An MGM PETE SMITH SPECIALITY Short Subject.
When her cook walks out, an incompetent housewife receives PENNY WISDOM in the kitchen only minutes before her hubby's boss comes to dinner.
Pete Smith serves up his special brand of narrative lunacy in this very enjoyable short film which features Prudence Penny, Culinary Columnist for the Los Angeles Examiner. She demonstrates her cooking expertise by producing a delicious ham meal, with baked Alaska for dessert, in a short time. The food looks great in Technicolor.
This little movie, which won the Oscar for Best Short Film of 1937, was a reworking of an earlier Pete Smith short subject, MENU (1933).
Often overlooked or neglected today, the one and two-reel short subjects were useful to the Studios as important training grounds for new or burgeoning talents, both in front & behind the camera. The dynamics for creating a successful short subject was completely different from that of a feature length film, something akin to writing a topnotch short story rather than a novel. Economical to produce in terms of both budget & schedule and capable of portraying a wide range of material, short subjects were the perfect complement to the Studios' feature films.
