Lo scorpione d'oro

My Favorite Blonde has in the title role Madeleine Carroll a most beautiful blond player, who is a British secret agent trying to get some microfilm about air routes for American planes to go to Great Britain as part of lend lease. But just as her boat is docking in New York, some nasty Nazi spies shoot her male companion.

The microfilm is hidden in a pin that she's wearing and with the Nazis hot on her trail. she ducks into a vaudeville house which has Bob Hope and a roller skating penguin on the bill. I'm sure back in the day Hope played in vaudeville with many type acts like these. Vaudeville was moribund in those days and Hope wasn't helping to revive it.

In fact he's got to get to Hollywood because some movie company wants to star the penguin in a film. That fits in real nice with Carroll's plans and as it usually goes, the bumbling Mr. Hope is in the clutches of a beautiful who actually falls for old ski nose as he tries to help her when she levels with him.

My Favorite Blonde is a fast paced 78 minute film, one of the shortest of Hope's feature films. Carroll looks like she's enjoying spoofing a part she did in Alfred Hitchcock's 39 Steps across the pond. Of course she's the one dragooned into help.

But it's Hope's show all the way. My favorite two sequences is both trying to sleep and feed the penguin in an upper on a train and when Hope and Carroll are at an Irish picnic in Chicago. James Burke and Edward Gargan are very funny as a pair of thick headed Irish teamsters.

Though My Favorite Blonde is terribly dated with the World War II background the laughs still hold up very well.

After swooning for quite some time on his radio show about Madeline Carroll, the actress, enjoying the publicity, approached him about being a guest on his show. Hope suggested that instead, they do a film together. The result is the delightful "My Favorite Blonde" about a British spy, Carroll, trying to deliver a coded message to Los Angeles. Attempting to escape German agents, she barges into a theater dressing room inhabited by Hope, who is performing as straight man to a penguin.

Hope is a riot, with the wisecracks coming quickly throughout the film, and Carroll is a good leading lady for him - classy, serious, and the character she plays is game for anything to reach her goal. Gale Sondergaard has precious little to do - one wonders if her role was cut; Dooley Wilson has an unspoken bit on the train; and Bing Crosby directs Hope to a bus in one scene. Hope starts to walk away from him, stops, takes a beat and says to himself, "No. It couldn't be." There are other in jokes as well - Hope turns the radio to his own show and turns it off, commenting, "I can't stand that guy." As someone who was a young adult in the '60s, it wasn't kosher to like Bob Hope because of his politics, but I've always enjoyed his film performances. "My Favorite Blonde" is one of his best.

Larry Haines is a vaudeville entertainer who's act involves a roller skating penguin. He becomes entangled in a war time plot when British agent Karen Bentley is forced to use him as cover to help her get American bomber plans into the right hands and keep it safe from the Nazis.

It's a shame that this film has eluded me until the great man himself has actually died, but it was to mark his passing that this film got screened on television recently. The plot is largely meaningless but is good natured and involving enough to keep the film moving along as a thriller of sorts. However it is really no more than a nail from which to hang a series of quips, one liners and wise cracks from Bob Hope. These are scripted well and the film manages to be very funny even more than half a century later.

Hope is at his best here as the cowardly, self-depreciating performer who is sucked into the plot with his trademark unwillingness. His lines are still sharp and his delivery here is as good as some of his best work. Madeline Carroll was never going to be able to share the limelight with Hope given that she has to carry the plot side of the film, however she does really well and has some laughs herself. The nazis fail to make a significant mark in the film and I struggle to remember them other than stooges even a short time after watching the film.

Regardless of this, the film should and will be enjoyed for it's main selling point – the wise cracking comedy of Bob Hope. This film seems to be forgotten against some of his other works but it is a fine example of the wisecracks, jokes and delivery that made Bob Hope famous years after he left show business and will keep him famous for many more years yet.

Madeline Carroll is British spy Karen Bentley, she has in her possession British aeroplane plans that the Nazis obviously want, so she's on the run with the baddies in hot pursuit. During one escape she hides away in a theatre and comes across Larry Haines (Bob Hope) and his performing penguin Percy, she doesn't have to work hard to get Haines smitten with her and he helps her escape. This sets us up for a mad cap cross country chase movie with quips aplenty and incredulous scenes to enjoy. Hope is on prime form and the chemistry between Carroll and himself is one of the film's chief bonus points, and in view of the back story to the film it's not hard to see why the pair were a believable duo. By all accounts Hope really had the hots for Carroll and she spent the whole shoot fighting him off since she was happily involved with Sterling Hayden at the time. It's a fun film that takes a while to get going, but once it does it doesn't disappoint on the fun front, and Bing Crosby of course turns up for one of his many cameos. 7/10

A good spy thriller: British agent Madeleine Carroll attempts to transport a scorpion-shaped brooch that conceals microfilm holding key military information. She is chased by Nazi spies led by George Zucco and Gale Sondergaard. Two agents are killed in the first ten minutes.

Cut to Bob Hope—or rather, his penguin. Hope and penguin are Haines and Percy, a sort of vaudeville act. The penguin has just gotten the call from Hollywood; Hope would like to think that he is the real star. Paths cross when Carroll, hoping to shake the Nazis from her trail, ducks into Hope's dressing room. And the fun begins.

Needing cover and hoping to conceal her true identity, Madeleine feigns romantic interest in Bob, and plays it up good. He is surprised and mystified by her attention—and soon by attention from Zucco and gang, who want the scorpion and know he is somehow involved. The scene where spies surround and stare him down on the train's club car is classic Hope, as his nervousness starts slowly but gradually bubbles over.

The scenes between Hope and Carroll are even better…she plays it fairly straight and he plays it goofy and the interplay just works like a charm. One especially funny scene in the train compartment: having pressed up close to him with a kiss and retrieved the brooch from his lapel, she stands up and moves away; not having a clue, Hope grabs her and tries to kiss her again—and she slaps him indignantly. "Take your hands off me!" she snaps. Poor Bob.

The dialog is bright and funny throughout, with Hope naturally getting the best lines, including some vintage Hope gems: "I've given up kissing strange women." "What made you stop?" "Strange women."

Zucco and Sondergaard have only small roles, but they sure can play the baddies. Talk about sinister!

However, Bob and Madeleine are pretty much the whole show here. The relationship between the two leads develops nicely—we have a pretty good idea how it's going to turn out, but it grows at a careful pace, not too fast or too slow or too sudden.

Top notch and full of great laughs.