Millionaire Playboy

this is a very good slapstick comedy feature from RKO, with a fine supporting cast including Tom Kennedy playing one of his patented dimwits, Fritz Feld, Arthur Q. Bryan and the underrated Mantan Moreland. Russ Brown, now principally remembered as a leading support in the stage cast of DAMN YANKEES is a fine second banana. It's directed by old hand slapstick pro Leslie Goodwins. And it's all wrecked by Joe Penner.

During the 1930s a lot of radio comedy was predicated on people with funny voices -- Fanny Brice, a talented performer, led the way with Baby Snooks. There were others and Joe Penner was among their ranks: an adenoidal toddler's voice, a catch phrase ("wanna buy a duck") and that was it. Think of Lou Costello without Bud Abbott to play against and only a portion of one routine ("I'm a baaaaad boy!") and done. That's Joe Penner: a third banana from a burlesque show somehow shoved into the top spot of a movie without preparation.

Show business has always thrown up these sports and for the most part they star in one show, then it's on to whatever B or C list celebrities do -- "Comedy Central Celebrity Roasts" these days, where they can be safely ignored. Well, in those days, this is what happened to them: B comedies from RKO where skilled supporting casts and Leslie Goodwins tried to make bricks without straw.

So long as Joe Penner is not on the screen, this is a pretty good comedy: millionaire sportsman is afraid of young women, so his father hires a psychiatrist to cure him. The psychiatrist take him to a failing resort populated by millionaire-hunting pretty girls who are all, he informs the millionaire, actually old ladies. Complications, in the manner of all the best comedies, ensue, including a local mass murderer. Unfortunately, Joe is there to be annoying to other characters (which is fine) and audience alike (which is not). Others could certainly play this part very well, even, perhaps, people in this movie. Unfortunately, they chose Joe.