Mad Holiday

Philip Trent (Edmund Lowe) plays the popular film character, private detective Shelby James, as written by Peter Dean (Elissa Landi). He hates the character and the work. He quits the long-running series and goes on a cruise ship vacation. A mysterious blonde barges into his room and seemingly murders somebody. He stumbles upon the body just he claims to hate about the films.

I like the starting premise but I lose interest in the murder mystery. There are ways to heighten the intensity. The leads don't have enough chemistry until getting handcuffed together. Maybe they just needed some time alone. They need to get arrested sooner and the story should finish on board the ship. It's a lot of joking around. The murder mystery gets convoluted and confused. This has a bit of fun. I can do without the fake Chinese but that's the times. I would think that the idea was to make this a long-running amateur sleuth couple franchise. At last, this isn't one which lasted.

Edmund Lowe and Elissa Landi are terrific in this comedy-drama directed by sure comedy hand George Seitz. They are supported by the always hilarious Edgar Kennedy and Zasu Pitts, as well as the annoying Ted Healy, with Edmund Gwenn in a small but well-performed role.

The movie looks like it was originally intended for William Powell and Myrna Loy as a spoof on THE THIN MAN, but the lead pair -- Lowe plays a movie actor trapped in a series of successful murder movies written by hack Landi -- manage their own chemistry. Lowe times his wisecracks like Groucho Marx and Landi's timing and character reminds me of Greer Garson, still three years from being noticed by Louis Mayer.

Seitz had had a sure hand for comedy, both as a writer for Broadway and for the movies since silent days. He would direct a couple more great comedies for Metro, including the amazing MY DEAR MISS ALDRICH and then spend the remainder of his life directing the lively Andy Hardy series. If you get a chance to see what he could do with a good script and adult actors, take it.

Mad Holiday (1936)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

MGM crime-mystery about actor Philip Trent (Edmund Lowe) who grows tired of playing a mystery solver so he decides to quit the film business and go on a trip. On board a ship he runs into Peter Dean (Elissa Landi) who just happens to be the writer of his story. It doesn't take long for the two to find a dead body and now they're got a real mystery to solve. It's clear that this "B" picture was trying to recapture the magic of THE THIN MAN and while it doesn't reach the levels of that classic, the fun cast makes the film worth viewing. There's no question that Lowe was an expert at playing this type of character. The character is rather full of himself, charming and has a way with words so Lowe is perfect at this. He's especially good early on once he finally cracks and realizes that he doesn't want to act in these type of pictures. Landi makes for a good partner in crime as the two manage to have some nice chemistry. The supporting cast has some very familiar faces with Edgar Kennedy stealing the picture as a detective who just happens to be on board the ship. Zasu Pitts plays a rather dimwitted fan of the actor and Ted Healy can be seen playing a stooge promotional man for the studio. The actual mystery itself is a pretty good one as you'll certainly be left in the dark as to who the killer is and what the exact motive was. Director George B. Seitz does a nice job at keeping the film moving at a nice pace and the screenplay also has some good touches and especially when it gives the viewer a few winks about what happens behind the scenes of one of these films. MAD HOLIDAY is far from perfect but it's a nice little time killer.

Here Edmund Lowe plays actor Philip Trent who is tired of playing the same detective in a series of B films. The problem is these B films make money! So the studio and the author of the detective books do not want Trent to leave. Trent decides to decompress on a cruise between LA and San Francisco, but his vacation turns out to be anything but refreshing. The writer turns up on the cruise to try and convince Trent to stay, and then there is an actual murder mystery on the ship that turns out to have lots of twists and turns in it.

Ultimately this film is somewhat like "The Thin Man" in that you have a reluctant detective (Lowe) and a woman spurring him on and getting involved in the mystery herself (Elissa Landi). This is actually a very good role for Landi, actually much more up her alley than some of the other films I've seen her in.

The film gets very busy with lots of minor character actors showing up, including the zany Zasu Pitts and the always on edge Edgar Kennedy. I might have given this film an 8/10, but Ted Healy absolutely ruins every scene he is in, he is just so obnoxious. He cut the Three Stooges loose in 1934, they went to Columbia, the rest is history. Healy stayed at MGM ,and the rest is just not funny. In this film he has some kind of pseudo stooge that looks like a genetic splicing of Moe and Larry. It is all very weird.

The end is just a big joke, but as (deliberately) corny and hammy as the individual parts were, it really fit well into a satisfying whole of a spoof. I'd recommend it.

"Mad Holiday" is a typical low budget 30s thriller, centering on Edmund Lowe as a vacationing movie idol, a shipboard killer and a diamond heist. But the real mystery is why Loew's co-star, Elissa Landi, never became a star in her own right. Rising above the grade B trappings as an incognito author, she's a revelation...sexy, stylish and bouyantly amusing with the sparkle of a Rosalind Russell or Katherine Hepburn. She also gave a stand-out performance in the second "Thin Man" caper, "After the Thin Man" (albeit in a less captivating role.) But by 1943, her screen career was over. She's not the only gifted performer who somehow got lost in the maze of the studio system. But watching her sail through this otherwise tepid crime story, one an only wonder how Hollywood let her get away.