances of ever hearing these three if you don't watch the movie are probably zero. "Yum Yum" (20 minutes in) and "Calliope Jane" (34 minutes in) are performed by the four-member African-American close-harmony group, The Charioteers. They're excellent upbeat songs. Carmichael wrote the lyrics for both. "I Should Have Known You Years Ago" (58 minutes in) has a nice melody of yearning, dubbed by Martha Mears for Landis, but is marred by the conventional, syrupy lyrics of Harris Robison.
Why push on through this pleasant, unexceptional time killer, even if it was co-written, or, more probably, had some of the jokes developed by Harry Langdon? Two words: Hoagy Carmichael. He wrote three songs for this movie. If you're as much a Carmichael fan as I am, you'll know the chances of ever hearing these three if you don't watch the movie are probably zero. "Yum Yum" (20 minutes in) and "Calliope Jane" (34 minutes in) are performed by the four-member African-American close-harmony group, The Charioteers. They're excellent upbeat songs. Carmichael wrote the lyrics for both. "I Should Have Known You Years Ago" (58 minutes in) has a nice melody of yearning, dubbed by Martha Mears for Landis, but is marred by the conventional, syrupy lyrics of Harris Robison.