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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!

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.

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

This early wartime Bob Hope comedy is one of his best, and is from a time in the comedian's career when his movies hadn't become routine, and when his was a bit less buffoonish and incompetent than in his later efforts. Aided by the lovely Madeline Carroll, Bob is up to his neck in Nazi spies in this satire of Hitchcock-type thrillers, and the "straight" scenes are menacing enough to give the story real bite. The supporting cast is lively and eclectic, and includes George Zucco and Dooley Wilson. Gale Sondergaard is on hand, and as was so often the case in the forties she seems to be doing a send-up of Judith Anderson's malevolent Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca. She does it very well, but one wonders why this beautiful woman was never cast as a female lead. My Favorite Blonde is fast-paced and has some good lines from Hope regulars Frank Butler and Don Hartman. Watching this movie always makes me wonder why Hope's later films, which also tend to be spoofs, are so sloppy, since he is so much funnier and more effective in early vehicles like this one, which are played at least half-straight, and far better for it.