The Nitwits

Nitwits, The (1935)

*** (out of 4)

Wheeler and Woolsey comedy has the boys playing cigar salesmen who get caught up in a murder mystery surrounding a killer known as "The Black Widow". This is a pretty good little gem that manages to be quite hilarious but it also has a good mystery surrounding it. There's also no doubt that this film influenced Abbott and Costello's Who Done It? not to mention there are other gags here later used by Abbott and Costello. The film has non-stop gags including a hilarious sequence that involves a chase towards the end of the film. Just about every type of gag gets thrown out there and the majority of them stick. There's also a very funny scene where Woolsey scares the future dead victim by singing a song about a black widow. Betty Grable play's Wheeler's girlfriend and the prime murder suspect and she's very good in her bit role. Black actor Willie Best has some of the funniest scenes, although most of them come in the form of racial jokes.

When the Black Widow murderer strikes at the boss of a music production business, THE NITWITS who run the cigar stand down in the lobby find themselves under investigation for homicide. Can the Boys find the real villain before he kills again?

A rather routine Wheeler & Woolsey comedy (Bert Wheeler is the one with the curly hair; Robert Woolsey has the cigar & spectacles) but the Boys are always fun to watch. Betty Grable is on hand this time as Wheeler’s love interest. Blustery Hale Hamilton is one of the Black Widow’s victims. Erik Rhodes has a small role as a suspect. Willie Best is on hand to add to the madcap finale. Film mavens will recognize Arthur Treacher as the man with the tennis equipment.

Wheeler & Grable sing “You Opened My Eyes” - Woolsey warbles “The Black Widow’s Gonna Get You If You Don’t Watch Out”. There is some racial stereotyping, not unusual in Hollywood films of this period.

Little-known team (today) of Wheeler and Woolsey were the first comedy team of film at this time, having made almost a dozen movies by 1935. Betty Grable makes a lengthy appearance here. The movie is not bad for 1935 tomfoolery, although it could benefit from some intelligent editing.

The film definitely goes on the "watchable" pile simply for the sake of its early slapstick continuity and the fact that this comedy team was so prolific in the early days.

Whether or not this type of comedy tickled your funny bone is entirely another matter (I don't think it's funny, for example, but many people will.)

The Nitwits are of course Wheeler&Woolsey and in this film they own a cigar stand in the building where music publisher Hale Hamilton has an office. Hamilton's got a secretary played by Betty Grable that Bert is stuck on. Hamilton's married to Evelyn Brent, but never lets that stand in the way of a little nookie.

Anyway, a notorious criminal called the Black Widow is known for sending out letters of extortion demanding money or the victim would be killed. Hamilton decides not to give in and does wind up dead as a result.

Unlike Abbott&Costello's Who Done It which has a lot of the same plot premise, The Nitwits is better edited and the perpetrator doesn't come out of nowhere as in Bud&Lou's film. Unfortunately due to one of the gags which involves Woolsey inventing a chair in which a charge of electricity passes through you so you blurt the truth out, we learn a little prematurely in my opinion who the culprit is.

Anyway because Betty is a prime suspect, Wheeler&Woolsey get themselves involved in the investigation. They prove as much help to the cops as Abbott&Costello did, but like them they do stumble on to the perpetrator.

One reason this film is not revived too often is the climax also involves a bunch of black people being allowed by one of their peers who works as a janitor to use the basement for a quiet crap game. Their fright reactions in the climatic chase of the culprit plays into a lot of racial stereotyping.

Anyway I did like Woolsey's Rube Goldberg contraption as a gag. Maybe they could use a real one of those at Guantanamo.

For awhile it looks as though THE NITWITS will be fun along the lines of an Abbot and Costello comedy that mixes mirth with murder in the form of a who-dun-it, but by the time the murderer is revealed as the man behind The Black Widow killings, the story has limped to a madcap slapstick conclusion with an assortment of gags, some good, some tiresome.

Along the way there are a couple of innocuous songs, one of them sung by a very young BETTY GRABLE before stardom at Fox, which she duets with BERT WHEELER. She's the secretary of a murdered executive and for awhile she joins the list of suspects, although we know she's innocent. ERIC RHODES has little to do as a man with a good reason to be one of the suspects, but the plot mainly has to do with Wheeler and ROBERT WOOLSEY (who looks like Phil Silvers on diet pills), and their scatterbrained encounters with the policemen trying to solve the case.

George Stevens directs the whole thing at a fast clip, especially the climactic ten minute scene of frantic over-the-top slapstick that concludes the story.

Summing up: Just okay if you're a fan of Wheeler and Woolsey. It's the kind of slapstick farce the kiddies usually enjoy at a Saturday matinée.