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Ginger Rogers is Thelma, a secretary seeking rest and relaxation at a Catskill resort in "Having Wonderful Time," also starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Lee Bowman, Eve Arden, Jack Carson, Lucille Ball and Michael (Red) Skelton.

Uptight Rogers arrives at the resort and gets off on the wrong foot with Chick, a law student working as a waiter (Fairbanks). Eventually they discover they really like each other, but when Thelma expects a proposal from Chick, she gets a proposition instead and blows her stack. On the rebound, she picks up with fast Buzzy (Bowman), who's been staked out by Miriam (Ball). Complications arise.

"Having Wonderful Time" is light entertainment that has nothing special about it except its talented young cast. Rogers is fine as the more serious, less flirtatious woman in a group of love-mad girls.

Fairbanks is fantastic, using a completely different persona from other films. He sports an American accent and comes across as a brusque handsome hunk rather than a British gentleman.

Eve Arden's New York accent is over the top but she's funny as a resort guest, and comedy and slapstick are provided by pretty Lucille Ball and Red Skelton, who gets to do a couple of comedy routines.

All in all good fun from RKO and recommended.

Arthur Kober's play Having Wonderful Time was fresh from its Broadway run of 372 performances for 1937-38 when RKO bought it to the screen starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Ginger Rogers. The play was a homage to the Catskill resort area so frequented by New York's Jewish population because of restrictions on other vacation areas. The area with its own Jewish owned and operated resorts became popularly known as the Jewish Alps.

On Broadway John Garfield and Katharine Locke starred, but for the screen RKO used two of its best contract players of the time Fairbanks and Rogers. According to Salad Days the memoir of Fairbanks, both he and Rogers did use proper Brooklyn and Bronx accents in their characters, but after the audiences in Red State America had trouble understanding them, both he and Ginger were called back and dubbed a whole lot of their lines in more generic tones.

By the way Fairbanks could and did use a really good New York type accent in Angels On Broadway a few years later.

A whole lot of outstanding character players are in Having Wonderful Time like Eve Arden, Donald Meek, Lee Bowman, Jack Carson, and Lucille Ball. Making his screen debut as the camp social director where we got to see some of his Catskill type shtick was Red Skelton.

Having Wonderful Time is a good screen comedy, showing off Fairbanks and Rogers to their best advantage. But I would probably have liked to have seen the film done as it was presented on Broadway. The days of the great Jewish resorts of the Catskills are gone now so it's highly unlikely we'll see a remake of Having Wonderful Time. An opportunity to have preserved a piece of history is now gone unfortunately.

If the pleasure of watching GINGER ROGERS, DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS, JR. and LEE BOWMAN in their prime is enough for you, you won't mind watching this feeble little comedy about a vacationing girl in a typical girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl wins boy kind of affair.

And whatever laughs come along are few and far between, as someone else suggested, and the gags aren't fresh enough to sustain much interest. The backgammon scene becomes a bore, as does the party scene with "Heigh Ho" being sung non-stop in inebriated fashion.

Strictly a small time trifle, hardly worth bothering about. No one is seen to their advantage except for the three photogenic leads in a cast that includes EVE ARDEN (wasted), LUCILLE BALL (wasted), JACK Carson (wasted), DONALD COOK and GRADY SUTTON, with an interesting debut of comedian RED SKELTON, billed as Richard (Red) Skelton) who demonstrates his skill with a series of pratfalls. He does more with his small role than anyone else is able to muster.

The original play was a satire about Jewish vacationers in the Catskills but was revamped as a vehicle for Ginger Rogers with all the Jewish jokes removed. What's left is a weak comedy with nowhere to go.

Summing up: The title is a misnomer. It's hardly worth anyone's time but it's pleasing to note that LEE BOWMAN's reaction shots reveal a flair for comedy never fully realized throughout his film career.

Not much of a story or script but Rogers and Fairbanks make a good romantic couple. Supporting cast with Eve Arden, Lucy, Jack Carson, and others do a good job with slight material. If you like Red Skelton he does several of his skits. Ginger does her good girl thing which is standard for her. Fairbanks is good too but the film as a whole is pretty weak. This film was a vehicle for the stars.

