Imagine Fred and Ethel Mertz as a staid married couple in a small town where he's a successful real estate owner and she's his oh so devoted wife, caring for their home and two children. But it's obvious who has the brains in the family and who has the wool completely over their eyes. If she's the wit, then he's the nit wit, half wit, nincompoop and completely babbity and provincial. He's the thick headed businessman who thinks he's smarter than anybody else and must be knocked down completely to wake up and smell the Maxwell House. The first half of this film has Guy Kibbee's character being completely revealed, fooled by his lodge buddies into thinking he acted inappropriately while drunk, while his wife (Aline MacMahon) trying to keep the family life calm and cosy. The second half shows Kibbee's fall from grace, both in a personal scandal and a shady business deal. With their differences in age, Kibbee and MacMahon are as close to William Frawley and Vivian Vance as a couple can be, although they were paired together at least half a dozen times.
Stealing every moment she's on screen, Hattie McDaniel is a hoot as the chatty cook who envisions herself an equal and offers Greek chorus on everything and anything while boiling Kibbee's two and a half minute egg. Claire Dodd is the shady lady who leads Kibbee astray, with Berton Churchill as a crooked judge and Alan Hale as another of Kibbee's pals who turn against him. But it's the wise MacMahon and the fluttery Kibbee who get the top honors, their chemistry undeniable even if the age difference is extremely obvious. The film is too short to give the Sinclair Lewis novel real justice, but the actors makes every moment shine. Like Babbitt, you too may come out learning something, which in his case is true humility.
Stealing every moment she's on screen, Hattie McDaniel is a hoot as the chatty cook who envisions herself an equal and offers Greek chorus on everything and anything while boiling Kibbee's two and a half minute egg. Claire Dodd is the shady lady who leads Kibbee astray, with Berton Churchill as a crooked judge and Alan Hale as another of Kibbee's pals who turn against him. But it's the wise MacMahon and the fluttery Kibbee who get the top honors, their chemistry undeniable even if the age difference is extremely obvious. The film is too short to give the Sinclair Lewis novel real justice, but the actors makes every moment shine. Like Babbitt, you too may come out learning something, which in his case is true humility.