Stella

Ann Sheridan at her best. David Wayne and Frank Fontaine give the two best performances by comedic actors ever caught on film. This is a must see. You don't know funny till you see this gem. Please e-mail if you see it in your local paper to be shown. I need a copy today!!!

When Uncle Joe hits his head on a rock at a family picnic, he dies. The others worry that the police will think that David Wayne killed him, so they bury him on the spot. Soon, lady friend Lea Penman files a missing persons report with police chief Chill Wills. When Ann Sheridan, the only member of the family worth a darn, finds out, she wants to tell the police, but is talked out of it. A body shows up. Wayne and brother-in-law Frank Fontanne identify it as Joe, and Miss Sheridan's boss and fiance, Leif Erickson tells her Joe had a $10,000 life insurance policy with a double indemnity clause. Matters grow complicated for Miss Sheridan when insurance investigator Victor Mature shows up to offer Erickson competition for Ann, and a series of corpses are identified as Joe and turn out not to be.

It's a rather lugubrious dark comedy from Doris Miles Disney's novel FAMILY SKELETON. One problem I had with the movie was the way everyone spoke their lines very fast. The other seems to be a couple of scenes that should have been cut; the entire trip to New York City seems superfluous. Screenwriter/director Claude Binyon was a good comedy writer -- his best-known piece of writing was when, as a VARIETY writer, he came up with the headline "Stix Nix Hix Pix" -- but his directorial efforts were undistinguished. Wayne and Wills are amusing, but everyone else come off a trifle flat.

This is a very funny movie with a quirky story line. Ann Sheridan is Stella, a strong, level headed woman, working for the local insurance salesman, saddled with a family of leeches, including her two lazy brothers-in-law, Carl (David Wayne) and Don (Frank Fontaine) who work in their resort community four months each year and collect unemployment the rest of the year. When her mother, uncle, sisters and their husbands go out for a picnic one afternoon, the drunken uncle starts a fight with Carl, trips on a tree root, and strikes his head on a rock. The family decides that no one will believe they didn't kill Uncle Joe, so bury him in a field and go home. An unlikely beginning to a comedy, but hilarity ensues after Uncle Joe's lady friend reports him missing. Stella finds out what really happened and is sucked into the cover-up. Things are fine until the police chief reports that Uncle Joe's body has been found on a railroad track; when the Carl and Don find out that Uncle Joe was insured for $20,000, they decide to identify the body, even though they know it can't be Uncle Joe. Victor Mature, meanwhile, is a claims adjuster for the insurance company. He has come to town to check on Stella's boss (and fiancé), and takes an immediate interest in Stella. He checks the dental records on the "John Doe", and discovers that it couldn't have been Uncle Joe. That settles that -- until the next unidentified body washes up on a beach. The "boys" keep getting in deeper and deeper, dragging an unwilling Stella along with them. Stella, meanwhile, has fallen for Jeff (Mature), but her fiancé is not about to give her up so easily, especially after she confides the family secret to him.

Ann Sheridan is wonderful in this movie, and David Wayne is brilliant. I have a VHS recording from a WGN broadcast back in 1986, and have never found it on DVD or seen it broadcast again. If you get a chance to see this film, grab it -- you'll be glad you did.

At the beginning of the film, drunk old Uncle Joe falls and dies and the family decides not to tell anyone and just bury him!! This is no ordinary family, that's for sure. You see, they are a greedy pack of lazy jerks and Uncle Joe was their meal ticket...and with him dead they might have to get real jobs. In addition to Joe, the family also regularly sponges off Stella (Ann Sheridan)...a nice lady who is the ultimate enabler. Inexplicably, once she learns of their scheme, she decides to go along with their plot...and that's a problem because an insurance investigator (Victor Mature) is hot for Stella and is spending way too much time around this pack of vultures. There's also a bigger problem when Uncle Joe's girlfriend shows up and when they cannot produce him, she reports him missing. The family also finds out he has insurance and if they can identify some corpse, they can collect. So, again and again, they say that bodies are Uncle Joe...and each time the authorities figure out it isn't.

While this could have been a very funny film and had many interesting elements, I was pretty much irritated by the characters as they were just too selfish and nasty. And, while family loyalty is fine, Stella is the ultimate enabler...and that doesn't make her especially endearing. These are huge problems with the story. I think making them dumber and more kooky would have worked much better than making them lazy and greedy. While a very WEIRD film, "The Trouble With Harry" did this sort of thing better.

The title role of Stella is played by Ann Sheridan, the only one in a family of lunkheads who earns a decent living, as a secretary to Leif Erickson as an insurance salesman and head of the branch in their Cabot Cove like New England town. She puts up with a lot with a daft mother Evelyn Varden, a pair of scatterbrained sisters, Marion Marshall and Randy Stuart, and most of all a pair of seasonal workers the congenitally lazy David Wayne and Frank Fontaine.

And there's Uncle Joe who dies at the beginning of the film. He was sparking the widow Lea Penman who owns the resort hotel the whole family is employed at but Sheridan. The description of him is a lazy lout and obnoxious and apparently good for only one thing as Penman attests. The family employment is seasonal, they all go on unemployment when the season is over.

But one fine day a family picnic which Sheridan is not at Uncle Joe gets drunk and stupid and gets himself killed trying to pick a fight with the nephews-in-law. Instead of reporting the crime the two geniuses Wayne and Fontaine bury the body. But then when there's insurance money involved we've got to find a body and then they have a bumper crop of stiffs.

As this involves an insurance claim the most proper Mr. Erickson gets to investigate before approving a claim. At the same time Victor Mature from the home office gets in the act on the claim and in competition for Stella. Both Mature and Erickson are a bit guilty of thinking with their male members, but Erickson decidedly more so.

Stella reminds me of one of Alfred Hitchcock's lesser efforts The Trouble With Harry. Hitch tried for black comedy, this film is far less subtle. Both were passably entertaining, but really miss the mark.

Victor Mature kind of misses in the light touch department. He's all right but can you imagine Cary Grant in the same part?

I also can't imagine why the sisters couldn't do better in their choices of husbands. Both married way below their league.

Stella does have a few laughs in it however. The punishment worked out for Wayne and Fontaine is quite appropriate.