This is a great timeless romantic story. Hollywood should remake this movie! One interesting point, is that the movie ends abruptly at the camp and many of the "dating" themes should have been more deeply explored in the script.

That said, a star studded cast of 1938 with many of the great stars in their early part of their careers. A wonderful, heart warming moving about falling in love.

You've got to think there's something a-missing from this film and not just in the title. At the end, I realised what it was - the lack of a decent script. By the slip of my finger I accidentally clicked on this Ginger Rogers movie when in fact I was intending to watch "Top Hat". As Julia once said many years later, "Big mistake!"

At barely 70 minutes long, directed by a director unknown to me, it's a lame summer-camp movie with Rogers and her leading-man Douglas Fairbanks Jr having to act characters about ten years younger, as they play out a will they-won't they teen-romance while on vacation with a bunch of other like-minded kids who include the young Lucille Ball in their number.

The pair of them certainly look swell and interact well enough together but with material thinner than two-minute-old ice, this one flounders like Bambi on said ice from the very start. Yes, Ginger gets to dance, but not in any great solo or paired set-piece, there's no relieving Cole Porter or Irving Berlin soundtrack and worst of all there's the absolute unmitigated pain of enduring not one but two, I hesitate to call them comedy routines by Red Skelton each about as funny as a punch in the face.

I was ten minutes or so into this bore-fest when I realised this wasn't how I remembered "Top Hat" beginning and that Fred wasn't going to make an appearance.

Next time I'll be more careful with my cursor!

Bronx stenographer leaves the typing pool for two weeks in the country at a camp for single adults (presumably the Catskills, though any ethnic division has been tidily scrubbed from the scenario). Arthur Kober adapted his own successful play for the screen, keeping the patter between the guests and the staff coming fast and loose. Ginger Rogers at first appears to be playing a lovely blonde killjoy, and the lack of humor in her snippy characterization is a bit disconcerting (although it certainly explains why she's unattached); she's even rude to law student/waiter Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who should have women fawning all over him yet curiously does not. Douglas manages to thaw Ginger out in time, however a childish fight between the two sends her to another man's cabin on Party Night. Not much of a plot--this works much better as a comedic study of character circa 1938. Ginger's mother worries her daughter will become an old maid (!), while Fairbanks seems to embody the handsome but unmotivated loaf-off. Richard (Red) Skelton plays social director, while Lucille Ball and Eve Arden are two of Rogers' cabin-mates. Breezy, innocuous fun for star-watchers. **1/2 from ****

HAVING WONDERFUL TIME (RKO Radio, 1938), directed by Alfred Santell, is a Ginger Rogers starring comedy produced towards the end to her great popularity years (1933-1939) of those nine song and dance musicals produced by RKO opposite her most famous screen partner of all time, Fred Astaire. Although reportedly a comedy adapted from the 1937 stage success by Arthur Kober, that success didn't seem to be repeated on screen due to changes and alterations, thus, resulting to a somewhat disappointing production made plausible mostly by Ginger Rogers and her STAGE DOOR (RKO Radio, 1937) co-stars of Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, Jack Carson, Grady  Sutton making return engagements. There's also a very young comic named Richard Skelton, better known as "Red" Skelton, making his motion picture debut.  

Following a visual view of New York City, the story introduces Teddy Shaw (Ginger Rogers), a stenographer working in a crowded office surrounded by other girl, over-viewed by a strict supervisor (Elsie Cavanna).  It's also her last day at work before her trip to the Catskills mountains where she's to vacation for the next two weeks at Camp Kare-Free to "relax in the peace and quiet of the pines." Following a subway ride to her apartment in the Bronx where she's surrounded by family members consisting of her parents (Harlan Briggs and Leona Roberts), sister (Inez Courtney), her brother-in-law (Dean Jagger) and their daughter (Juanita Quigley), Teddy, the only single girl in the family, resents the annoyance of her nagging family to marry Emil Beatty (Jack Carson), a successful but obnoxious businessman whom she does not love. Upon her train arrival to the mountains, Teddy's vacation comes to a bad start leading to constant quarrels with Chick Kirkland (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), a young man whose ambition to become a lawyer by earning extra money as both waiter and bus driver. Chick resents the ill treatment from customers who feel they are always right, while Teddy resents Chick's temperamental treatment towards her. Eventually Teddy and Chick come to terms until a misunderstanding and rumors of Teddy spending the entire night in a cabin with Miriam's (Lucille Ball) beau, "Buzzy" Armbruster (Lee Bowman), puts further friction in their brief relationship. Other members of the large list of cast credits include: Peggy Conklin (Fay Coleman, Teddy's friend); Eve Arden (Henrietta); Dorothea Kent (Maxine); Donald Meek (P.U. Rogers, manager of the resort); Allan Lane ("Mac"); Clarence Wilson, among others.

