Obliging Young Lady

From the opening of this minor screwball comedy from RKO, the silly tone is set for an enjoyable romp.

Joan Carroll plays a girl abandoned by her silly squabbling parents to the lawyer's secretary--Ruth Warrick, who is being chased by a crazy reporter--Edmond O'Brien. They all end up at Lake Mohawk in the off season.

The opening motif of repeating Heinie Manusch to the sounds of the clattering train wheels is very funny and starts the film off on a perfect note. Manusch was a famous baseball player. Warrick has a stuffy boy friend (Robert Smith) and the voracious lady reporter (Eve Arden) is after the story of the little girl.

At the lodge, Carroll and Warrick pose as sisters until O'Brien shows up and says he's the kid's father. The hotel staff gets intrigued especially when Smith shows up and says he "Mama's" boy friend.

Lots of fun and made funnier my a sterling supporting cast: George Cleveland, Ceorge Chandler, Almira Sessions and Fortunio Bonanova are the hotel staff. Charles Lane is the detective. Luis Alberni is the deranged composer. Franklin Pangborn heads the birding party. Marjorie Gateston and John Miljan are the parents. Pierre Watkin is the lawyer. Andrew Tombes is the train conductor. George Watts is the judge who wants chicken.

Warrick and O'Brien are attractive leads. Carroll isn't too sticky and is funny as she puts tacks on everyone's chairs.

and always remember: HEINIE MANUSCH!

It's painfully obvious that OBLIGING YOUNG LADY is about a bratty girl who isn't the least bit obliging. Nor do the adults around her behave with any more common sense throughout the running time of this weak screwball comedy.

JOAN CARROLL gets top billing as the bratty girl given to putting tacks on chairs for sheer delight. EDMOND O'BRIEN proves that comedy was not his forte; EVE ARDEN is totally wasted as a newspaper woman; RUTH WARRICK is pretty but can do nothing much with a bland role as a lawyer who takes the girl to a lodge in the country while the parents are involved in a custody battle.

The good supporting cast includes GEORGE CLEVELAND, CHARLES LANE, FORTUNIO BONANOVA and FRANKLIN PANGBORN. Pangborn is the only bright note in the comedy, arriving at the lodge with his bird group and providing some genuinely amusing comic moments with their bird calls.

RKO was obviously hoping to provide a star vehicle for child actress JOAN CARROLL but the character she plays is obnoxious from scene one and the script never gives her an opportunity to be anything but annoying.

Bad script defeats everyone and results in a strained and very foolish comedy in which everyone is guilty of boorish behavior.

This weirdly inept attempt at screwball comedy is undone by the casting of its three leads. Edmond O'Brien -- best remembered today as the desperate poisoning victim in the 1950 cult classic "D.O.A." and the alcoholic senator in "Seven Days In May" (1964) -- and Ruth Warrick -- known primarily for playing Charles Foster Kane's first wife in "Citizen Kane" and a long run on a TV soap opera -- were never known as adept farceurs. And moppet actress Joan Carroll has the kind of physical and verbal precocity that makes the audience wonder if perhaps she might not be a midget (OK, "little person," if we have not yet appropriately repudiated the silliness of political correctness). And she's a little person with a distracting tendency to let her mouth hang open in closeup reaction shots, at that.

The script -- rewritten (over Frank Ryan) by Bert Granet, suggesting that a certain paucity of talent may have been what redirected him to demi-success as a TV producer in the '50s and '60s -- is littered with what are presumably meant to be running gags, but bespeak a lack of understanding that to merit that classification, the shtik must be funny, not merely repetitive. These "runners" include the bizarre notion of a train's sound mimicking the name of a famous baseball player of the period, Heinie Manusch, and every passenger on the train getting the name stuck in their head, treating us to tedious extended sequences of extras chanting the name over and over again in syncopation with the chugging of the locomotive. There is also Carroll's character, Bridget, who repeatedly demands, for no apparent reason, "What's wrong with the name Bridget?"

