LEO MCCAREY
Bil’s rating (out of 5): BB.5. USA, 1934. Paramount Pictures. Story by Keene Thompson, Douglas MacLean, Screenplay by Walter DeLeon, Harry Ruskin. Cinematography by Henry Sharp. Produced by Emanuel Cohen. Music by John Leipold, Ralph Rainger. Production Design by Hans Dreier, Robert Odell. Film Editing by LeRoy Stone.
Charles Ruggles and Mary Boland, paired so well in Leo McCarey’s Ruggles Of Red Gap, team up again for this little road adventure. They play a long-married couple who go on a cross-country trip for their second honeymoon, but the privacy they desire isn’t theirs when they take on a couple of road partners (George Burns and Gracie Allen) to share expenses with on the trip. When they get to a hotel out west, drunken sheriff W.C. Fields arrests Ruggles for allegedly robbing the bank he works at, and all sorts of complications arise before this truly deserving couple can finally get some time to themselves. The exercise itself is forgettable, but it assembles some of the most memorable performers that the cinema has ever seen: the sight of watching Fields drink a bottle of whiskey and then gag at the sight of a glass of water is worth your time all on its own. Burns and Allen get their usual puns in, with him being the witty straight man and she delivering all the cute zingers.