Red Skelton, who would later win fame and popularity in musical-comedies for MGM in the 1940s, and later on his television variety show, plays a comical social director who manages to throw in some of his comic routines for good measure, ranging from his method of dunking donuts to climbing up and down the stairs. Although funny to the guests and workers at the resort, Skelton's routines just don't appear to register well as they formerly did to contemporary viewers. Future television personalities as Lucille Ball and Eve Arden are almost unidentifiable, especially when speaking in strong Bronx accents, and Eve wearing horn-rim glasses.

For a Ginger Rogers solo effort, which are usually clocked anywhere between 80 to 90 minutes, HAVING WONDERFUL TIME is relatively short (70 minutes), playing more like a second feature presentation rather than a major "A" comedy. Its a wonder how much was deleted considering the fact that actress/dancer Ann Miller's name comes after Red Skelton's in some theatrical lobby cards, yet her character role of Vivian doesn't appear to be seen anywhere in the finished product. There are songs, including "My First Impression of You" (sung by Betty Jane Rhodes) and "Nighty Night" by Charles Tobias, Sammy Stept and Bill Livingston, which are easily forgettable. Considering the locale of Camp Kare- Free, it's a wonder how this production might have turned out had it been a Fred and Ginger musical/comedy instead, retaining its CAREFREE title already used for their other 1938 musical consisting an entirely different plot altogether.

As much as Rogers worked so well with Astaire, and other leading men of her day, including Dick Powell, James Stewart or George Brent, for some reason, she doesn't register well with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who seems out of place here. Possibly newer RKO Radio performers as James Ellison or Lee Bowman might have been better suited, although their names were hardly those to draw a large theater crowds. The major weakness to HAVING WONDERFUL TIME is the revised treatment by its author probably due to certain scenes that couldn't be used for the screen version due to the production code. The story starts off well, but once it set at Camp Karefree, it becomes weak, especially the typically love-hate relationship between Rogers and Fairbanks, followed by Rogers endlessly playing backgammon as the guests in another cabin are heard repeatedly singing "Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho," that grows tiresome after awhile.

Formerly available on video cassette in the 1980s accompanied by a second Ginger Rogers feature, CARNIVAL BOAT (1932) on the same tape, HAVING WONDERFIL TIME did show up regularly on American Movie Classics prior to 2001, and occasionally turns up from time to time on Turner Classic Movies. As much as the movie fails to have its wonderful time with its quota of big laughs, the casting of future TV personalities as Lucille Ball, Eve Arden or Red Skelton early in their careers would be sole reasons for viewing this light comedy today. (**1/2)

The original movie script was about a Jewish girl on holiday in the Catskills. They put Ginger Rodgers in it and changed it around a bit. This is a cute and funny movie. Nothing major, just a nice little movie about a working girl away for some R&R and ending up falling in love. Her love interest is Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who is a babe, and very funny in his own right. They both meet at camp and instantly dislike one another. He is working there as a waiter/camp counselor/gigolo (see Patrick Swayze's part in Dirty Dancing) to earn money to pay for school. From the first moment they meet, you can tell that even through all the fighting and cutdowns they really like one another. Neither of them has the courage to say how they really feel to the other. Of course finally they do and it all happens naturally. You believe this movie and the characters in it. To me that means a good movie. Thank goodness I taped it off AMC. This movie includes alot of talents, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, Jack Carson, to include a few. You can't get alot of Ginger's non-musical films on VHS or DVD. This ticks me off people.

PS...If you like to see more of Ginger Rodgers non-musical greats, check out Tom, Dick and Harry, Kitty Foyle, and the classic Stage Door.

