Charley's Aunt

Lousy copy on CD from ebay that wouldn't play all the way through but from what I could see it looked funny. I've seen the 1930 version starring Charlie Ruggles so I already knew the story.

Jack Benny masquerades as Charley's aunt and gets involved in several scrapes while a student at Oxford. Good cast with Jack Benny in one of his best roles. Kay Francis as the real aunt. James Ellison and Richard Haydn as the school friends, Anne Baxter and Arleen Whelan as the girls. Laird Cregar and Edmund Gwenn vie for Benny's hand. Reginald Owen is a professor.

Best scene (I could see) had Cregar teasing Benny with a bottle of champagne and spilling it on a table. Benny (in old lady clothes) leaps onto the table to lick up the booze.....

Oh well.....

During his life Jack Benny often joked about the poor quality of many of his films, but "Charley's Aunt" doesn't deserve such criticism. This "drag" comedy never drags!

Benny's humor, perhaps a bit subdued for today's audiences, nevertheless shines in "Charley's Aunt." It doesn't hurt that he's in drag for a good part of the movie...A man in a dress can always be counted on for a few laughs!

But the basic story is amusing in itself, with Benny (broadly!) impersonating a maiden aunt and chaperoning for his buddies and their girlfriends. Naturally, there are a couple of older gentlemen who take a fancy to the "aunt" adding more complications to the story.

"Charle's Aunt" is rarely shown on television, but worth a look if you happen to stumble upon it.

Jack Benny is "Charley's Aunt," in this 1941 film version of the famous play, one of several film re-creations that exist.

Benny plays Fancourt Babberly, a somewhat older student at a British university in the late 1800s who, through a series of complications, winds up playing Donna Lucia of Brazil, the aunt of another student, Charley, because Charley and his friend Jack need a chaperone in order to have the dates they've planned.

The late-arriving aunt is actually portrayed by the lovely Kay Francis, and wait until you catch the look on her face when she sees what's been impersonating her. As ridiculous looking as Fancourt looks in his drag attire, he manages to win the hearts of both the ward of one of the young women and the father of Jack Chesney, who pursue him relentlessly. Fancourt, meanwhile, finds the real Donna Lucia quite a strudel.

There's nothing like a man in drag for laughs, and when the man is Jack Benny, watch out! Benny, famous for his long takes, is delightful here, and what makes him even funnier is that every once in a while, he says one word or another with a British pronunciation in the middle of a sentence where he's using his typical American accent. It had to be on purpose.

The DVD of the film has a short publicity reel shown in theaters called "Three of a Kind," which has Benny in the 20th Century Fox commissary trying to explain his role to Tyrone Power and Randolph Scott as a bellhop asks his approval on a girdle, a dress and shoes. It's very good.

Jack Benny was a wonderful actor and comedian with a great, dry, sometimes exasperated delivery. He made audiences laugh for years. Thanks to the existence of his radio shows and movies, he's still doing it.

This is the type of classic movie that should be released on DVD as soon as possible! Fans of turn-of-the-century style English Farce will want to add it to their collection. Jack Benny is superb as is the rest of the cast of this black and white classic that must be seen to be appreciated. 20th Century Fox, PLEASE add this movie to your collection of classic films.

This perennial chestnut by Brandon Thomas has been wowing audiences ever since it opened in London in 1882. Charley's Aunt has had numerous stage revivals and more screen versions than most people can remember. When Jack Benny took it on in 1941, nearly 60 years after the London opening, the movie turned into one of his biggest hits. Now, nearly 65 years since the movie opened, it remains one of the funniest, most good-natured and most antic farce comedies around.

Benny plays Babbs Babberley -- Lord Fancourt Babberley -- an aging student at Oxford in the year 1890. His two friends, Jack Chesney (James Ellison) and Charley Wyckham (Richard Hayden), are keen to marry, respectively, Kitty Verdun (Arleen Whelan) and Amy Spettigue (Anne Baxter). The girls are beautiful and sweet, and as shallow as tea saucers. But old skinflint Stephen Spettigue (Edmund Gwen), Kitty's ward and Amy's uncle, will have none of it. He will lose his income from Kitty's fortune when she marries. Then there is Jack's father, Sir Francis Chesney (Laird Cregar), who has inherited a title which has more debts attached than income. When the girls come to call on the two boys in their rooms at Oxford, it is essential that they have a chaperone. For reasons too complicated to explain, the chaperone, who was to be Charley's aunt, Donna Lucia (Kay Francis) from Brazil, has been delayed (but will shortly show up incognito). The boys blackmail their good friend Babbs to dress up as Donna Lucia and be the required chaperone. Ah, but then old Spettigue learns of Donna Lucia's wealth and decides to do some wooing of his own. Even Sir Francis, reluctantly conceding that an advantageous marriage would help the Chesney exchequer, decides to pursue Donna Lucia. And poor Babbs, now got up in a Victorian gown with corset, wig and fan, must fend them all off...over tea, in the garden, at dinner, by a garden pool, while trying to secretly smoke a cigar, while furtively trying to shave.

Will Jack win Kitty? Will Charley win Amy? Will old Spettigue receive a comeuppance? Most importantly, perhaps, will Babbs wind up marrying Sir Francis or the real Donna Lucia?

Benny plays Babbs with gusto and great timing, and spends most of his time in a dress. It's definitely a Jack Benny movie, but the play itself is so inherently ridiculous and funny, and so good-natured about every bit of stuffy Victorian manners and proper Victorian behavior, that it still works now as great light entertainment...just as the movie worked originally in 1941 and the play has worked for 125 years. I saw a regional production of Charley's Aunt some years ago; it really is a fast and funny farce, and depends heavily on the skill of the actor playing Charley's aunt. The movie, like the play, is funny and silly, and it does no harm.

In addition to Jack Benny, two actors stand out for me. Edmund Gwen as Spettigue provides a classic lesson in how to play farce; utterly serious with the kind of timing that comes from experience. For those who know of Gwen primarily as an avuncular and kindly old Santa Claus, his Spettigue should be a welcome relief. And then there is Laird Cregar, an immensely gifted actor. Cregar was only 25 when he played Jack Chesney's father. The actor who played his son was 31. Cregar was a big man -- 6'3" and 300 pounds -- who disliked the idea of being type-cast as a bad-guy; he longed to be a lead actor. He went on an unsupervised crash diet, quickly shed 100 pounds and shortly after, at 28, died of a heart attack. He made his first movie in 1940 and was dead four years later. He could be so vivid and accomplished on screen that critics still speculate on what he might have accomplished. The movies he was in may not all have been first-rate, but he tended to focus attention whenever he appeared. Two movies which were as good as his talent, in my opinion, are Heaven Can Wait (1943) and I Wake Up Screaming (1941). The Lodger (1944) also stands up well, as I remember it. And although Blood and Sand (1940) is something of a melodramatic stew-pot, Cregar stands out.

And perhaps one of these days the Frank Loesser estate, which I understand owns the rights, will release the 1952 movie Where's Charley?. The problem seems to be that the film, just as the stage production, is generally recognized as Ray Bolger's Where's Charley?, not Frank Loesser's Where's Charley?. Where's Charley was Frank Loesser's first Broadway show, produced in 1948. It featured career-defining performances for Ray Bolger as Charley Wyckham (who plays his own aunt) and Allyn Ann McLerie as Amy. There are some fine Loesser songs, including Once in Love with Amy and My Darling, My Darling. The movie may have its faults but it should be made available.