Here Comes Cookie (1935)

Here Comes Cookie (1935)

Fearing his daughter’s fiancé is a gold digger, a millionaire hastily signs away all his wealth to his other daughter to protect it, to reveal the fiancé’s dark designs and protect his daughter.

Too bad the other daughter is Gracie Allen, a ditzy, clueless dame who can’t seem to understand the reasoning behind the plan and whose idea is that they now must conceal the wealth from the eyes of the world. She achieves this by destroying the property and opening the home to a troupe of unemployed vaudevillians, (some of which get to show off their acts.)

The crazy scheme concludes with the home turned into a theater and a disastrous show that somehow ends up being a comedy hit, and Gracie hailed as a genius producer.

I guess the basic idea for The Producers (1967) had been around for a lot longer than I ever thought but, don’t be confused: The Producers this ain’t.

The movie’s title refers to a popular song of the time (not even the main character’s nickname,) I assume, but we don’t even get to hear but a snippet of in a medley of a culturally confused Argentinian/Mexican number even when do we get an instrumental version during the credits.

George I am mostly familiar with from his late career where he seemed a seasoned veteran who made it all seem effortless. Gracie I still don’t get, even when, according to him, she was a master comedian.

It’s easy to see these are talented folks, but more difficult to see is what appeal they might have had to audiences of the time based on the characters and the flimsy plot we see here.

Audiences of the time must have been starving for light entertainment, and this movie is certainly very light in entertainment, but at barely over sixty minutes length it’s also fairly painless. Hopefully the other two features in the 3x1 disc will be better.

Director Norman Z. McLeod got much better movies out of the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Danny Kaye and Bob Hope.

With George Burns, Gracie Allen, George Barbier, Betty Furness, Andrew Tombes and Rafael Storm.