Office typist Teddy Shaw (Ginger Rogers) is tired of work, the city, and her family. She decides to leave New York City, and follow her friend to vacation at Camp Kare-Free in the Catskills. She's not happy initially with the men and the crowded room until she encounters waiter Chick Kirkland (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.).

Both Rogers and Fairbanks are playing pissed off characters. They fit together in this world but I'm not that invested in their relationship. The other notable aspect is that two future comedic stars are playing big side roles. Lucille Ball plays the sassy Miriam. I actually like her acting. She would have been great to sass up the best friend character. The other is Red Skelton. It's his debut and he plays the prankster Itchy. I don't like Itchy that much. He's doing a look-at-me-and-laugh-at-my-jokes performance. I hate to be sacrilegious but I didn't enjoy the donut skit. More than anything, this is interesting as a piece of historical celluloid.

A hit Broadway play, adapted by the playwright (and later turned into a hit musical); what more could you ask for? Well, for starters, you could ask that the premise, a love story set at the very predominantly Jewish summer camps that thrived in the Catskills from the 1920s into the 1970s, not have virtually every trace of Jewishness removed from it. We have one Jewish waiter here, and possibly a couple of older Jewish campers, and from there it's on to Ginger Rogers, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Peggy Conklin, Lucille Ball, Lee Bowman, Eve Arden, and a very young, very annoying Red Skelton, whose two extended comedy routines land with a thud. That Rogers would even be living with her large family in that section of the Bronx strains credibility. They're pretty people, the summer-camp setting is pretty and convincing, and for a post-Code item, it's pretty frank about the sleeping-around that's going on, or at least suspected. Lucille, being built up by RKO, has some funny moments, and Eve, playing the "intellectual" camper (we can tell she's intellectual because she wears glasses), makes a great deal out of little. At a little over an hour, it speeds by, and Rogers, playing a not-very-nice heroine, at least is photographed lovingly. But the goy-izing of it kind of deprives it of any point.

A cavalcade of stars - Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball, Eve Arden (all together in Stage Door) This has Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Jack Carson, Donald Meek, Alan Lane (voice of Mr. Ed), Red Skelton, Grady Sutton (made all those W.C. Fields movies). As others have noted, movie lost a lot in translation from the original play, which would be politically incorrect these days. This show has Ginger Rogers in the same formula plot from the Fred Astaire movies, where boy meets girl, girl acts spoiled and insulted, and boy spends remainder of movie trying to make it up to girl. Unfortunately, the script and interaction between actors just isn't up to the par of those Fred Astair films, but it IS interesting to see all those actors in their early years.

It's a real stretch to give this film four stars. Any film with such a cast of comedy players should be dynamite. Yet, "Having a Wonderful Time" is anything but. It's almost the opposite - a dud. There's just enough comedy and silliness provided by Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, Red Skelton, Lee Bowman and Donald Meek - all combined, to make it barely bearable.

Ginger Rogers provides one spark of comedy as Teddy Shaw. Otherwise it's the others as Miriam, Henrietta, Itchy, Buzzy and P. O. Rogers who provide what little comedy there is. The art cover on the DVD I got of this movie shows Douglas Fairbanks Jr. And Ginger Rogers laughing up a storm. Someone must have told a joke on the set after filming. Fairbanks' character, Chick Kirkland is a drag.

There are others in this cast who generally provide good comedy in their films, but have no humor at all here. Jack Carson and Grady Sutton are two. This is one example of a weak or bad screenplay doing in a whole cast of otherwise very good entertainers. If I don't quit now, I'll talk myself in deducting another star or two from this poor film.

A few young Hollywood actors and actresses introduced to the public in the late 1930s years later made their mark in the emerging medium of television. In the July 1938 "Having A Wonderful Time," three performers, one whose it was his film debut, eventually gained lasting fame as TV personalities.

Comedian Richard Red Skelton, 25, displayed his talents for the first time on the screen in "Having A Wonderful Time," posing as a social camp director. Starring Ginger Rogers and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., the comedy contains Skelton's skit he made famous on the stage, his description of 'Donut Dunkers.' Ginger plays Thelma 'Teddy' Shaw, a New York City typewriter pool worker who is coxed by her friend Fay (Peggy Conklin) to spend two weeks at an upper state New York camp for some adventure and relaxation. At the camp she meets employee Chick (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), a law student who's smitten with Teddy.

