La blonde de mes rêves

Larry Haines is a vaudeville entertainer who's act involves a roller skating penguin. He becomes entangled in a war time plot when British agent Karen Bentley is forced to use him as cover to help her get American bomber plans into the right hands and keep it safe from the Nazis.

It's a shame that this film has eluded me until the great man himself has actually died, but it was to mark his passing that this film got screened on television recently. The plot is largely meaningless but is good natured and involving enough to keep the film moving along as a thriller of sorts. However it is really no more than a nail from which to hang a series of quips, one liners and wise cracks from Bob Hope. These are scripted well and the film manages to be very funny even more than half a century later.

Hope is at his best here as the cowardly, self-depreciating performer who is sucked into the plot with his trademark unwillingness. His lines are still sharp and his delivery here is as good as some of his best work. Madeline Carroll was never going to be able to share the limelight with Hope given that she has to carry the plot side of the film, however she does really well and has some laughs herself. The nazis fail to make a significant mark in the film and I struggle to remember them other than stooges even a short time after watching the film.

Regardless of this, the film should and will be enjoyed for it's main selling point – the wise cracking comedy of Bob Hope. This film seems to be forgotten against some of his other works but it is a fine example of the wisecracks, jokes and delivery that made Bob Hope famous years after he left show business and will keep him famous for many more years yet.

Pleasant comedy about a guy (Bob Hope) who has a vaudeville act with a penguin getting mixed up with a British secret agent (Madeleine Carroll). It's not the funniest comedy you ever saw but darned if it isn't one of the most likable. Hope and Carroll have nice chemistry and their banter is great. Lots of snappy lines. The villains are played by George Zucco and Gale Sondergaard. It's pretty much impossible to have a bad movie that features both Zucco and Sondergaard. Nice cameo from Bing Crosby. Very funny bit about halfway through between Edward Gargan and James Burke over who is really Mulrooney (watch and you'll see). It's a good comedy with a fun spy plot and a great cast.

A good spy thriller: British agent Madeleine Carroll attempts to transport a scorpion-shaped brooch that conceals microfilm holding key military information. She is chased by Nazi spies led by George Zucco and Gale Sondergaard. Two agents are killed in the first ten minutes.

Cut to Bob Hope—or rather, his penguin. Hope and penguin are Haines and Percy, a sort of vaudeville act. The penguin has just gotten the call from Hollywood; Hope would like to think that he is the real star. Paths cross when Carroll, hoping to shake the Nazis from her trail, ducks into Hope's dressing room. And the fun begins.

Needing cover and hoping to conceal her true identity, Madeleine feigns romantic interest in Bob, and plays it up good. He is surprised and mystified by her attention—and soon by attention from Zucco and gang, who want the scorpion and know he is somehow involved. The scene where spies surround and stare him down on the train's club car is classic Hope, as his nervousness starts slowly but gradually bubbles over.

The scenes between Hope and Carroll are even better…she plays it fairly straight and he plays it goofy and the interplay just works like a charm. One especially funny scene in the train compartment: having pressed up close to him with a kiss and retrieved the brooch from his lapel, she stands up and moves away; not having a clue, Hope grabs her and tries to kiss her again—and she slaps him indignantly. "Take your hands off me!" she snaps. Poor Bob.

The dialog is bright and funny throughout, with Hope naturally getting the best lines, including some vintage Hope gems: "I've given up kissing strange women." "What made you stop?" "Strange women."

Zucco and Sondergaard have only small roles, but they sure can play the baddies. Talk about sinister!

However, Bob and Madeleine are pretty much the whole show here. The relationship between the two leads develops nicely—we have a pretty good idea how it's going to turn out, but it grows at a careful pace, not too fast or too slow or too sudden.

Top notch and full of great laughs.

After swooning for quite some time on his radio show about Madeline Carroll, the actress, enjoying the publicity, approached him about being a guest on his show. Hope suggested that instead, they do a film together. The result is the delightful "My Favorite Blonde" about a British spy, Carroll, trying to deliver a coded message to Los Angeles. Attempting to escape German agents, she barges into a theater dressing room inhabited by Hope, who is performing as straight man to a penguin.

Hope is a riot, with the wisecracks coming quickly throughout the film, and Carroll is a good leading lady for him - classy, serious, and the character she plays is game for anything to reach her goal. Gale Sondergaard has precious little to do - one wonders if her role was cut; Dooley Wilson has an unspoken bit on the train; and Bing Crosby directs Hope to a bus in one scene. Hope starts to walk away from him, stops, takes a beat and says to himself, "No. It couldn't be." There are other in jokes as well - Hope turns the radio to his own show and turns it off, commenting, "I can't stand that guy." As someone who was a young adult in the '60s, it wasn't kosher to like Bob Hope because of his politics, but I've always enjoyed his film performances. "My Favorite Blonde" is one of his best.

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.