DVD/Movie Review: My Favorite Brunette and The Cat and the Canary starring Bob Hope

My Favorite Brunette and The Cat and the Canary
starring Bob Hope (DVD My)

While recently working on the comedic play “The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940” at the Lincoln Community Playhouse, I was inspired to watch two classic Bob Hope comedy dramas, which served as inspiration for that wacky mystery/farce play.

 

My Favorite Brunette (1947) featured Hope as mild-mannered children’s photographer Ronnie Jackson, who envies the private eye who operates out of the office next door to his. When that P.I. is absent, Ronnie ends up taking one of his cases, after misrepresenting himself, and soon finds himself up to his armpits in thugs, femmes fatales, and gun-toting goons. Because the film opens with Ronnie being led to the executioner’s chamber on Death Row and relating his adventures in flashback, we now that things didn’t go his way. That’s what you get for pretending to be something you’re not!

 

The Cat and the Canary (1939) is a more direct thematic predecessor of “The Music Comedy Murders of 1940”, with Hope as Wally Campbell, one of several people named in the will of an eccentric man who died 10 years earlier. The will requires that all the people named in it must journey to the swampy estate in the Bayou, where the man used to live. The primary heiress, Joyce Norman (played by frequent Hope co-star Paulette Goddard) must live for a week in the estate, without being driven insane, in order to fully inherit.

 

This triggers a madcap series of wacky events, involving hidden doorways and passageways, creepy spooks, other jealous relatives, a woman who may or may not be a witch, and maybe even paranormal hijinks.

 

Both films are classic comedian Bob Hope at his wimpy, sarcastic, snarky, break-the-fourth-wall best. Anyone who’s ever seen and enjoyed Hope and his friend Bing Crosby in their series of “The Road to…” movies will definitely enjoy both of these films. The libraries own My Favorite Brunette on DVD. The Cat and the Canary is available to borrow on DVD through our InterLibrary Loan service, but it is also available to watch for free on YouTube (with commercial interruptions). Both movies are short — under 90 minutes each!

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the stage play The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940.)

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for My Favorite Brunette ) | ( Internet Movie Database entry for The Cat and the Canary )

 

See the booklist page for the Lincoln Community Playhouse: The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 here on BookGuide, for additional similar items!

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

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