Lo scorpione d'oro

My Favorite Blonde is not just one of Hope's very best films, but an excellent introduction for new fans. Hope's usual roles were as a vaudevillian or radio comedian who finds himself having to reluctantly participate in some dangerous intrigue which is way over his head, and this movie shows the formula at its cleanest and most smoothly executed. Madeleine Carroll plays a British agent delivering a coded message who has run afoul of Nazis operating in the U.S., and Hope, a ne'er do well road company performer who does an act with a penguin, meets her on a train and bravely (well, sort of bravely) pitches in to keep her safe. The cloak and dagger nonsense on the train is a deft nod to Carroll's star-making turn in The 39 Steps, and this movie has much of that earlier film's energy. Carroll and Hope banter amusingly as they are chased across half of the U.S. The bright dialogue is the film's best feature and Hope's reluctant hero persona, introduced in The Cat and The Canary and Ghost Breakers, is a fully polished comic gem at the the film's center. The look of the film is very 'film noir' with looming shadows and danger on staircases and other now-familiar devices, but it still comes off as fresh entertainment even now. This one movie alone was enough to convince me that Hope is one of the great comic actors in all of movie history and this is an excellent showcase of what he could do. Also a must see for fans of the deliciously sinister Gale Sondergaard, here at something near her best.

I can't believe no one has reviewed this film until now. The teaming of Bob Hope and Madeleine Carroll in "My Favorite Blonde" is comic heaven. Madeleine Carroll shows a flair for comedy she was rarely allowed to display in her films.

"My Favorite Blonde" is funny, fast, and sharp in the banter between Hope and Carroll. Check out the scene where they get out of what appears to be certain capture: the most hilarious scene in the film. A fine supporting cast of Paramount contractees make this one of Bob Hope's best constructed comedies. It's plotting and editing make this even more of a road picture than the "Road" pictures, a precursor to "Romancing The Stone".

"My Favorite Blonde" seamlessly shows the mixing of '30's romantic comedy with World War II plots, something that would soon become obsolete as the war dragged on. Catch it whenever you can!

Carroll is a British secret agent on the run from German spies. She's carrying valuable information that must reach Los Angeles. She lands in New York and eludes her pursuers by dashing into Hope's dressing room while he's on stage doing a bad act with a penguin. The thin plot has Hope and Carroll traveling across country with the bad guys always on their tail. So far, just formula. But Hope is excellent here, much better than in the Road pictures. He's less self-conscious here -- no talking to the camera, no in-jokes between him and Crosby, no leering at Lamour. Woody Allen once said that his film persona was to a large extent modeled after Bob Hope's character and nowhere is this more evident than here. As you watch the movie, try to imagine Woody playing Hope's role. You can easily visualize Woody doing the lines as Woody and it's not much different from Hope (though Hope's character isn't a New York neurotic). Definitely worth watching.

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.