published on January 07, 2024 in blog

They Got Me Covered

Production: RKO/Goldwyn. Director David Butler; Producer Samuel Goldwyn; Screenplay Harry Kurmitz, Frank Fenton, Lynn Root; Camera Rudolph Mate; Editor Daniel Mandell; Music Leigh Harline
Crew: (B&W) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1943. Running time: 96 MIN.
With: Bob Hope Dorothy Lamour Lenore Aubert Otto Preminger Eduardo Ciannelli Marion Martin

Samuel Goldwyn took top comedy writers, a top comedy director and top comic and distilled them into a farce of the broadest stripe. Sometimes it takes and sometimes it doesn't.

Samuel Goldwyn took top comedy writers, a top comedy director and top comic and distilled them into a farce of the broadest stripe. Sometimes it takes and sometimes it doesn’t.

An apparent endeavor by the writers to be super-funny has certainly resulted in a barrage of entertaining gags and situations, although lacking spontaneity. It’s just too clear how hard the boys were trying.

Bob Hope is pictured as a newspaperman who’s just been fired as a Moscow correspondent for completely missing the German invasion of Russia. He returns and goes to Washington in the hope of re-establishing his rep.

No asset to the film is the quality of much of the acting, particularly that of Dorothy Lamour, whose flat delivery of her lines makes Hope work twice as hard to sell his gags.

Director David Butler succeeds in keeping the film moving, although it is sometimes a battle against the episodic construction of the situation gags.

Jump to Comments