Piccadilly Jim

How on earth could one not enjoy a screwball comedy like "Piccadilly Jim?" Directing a nimble cast that included Robert Montgomery, Eric Blore, Billie Burke, Cora Witherspoon, Robert Benchley and Frank Morgan, Robert Z. Leonard kept this '36 movie popping merrily along, stirring up mayhem of one kind or another and garnering plenty of laughter along the way. Yes, okay, it's dated, and one can see the denouement coming a long way off, but -- despite its predictable nature -- the film has a satisfyingly madcap flavor that can only from the comic timing and talent of the team of acting pros assembled here. Veteran Eric Blore (playing yet another of his seemingly unlimited roster of butlers) steals every scene he is in. P.G. Wodehouse wrote the story on which the movie is based and -- for once -- none of the multitude of writers and re-writers hired by the studio for screenplay adaptation purposes managed to deflate Wodehouse's airy insouciance. It's a small gem of a movie and one too infrequently seen. Nab it!

Another great "gentleman's gentleman" role for Eric Blore, similar to his role in "It's Love I'm After," with Leslie Howard. He's hilarious!

Supporting players Cora Witherspoon and Eric Blore steal the show in this funny 1936 film.

A guy, (Robert Montgomery)who is a cartoonist and his father, a Shakespearian actor, who hasn't played Shakespeare in 20 years, (a very funny Frank Morgan) vie for the attention of two women.

Morgan is after Billie Burke, from a wealthy family, who is a plain ordinary lady. The trouble is her sister, Nesta, played with an aristocratic humor by Witherspoon. She sees Morgan as a fortune hunter and tries to end the liaison. Montgomery starts a cartoon series based on the family which is soon a hit throughout England. Little does her know that the girl he is after is the niece of Witherspoon.

There's a ship-board romance to America. Morgan dresses up as a European aristocrat to impress Witherspoon and her family. Further complications leads him to have the butler, Blore, play his father.

The ending is predictable but it's funny to see how things entangle in this screwball comedy of 1936.

I am becoming a Robert Montgomery fan as I see more of his movies. As an actor who made most of his films in the 30's he is largely forgotten today compared with actors who kept making films into the fifties like Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. However he is a fine natural actor, a very good comedian and an altogether charming leading man. His specialty is the warm-hearted, well-mannered and slightly tipsy gentleman in evening clothes and he doesn't disappoint in this film. He pursues the girl with an admirable single-mindedness and belief in the inevitability of her eventual reciprocation.

The film has other pleasures, most notably the presence of Eric Blore as the gentleman's gentleman. This delightful actor is one of the great funny-men of this era. Also in fine form are Frank Morgan, as the ham actor who impersonates a Hungarian Count, Cora Witherspoon as an overbearing society woman, Billy Burke, Grant Mitchell and Robert Benchley as, what else, a lush. Truly a smorgasbord of character acting.

The plot is interesting enough to hold our attention and the little snippets of caricature and thirties-style newspaper comic strip are fun.

The only slight disappointment is Madge Evans as the ingénue, who plays it straight and is no match for the sublime Montgomery. All in all an enjoyable interlude.

When the leading lady (Madge Evans) must explain why she likes her suitor (Ralph Forbes)and must contrast that attitude with her feelings for Robert Montgomery, you know the film is in trouble. Montgomery can say there's "electricity" between himself and Evans, but that spark is not transmitted to celluloid. And that is too bad, because the film is wittier -- per Wodehouse -- and better-acted than many films of the era. But Evans' loves and likings must be verbalized. The energy is simply not on the screen, only in the script. She is beautiful, though. She needed a different character -- more remote, more mysterious, more fearful of love. And then, maybe... Blore is wonderful, and lights up every scene he is in, as the butler who knows his Shakespere better than the ham, Frank Morgan. But this is one of Morgan's best roles. His only triumph, apparently, was as Osric, in Cedar Rapids. Now Osric is the foppish courtier at the end of 'Hamlet' -- hardly the role of a lifetime. But Morgan disguises himself as "Count Osric of Denmark" in order to infiltrate the family of his beloved (Billy Burke) and turns his failure as actor into personal success. It is a neat touch. Burke's flighty flutiness is hardly used in the film, but she does have a funny line about remembering how painful youth was. The Morgan-Burke romance is intended as a foil for the Montgomery-Evans courtship and that would have worked well had the main plot had more chemistry.