So and Sew

"So And Sew" is an amusing short comedy that gets good mileage out of simple coincidence and mistaken identity. An interior decorator working in a customer's home is asked by the wife to impersonate her husband, in order to help her deal with a pest who is making advances to her. But the decorator's girlfriend (a young Lucille Ball) happens to be an old friend of the wife, and when she comes to visit there is quite a tangle of misunderstandings.

The results are mostly entertaining and watchable, and this is a pretty good film of its kind.

When her jealous husband goes on a business trip, Constance Bergen's jealous ex-boyfriend Billy Gilbert shows up, sporting one of his accents. To hold him off, Miss Bergen claims interior decorator Lorin Raker is her spouse. This triggers Raker's fiancée, Lucille Ball.

Gilbert owns the short subject, of course, but it's an early top billing for Lucy, who had been in Hollywood for six years by this point. She had begun as a Goldwyn Girl, but a move to RKO had seen her gradual rise from decorative bits to solid parts. Although she would move on to other studios and media, she would remember her years at RKO fondly, and eventually buy the studio.

When the film begins, the very beginning of the credits are missing and you have no idea who directed the picture. In fact, nor does IMDB know who directed it...a rare case where no director is credited. Now considering that the story was written by Jean Yarbrough and Charles Roberts, there's a very good chance that one of them directed, as both were famous for directing as well as writing.

The story begins with a new bride and her ultra-jealous husband. The man keeps imagining that his wife is cheating on him. After he leaves, another super-jealous man (Billy Gilbert) arrives...pledging his undying love for the woman. When she informs him she's married, he doesn't believe her....so she has the interior decorator pose as her husband. This causes all sorts of problems with the decorator's fiance (Lucille Ball) arrives but it gets a lot worse when the husband comes home!

This comedy is enjoyable but not filled with big laughs. Additionally, the whole notion of insanely jealous and violent men is a bit creepy...not exactly the stuff of comedy considering how jealous and violent they are. But if you can accept this, the film is breezy and entertaining.