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This screwball comedy finds married couple Gerry (Claudette Colbert) and Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) in a strained relationship, largely due to financial difficulties. Gerry decides to leave Tom, a struggling architect, and head to Palm Beach in order to marry a wealthy man who could fund Tom's projects. When Tom follows Gerry, they cross paths with the quirky millionaire John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee) and his chatty, husband-seeking sister, Princess Centimillia (Mary Astor). [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on Oct 11, 2022 - 5 comments

A trio of classy card sharks targets a socially awkward brewery heir, until one of them falls in love with him. [more inside]
posted by Carillon on Sep 27, 2022 - 4 comments

Trying to follow the footsteps of his family of war heroes, Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith (Eddie Bracken) leaves his small town to join the Marines during World War II. Discharged for hay fever after only a month, he takes a job at a San Diego shipyard and writes letters to his mother about his fictitious wartime exploits. When the time comes to return home, a group of Marines pities him and returns with to convince the town that , Woodrow is the great hero he claimed. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on Sep 7, 2022 - 6 comments

John L. Sullivan, a $4,000-a-week director of comedies such as So Long, Sarong and 1939's Ants in Your Plants sets out to experience the hard life as a tramp to prepare himself for his next more serious movie: O Brother, Where Art Thou? -- against the wishes of his studio and staff, and with the somewhat involuntary help of an owl wagon met frail, or perhaps beasel is the term. [more inside]
posted by fleacircus on May 18, 2021 - 8 comments

The city is breathless waiting for the results of the Maxford House Coffee Slogan Contest; first prize: a staggering $25,000. Jimmy MacDonalad, a $20/week clerk and serial slogan contest entrant, thinks he's got it locked in this time with his entry -- If you can't sleep, it's not the coffee, it's the bunk! (It's a pun, you see.) With the prize money he and his girl Betty can finally get married. Who knows what wackiness might ensue if some of the fellas forged a fake telegram telling him he'd won? Written and directed by Preston Sturges. [more inside]
posted by fleacircus on Mar 22, 2021 - 4 comments

In this classic Preston Sturges comedy, the soldier-smitten Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) discovers that she is both married and pregnant after a raucous troop send-off party. While she has no idea who her new husband is, her longtime admirer, Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken), seizes the opportunity to help. When Trudy's cop father (William Demarest) catches wind of the situation, however, wacky misunderstandings follow, with the well-meaning Norval on the wrong side of the law.
posted by DirtyOldTown on May 9, 2019 - 7 comments