Finn and Hattie

Leon Erroll and Zasu Pitts are a nouveau riche midwestern couple on their way to Paris, with daughter Mitzi Green and nephew Jackie Searl. They are counselled by a street sweeper as to the best hotel in New York, and Lilyan Tashman tries to fleece Erroll out of $50,000. Erroll dances a drunken Apache, and Mack Swain steals his scenes, or perhaps his beard does. Co-directors Normans McCleod and Taurog have paced this one a tad too slow for my taste. Joseph Mankiewicz does the screenplay from a book by Donald Ogden Stewart.

This was a dumb movie about the misadventures of a yokel named Finley P. Haddock (Leon Errol) and the mischief of his daughter Mildred (Mitzi Green). "Finn and Hattie" was a long slapstick sitcom about a stumbling bumbling businessman named Finley who fancied himself a wrestler but always found himself tossed on his back.

His naivety and money made him the mark of two hustlers: Henry Collins (Regis Toomey) and the 'Princess' (Lilyan Tashman). While they worked on him, his wife (Zasu Pitts) fretted and stressed over him because of the awful marital advice she accepted from a four-time divorcee.

While Finn was getting played and Mrs. Haddock was fretting, Mildred was running amok with her cousin Sidney (Jackie Searl) while trying to save her parents' marriage.

This movie would've been OK as a half hour sitcom, but it was painful to watch as a seventy-five minute movie.

Free on rarefilmm.