No, No, Lady

Stage director Bud Jamison thinks that Dorothy Christy's play in which her stage husband lets her go off with her lover, and even finances the move, is unbelievable, but she insists it's drawn from life. But her real husband, Andy Clyde, is confused by the goings-on. He thinks it's real. But will he let the lady go as easily as that?

Eddie Cline directs this, and the absurd confusions of movie-screen reality and stage-fakery is something he had been going over for a decade or so, particularly in the shorts he had directed Buster Keaton in. There's more of that here, and Clyde's stoic, slightly slow-witted reactions to the theatrical silliness plays very nicely indeed.

When the story begins, a couple are rehearsing a play...one that is REALLY hard to believe. In the play, the cheating wife convinces her mousy and ineffectual husband to not only condone this affair but help pay for the lovers to run off together!! The director things the whole thing is unbelievable, so the couple from the play decide to act it out with her real life husband...the mousy and ineffectual Ed Martin (Andy Clyde). He DOES respond much like the man in the play and you wonder just how far the two can go until Ed loses his cool and fights back...but he doesn't and the director decides to do the play as written.

During the play, the onstage couple get lost in their roles and he begins actually kissing her passionately! She soon responds in kind...all the while Ed is watching in the audience. Does he continue to do nothing or will the worm finally turn?

This is just a fair comedy short for one big reason...it really isn't all that funny and could have used more laughs. It's watchable but could have been so much better...especially since Clyde could be quite funny. It's watchable but it just feels like they missed the mark.

By the way, if you see the film, although Clyde looks like he's about 60, he is actually in his late 30s and he often took on roles of characters far older than he actually was.