This farrago of badly-executed ideas is ultimately ill-served by the direction of B movie hack Richard Wallace, whose coverage is so inadequate that the cutter is repeatedly forced to go from masters to two-shots in which actors' positions and expressions change radically, making startling jump cuts out of what should be seamless transitions. Wallace even manages to undermine the usually-redoubtable Eve Arden, evidently sabotaging her trademark talent for wringing laughs from the lamest one-liners by underplaying. It almost looks like Wallace coaxed her to overact. It's painful to watch...not unlike the film as a whole.

This film had great potential, however, the screenplay left a lot to be desired. Young Miss Carroll is actually the better performer of all the folks who appear in it. Franklin Panghorn isn't that bad either. After these two forget it, which is a ashame. Eve Arden is wasted, such a talent deserved more than the tripe she was given in this one. Edmund O'Brian makes one ill just watching him handle his lines. I cannot bear to discuss the other parts. Joan Carroll had a lot of potential, but she like Ann Carter and Sharyn Moffet never were consistent child performers thanks to much of the inane scripts they were given. Carroll was the most talented of the three RKO child Starlets, but Moffet at least had a few pictures that were all her own. Obliging Young Lady shows Carroll was star material, this just wasn't a vehicle in which she was able to shine, still whatever redeeming value it has is carried by her.

A very annoying young girl's rich parents are getting a divorce. Apparently this is big news, as reporters are flocking to interview them as well as the child. In order to keep the child away from this hysteria, the child is sent on a vacation in the country--with a fake mother so reporters won't recognize her. In the process, Edmond O'Brien meets up with the pair and instantly falls for the lady (Joan Carroll) and spends the film following them.

I love romantic comedies from the 1930s and 40s, so you can't attribute my indifference to this film to any sort of dislike of the genre. I also love Edmund O'Brien and he could have handled this film better....if he'd had a decent script. The combination of a romantic comedy and O'Brien simply SHOULD have been a lot better.

The biggest problem with "Obliging Young Lady" is a complete and total lack of subtlety. As a result, the humor sure seems very, very forced. Too many story elements just seemed to be tossed in for effect--not for coherence. And, because of this, the characters seem, at times, more like caricatures than real people. Now SOME of this is due to the genre--in "Bringing Up Baby", Katharine Hepburn's character sure isn't all that believable--but the script was so good that you could suspend judgment. With "Obliging Young Lady", the script just doesn't have the energy or quality to do this.

Here are a few problems with the script. First, the young lady (from the film's title) was so completely unlike a real child it was ridiculous. She ran around putting tacks on people's seats compulsively--for a VERY cheap laugh that they did AGAIN and AGAIN. She also manipulated the heck out of everyone with a finesse that few, if any, adults could match. And, she was too 'cute' for her own good--and the film makers really tried too hard to make her adorable and kooky. I just wanted to hit her! Second, while O'Brien could have been great (especially since he was thinner and not yet Film Noir ugly back in 1942--plus he was a nice actor), his character too often was annoying. His "Heinie Manush" joke simply wasn't funny--yet it was repeated again and again and again. This really got me hating O'Brien's character and made me wonder if Manush (a retired baseball player) ever thought of suing these folks! Also, his character often got too close to the border between being a nice, cute guy AND being a creepy stalker. The way he forced himself on the leading lady made me wonder if he might just be a date rapist--he came on THAT strong and ignored every request to leave her alone. Nice. Third, while the bird watchers sequence could have been very funny, it was WAAAY overdone--too kooky and ridiculous--almost like it was made for a Three Stooges short (for which it might have been appropriate).

So is the film worth seeing? Well, it's not all horrible and is a watchable time-passer--but nothing more. If you love old movies, it's worth seeing--otherwise, try seeing "Arsenic and Old Lace", "My Man Godfrey", "His Girl Friday" or "Bringing Up Baby" instead--these are all far more worthy romantic/screwball comedies.