Mail Trouble

Perpetually sour-faced comic Leon Errol gets himself in a pickle after sending his annoying father-in-law's picture to a dating agency in this fraught comedy that's slightly above average for him, but still pretty poor.

Leon's father-in-law, George Cleveland is driving him crazy. Leon wants him gone, but that's the trouble with men. They don't leave unless they have someplace to go, and George doesn't have one. So Leon decides to marry him off, whereupon he will, presumably, go to live with his new wife. But neither George, nor Leon's wife, Vivian Tobin, are interested in that, so Leon writes a matrimonial agency, including a picture of George, fit to tempt the blind. When a letter comes, Leon intercepts it and discovers that prospective bride Anne O'Neal is on her way.

This hardly seems like Leon Errol territory. In his long-running series of shorts for RKO, I had noticed no in-law before. That's because this is an adaptation of an Edgar Kennedy short, MAID TO ORDER (1939) in which Edgar does the same thing, with the same unfortunate results.

I prefer the Kennedy version.