User reviews

1936's "Laughing at Trouble" stars Jane Darwell as Glory Bradford, a newspaper editor whose niece is in love with John Campbell (Allan "Rocky" Lane, later the voice of MISTER ED), unjustly accused of murdering his wealthy uncle with a knife. After the jury returns a guilty verdict, Campbell escapes from prison and hides out at Glory's home, with the alert Sheriff (James Burke) following close behind. Leading the chase with his German Shepherd in tow, is hot headed Deputy Sheriff Alec Brady (John Carradine), determined to replace his boss as the town sheriff, who doesn't hesitate to shoot the elusive Campbell against the Sheriff's orders. The local doctor (Frank Reicher) gives Campbell the okay to remain at Glory's due to his near-fatal injury, while Brady resigns and begins to work up the townspeople into an outraged mob over their harboring of an escaped criminal. During the evening, a remark from unmarried gossip Lizzie Beadle (Margaret Hamilton), about $10,000 in Treasury bonds belonging to Campbell's late uncle, helps lead Glory to the true identity of the real murderer. Three years before their excellent work in "The Grapes of Wrath," Jane Darwell and John Carradine team up in this long-forgotten (even in its day) little 'B' film, based on an unproduced play called "Glory," the name of its indomitable protagonist. Darwell is in fine form, snapping off witty remarks about everyone around her, especially Carradine, playing the kind of villainous role that audiences first became accustomed to seeing him in. This was the last film he did in 1936, a busy year that saw the bit actor gain character status in John Ford's "The Prisoner of Shark Island" (the hissable Sergeant Rankin), "White Fang" (with Jane Darwell), "The Garden of Allah," "Dimples," "Ramona" (also with Darwell), "Daniel Boone" (as Simon Girty, one of his most despicable villains), with a couple of sympathetic roles in John Ford's "Mary of Scotland" (as Katherine Hepburn's guitar-strumming consort, stabbed to death in her bed), and "Winterset" (as Burgess Meredith's falsely accused father). John Carradine's distinguished career was only just beginning.