(1941, b/w) "There's a lot to be said for making some people laugh." In a Hollywood screening room, watching the climax of a motion picture - two men fighting atop a box car before falling off the train into the water, signifying the fate of capitalism and communism - opens director/writer Preston Sturges's comedy with the king of comedy, director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrae), arguing with his producers in an effort to convince them into backing his making a movie of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

Confronting Sully's newfound passion for creating a picture with dignity and relevance during a time of troubles - war in Europe, domestic strikes, millions without work or food - shifting from his usual (very successful) fare of funny musicals ("but with a little sex") to serious drama with a moral message, Mr LeBrand (Robert Warwick) inquires: "What do you know about trouble … hard luck?" Realizing that they're right, he's never had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to get by let alone look for a meal in a garbage can, Sully decides he'll go out into the world of tramps and hobos to experience life as they find it, "to be poor and needy."

However, his butler, Mr Burrows cautions that poverty is not simply the lack of wealth; it's like a plague, a contagious disease, fraught with danger, thus something to be shunned rather than courted. Putting a dime in his pocket and wrapping up a few belongings on the end of a stick, Sully heads off down the road with a bus trailing behind (not his idea), containing his secretary (Margaret Hayes), a doctor, his press agent Mr Jones (William Demarest), assorted reporters, and a chef. Catching a ride with a 13-year-old kid in a roadster, the "whippet tank," the youngster and his hitchhiker lead their pursuers on a wild ride, causing slapstick chaos inside the bus. At the end of the chase, Sully makes a deal with those in the bus concerned about his well-being, promising to meet them in Las Vegas if they'll leave him on his own.

After chopping wood for a couple of spinster sisters and finding himself locked inside a bedroom, like a fly in a spider's web, he escapes out an upper-story window down a sheet rope, gets a lift from a truck driver, only to wake up back in Hollywood. In an owl wagon (small diner) a blonde, disillusioned actress (Veronica Lake) on her way back home buys him ham and eggs, engaging him in conversation about her own bad luck with movie directors, whom she generalizes as Mr Smearkase.

Calling himself a washed-up movie director, Sully with the girl as his passenger gets arrested for stealing his own car. As he says in a phone discussion from the police station, "There's always a girl in the picture." Sprung from the hoosegow by his butler and valet, Sully takes the girl to his mansion where she accuses him of being a "big faker," pushing him into his swimming pool.

Determined to resume his amateur adventure into adversity - imagining himself to be "broke, hungry, homeless, drifting in despair" - Sully eventually accepts the girl ("I know fifty times more about trouble than you do") as his "beazel," garbed in a boy's castoff clothing. The butler and valet telephone the railroad, inquiring whether or not the freight train carries tramps and where they get on.

Hopping a train and sleeping in a box car, where Sully catches a cold, the pair arrive chilled, hungry, and penniless in Las Vegas where at a luncheonette the owner offers them "a taste of human kindness," giving them a free meal. As he promised, Sully meets with Jones and the others, gets ordered into bed by his doctor, but sends a one-hundred-dollar bill to the luncheonette.

Once more without checkbook or friends, Sully and the girl enter a hobo camp and go to a Salvation Army shelter for showers, food, sermon, and floor space for sleeping; but after he wakes with his shoes stolen, Sully and the girl find looking inside garbage cans for their dinner too much to stomach.

Back in Hollywood, he explains to the girl his predicament of a misfortunate marriage (his business manager's idea for tax purposes); having completed his experiment, Sully goes out yet again with $1000 worth of five-dollar bills to hand out to those down and out. After receiving a fiver, a rapscallion follows the fellow in tattered tailoring who's handing out money, raps him on the skull, and drags the unconscious man into a box car before getting his comeuppance.

Suffering temporary amnesia from the knock on his noggin, Sully ends up in a prison camp, sentenced as Richard Roe to six years of hard labor for trespassing, atrocious assault with a rock, and resisting arrest. Inside a church with a colored congregation, the prisoners uproariously enjoy a picture show. "If ever a plot needed a twist," Sully says to himself, "this one does," so he confesses to murdering John L. Sullivan.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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