Skelton, whose father died two months before he was born, was a newspaper hawker at his hometown Vincennes, Indiana, at seven. A meeting with some theater comedians in the city three years later inspired Skelton to pursue performing in minstrel and showboat acts. He met his future wife when she won a marathon dance contest where Skelton was serving as an emcee. Edna Stillwell approached him after she won and remarked his jokes were terrible. Asked if she could do better, she took up the challenge and became a writer for a number of his jokes, including the 'Donut Dunkers' routine. Red gave his schtick before President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Capitol Theater in Washington D. C., where he was invited to perform at a White House luncheon. His act was so popular he became master of ceremonies for all of the president's birthday celebrations for years afterwards.

Lucille Ball is Miriam 'Screwball' in "Having A Wonderful Time," one of many films Ball appeared as secondary characters during the late 1930s. Ball finds herself as she did in 1937's "Stage Door" as a cabin mate to Rogers. The actress is more known today for her television show appearances, her first being with her husband Desi Arnaz in the series "I Love Lucy."

Eve Arden, playing Henrietta as another of Teddy's cabin mates, found herself in a similar position as Lucille Ball in the late 1930s in many supporting roles delivering her fast talking quick wit she established in 1937's "Stage Door." Arden plays a nerdy Bronx native in "A Wonderful Time." She later was Connie Brooks, a high school English teacher in the very popular television series "Our Miss Brooks." Lucy and Eve, friends since "Stage Door," saw Arnaz and Ball's company producing 'Our Miss Brooks.' Arden received the part after actress Shirley Booth, who later played Hazel in the namesake TV series, fail at the audition.

"Having A Wonderful Time" was adapted from the widely successful Arthur Kober play of the same name, which ran for 372 performances on Broadway. The popular play focused on New Yorkers who vacation in the Catskills, the so-called 'Borscht Belt.' Unfortunately for RKO, the Hays Office under Joseph Breen felt the Kober play had to be sanitized of all Jewish jokes that made his stage work so endearing to the public. Kober explained the censors felt "It was too much identified with the Bronx and the Jewish people might create misunderstanding, racial antagonism and all that. Thereupon, RKO very carefully explained that this angle would be entirely eliminated - that the picture would simply be about young people of the lower-middle class. So when I was called in to make the adaptation, the first thing I had to do was turn my Jewish characters into Gentiles."

Because of the changes, the movie flopped at the box office. But "Having A Wonderful Time" was monumental in Red Skelton's career, launching a successful radio show and 19 starring roles in film, and most notably, the long-running "The Red Skelton Show," broadcast on TV from 1951 until 1971. The highly-successful Broadway 1952 musical, 'Wish You Were Here,' was based on Kober's play, reinserting the original play's Jewish jokes and characters.

Dull and uninvolving with scenes that play out too long. The basic premise of a secretary on vacation falling in love with a waiter at the lodge is interesting but is not explored to its full extent; and despite good performances, laughs are far between.

Adapting the play into this movie sapped the fun out of it. Taking out the Jewish flavor took out all the fun right along with it. It has a good cast, but they have little to do. Fairbanks comes off better than Rogers and Ball does what she can with her underwritten role. The "romance" between the two leads is not believable for even a minute even though it was painfully predictable. Skelton seems to have wandered in from a different movie. He was amusing but that's about it. Pass this by. You won't miss much. I give it two stars just because you get to see Ball and Arden before they each hit it big on TV.

Poor city girl Teddy Shaw (Ginger Rogers) is desperate to leave New York City and go on vacation in the Catskills. However, her vacation proves more troublesome than she thought, as she falls in love with waiter Chick Kirkland (Douglas Fairbanks Jr).

Terribly dull comedy from RKO; I've never seen a better cast wasted in such a turgid film. Red Skelton makes his film debut doing two unfunny comedy sequences, while Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Eve Arden and Lucille Ball are wasted in their roles. Ginger does her best, while Jack Carson plays the secondary love interest yet again. There's a couple of good comedy scenes, mainly involving Lee Bowman.

And who though Douglas Fairbanks Jr looked like a waiter?