Comin' Round the Mountain

Comin' Round the Mountain - 1940 Version. This early Paramount feature doesn't hold up to the test of time. Unfortunately, it didn't fare any better when it was first released in 1940 when critics laid into it: "not very inspiring"; "Colonna's patter not up to radio persona"; "story is only an excuse -a poor one- for the hillbilly setting!" But it was filmed in the beautiful San Bernardino Mountains and at Lake Arrowhead, so from a historical perspective - I enjoyed it. Bob 'Bazooka' Burns was a famous radio personality of the day, as were many other members of the cast - but his stilted performance can't carry the lame story about a hillbilly who made good in the big city returning to his roots. Una Merkel is about the only believable person in the bunch. Harold Peary makes his film debut as the Great Gildersleeve, a personality he created in a 1935 Fibber McGee & Molly radio play. Only highlight of the day - a hot air balloon rising over Lake Arrowhead. I wonder where it landed? This film is on 4 nitrate reels at the UCLA archives, so you won't be seeing it on TV anytime soon. One of the local residents remembers it being filmed near Twin Peaks, in the San Bernardino Mountains, and also remembers that the community was asked to participate in the crowd scenes. One and half checks out of 5 would be overly generous.

Despite what the other review said about this movie not being shown on television, this movie has been shown on AMC and can be found for sale by some collectors on the web. I purchased it and found it charming mostly to see Peary as Gildersleeve and Thompson as The Old Timer and Don Wilson gets off a Jell-O gag. It is better than some of the OTR movies, but if you aren't a fan of OTR you probably won't get much enjoyment out of the film. Even at that it can still be enjoyed if you aren't too politically correct to enjoy Hillbilly jokes and references to things like Revenooers and Moonshine and the like. There is fun music, dancing and all the type of things that were common in fun little fluff comedies of the 40s. But really if you don't know the characters from OTR you'll miss out on most of the fun. The Characters are all second stringers woven into one story. The Old Timer and Gildersleeve from Fibber McGee, Don Wilson from Jack Benny and so on.

I saw this movie in 1941 when I was seven years old. At the time it was the funniest movie I had ever seen and I still remember some scenes in it. It was so humorous that it made indelible impressions on my young (naive) mind. I have searched for a copy for several years now that I am in my eighties; from the review I may not find it so humorous as I did when I was a youngster, but I would love to find a copy to find out for myself. If anyone has one, I would love and appreciate a chance to see it one more time in my life. This movie has stuck in my mind more than any other in my life; not as good as many but for some reason remembered more than most.