Don't Tell the Wife

The busiest players in the Hollywood Studio era had to be the character actors. I don't think any of them rested at all. A whole gang of them got to work here in Don't Tell the Wife and with no star to steal scenes from they practiced their scene stealing monkeyshines on each other.

Guy Kibbee writes a financial column and a group of conmen Thurston Hall, Guinn Williams, Lynne Overman, and William Demarest have decided he's the perfect gullible dupe in which to hide their nefarious scheme involving a gold mine. They also need some seed money for their enterprise and a related con involves Lynne Overman convincing wife Una Merkel that the scheme is on the up and up. Kibbee is also used as a patsy for that.

That's as far as I'm going to go, but if you watch this picture and see all these wonderful players do their shtick, you almost might forget the plot here.

There was one star here however and one Academy Award winner. Hattie McDaniel is down in the cast list as, what else, a maid. And in a small role as the secretary to the schemers was Lucille Ball who became a bigger name than any of them. But that was in the distant future.

Thurston Hall gets out of prison and back to selling gold mines in a boiler room. He's got a new wrinkle to avoid going to prison: he's got a mine. Is there gold in it, asks one of his crew? He has no idea.

They tap Lynne Overman for the start-up capital, but his wife, Una Merkel, wants to know who's backing the operation. One of the Wall Street Winthrops, he claims; so they track down clownish Guy Kibbee, whose name happens to be Winthrop, to serve as the nominal head of the firm.

There's a fine selection of comics in this movie directed by Christy Cabanne, including 'Big Boy' Williams, William Demarest, Lucille Ball, and Si Jenks. Cabanne has the reputation of being one of the worst directors ever to grind film, but given a decent budget, he proved that false, and here's the proof. It's very funny.

A fun Nat Perrin script gives some big laughs to Si Jenks. A gold mine of experienced talent is found under Cabanne's direction. Wonderful to see Una in the uno role. Guy Kibbee carries the action and stars in this. Mix together co-conspirators Thurston Hall, Lynne Overman, Big Boy Williams, William Demarest and numerous others in a convention of characters sucked into the caper. You get a unique chemistry of clever dialogue. Not dated, this is immersed in a modern culture of fraudulent phone sales which has only grown since 1937. This turns into a Western for a few minutes and ends with marital bliss. Lucille Ball and Hattie McDaniel are also involved. If you ever rooted for Una to get a lead role where she defers to no one, this is for you.

This on was a lot of fun. A reformed con man (Lynne Overman as "Steve Dorsey") gets lured back into the fraud business, having to lie to his beloved wife to do so. They're selling fake stock, and they hire a patsy, "Malcom Winthrop" to front it. He has the right name to make the deal sound sweet.

Guy Kibbee is brilliant as Winthrop, but you feel bad for the character as he is made to feel important when he is really a pawn. He tries to be helpful, but everything collapses on him. Meanwhile, the racket continues with the feds closing in.

It's interesting to note that a young Lucille Ball is in this film, but she's not yet given laughs. I wondered what if Ball had played the leading lady, "Ann Dosey"? No. It's not a funny role and Una Merkel plays it perhaps better than it merits.

It's a short movie and a few pretty good laughs.

For me, Una Merkel is the high point. Demarest is good as always, Kibbee is Kibbee, and the rest of the cast do their job quite adequately.

The plot is not entirely cliched, the pacing is okay, the acting is fine, and I suspect some of the jokes would have landed in 1937, but overall ... well, it passes the time without actually being funny.

This is one of Lucille Ball's early roles, and she's good, but of course tragically underutilized.

The only objectionable thing to me is the 50mph ticket contrivance, which, besides being irritatingly stupid, is totally unnecessary. It makes me think the writers simply couldn't figure out what to do at this point and gave up trying.