Tira a campare!

Just watched this early Bob Hope picture made before his established movie personality of a cowardly hero was ingrained in the minds of the public. Here, he's a rich man who believes he's dying due to...well, just watch the picture. Anyway, Martha Raye is also in this. Both of them are engaged to a someone neither wants to marry so they decide to wed each other. Oh, and Andy Devine is also here as someone who really likes Ms. Raye. Let me just stop here and just say that I found the whole thing quite funny and the fact Preston Sturges was one of the writers may have had to do something with it. There's also a game supporting cast involved. So on that note, I highly recommend Never Say Die.

I give this one a 10. I can't think of more than a minute or 2 going by without laughing. Martha Raye is the best female counterpart to Bob. She has the same comic sense and the two of them play off each other perfectly. Perhaps the first movie with full-on gay subtext jokes as well. Don't miss it if you like Bob Hope or classic comedy.

No masterpiece, but interesting in its own right. Martha Raye, for once, is playing it straight, and not doing the broad comedy/singing routine that was part of her 1930s Paramount films. (She really didn't show this side of her talent again until she had her regular TV variety show in the 1950s. Bob Hope had not yet become the familiar "Bob Hope", wise-cracking and egotistical; rather, here he plays a light comedy romantic lead rather in the British music hall manner. The love scenes between the two are often rather touching in their sincerity. The supporting cast is excellent, especially Gale Sondergaard, the predatory villianness whose shooting skill, which hangs ominously over Hope's head as she forces him into marriage during the entire film, provides the deus ex machina to resolve the romantic plot in a surprise turnabout. The fact that all other roles are played so broadly helps highlight the relatively subdued Raye and Hope performances. In fact, there are several surprises along the way, including the fact that boy and girl marry at about a third of the way through the movie; then fall in love. Very enjoyable.

Before the road pictures and Bing Crosby, there was Bob Hope and Martha Raye. This duo continued to entertain USO troops all over the world after the outbreak of WW2, and the thousands of GIs who saw them were always extremely grateful. This is one of their several film appearances together, and while not very believable from a romantic angle, they are, at least funny with their bantering. An hour of harmless fun.

I recently discovered this movie, the first one I ever saw with Martha Raye, and I can't decide who was funnier, her or Bob Hope, but what chemistry they had together! (I don't know if they did any other films together, but I'm sure going to find out, with fingers crossed.)

This was hilarious, with Bob as John Kidley, a (supposedly) fatally ill millionaire, Martha as Mickey Hawkins, the girl he marries to save her from Prince Smirnov (Alan Mowbray), the man her newly rich, social climbing father (Paul Harvey) is pushing on her, whom she can't stand, and who's only after her family fortune. (When John dies, Mickey will inherit everything and be rich in her own right, as well as independent.) Throw into the mix Henry Munch (Andy Devine), Mickey's hometown (and very unromantic) bus driver boyfriend, as well as John's fiancee, Olympic sharpshooter Juno Marko (Gale Sondergaard, in the first role I've seen her where she isn't talking to ghosts), who's not too pleased about being thrown over, and you get a real laugh riot!

Watch and enjoy!