IMDb RATING
6.9/10
1.5K
YOUR RATING
Assorted wacky characters converge on a Chinese hotel to bid on a new invention: television.Assorted wacky characters converge on a Chinese hotel to bid on a new invention: television.Assorted wacky characters converge on a Chinese hotel to bid on a new invention: television.
Rose Marie
- Rose Marie
- (as Baby Rose Marie)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaDuring the filming of one of W.C. Fields' scenes, a mild earthquake struck Los Angeles. The earthquake was supposedly captured on film. In the film clip, Fields and his co-stars are standing in the hotel lobby set, when the picture begins to shake as if the camera is vibrating. A chandelier on the set begins to swing back and forth, and a lamp suddenly falls over. Fields calmly ushers his co-stars off the soundstage, telling them to stay calm and walk slowly. The "earthquake footage" of Fields was played in newsreels across the country in the weeks following the 1933 quake. Nearly forty years later, however, director A. Edward Sutherland admitted that the "earthquake footage" was a hoax concocted by himself and Fields. It was done by rigging wires on the lamp and chandelier, and shaking the camera to simulate an earthquake. Sutherland claimed that he and Fields were amazed when the "earthquake footage" was accepted as genuine by newsreel distributors. "We shared a big laugh and an even bigger drink", Sutherland recalled. To this day, the fake "earthquake footage" is occasionally broadcast and accepted as genuine by entertainment television shows such as Access Hollywood (1996). The footage appeared in Hollywood Out-takes and Rare Footage (1983).
- GoofsDuring the scene where Prof. Henry R. Quail is by his auto gyro talking to Doctor Wong and Peggy Hopkins Joyce, you can see the shadow of the boom mic moving above their heads. The boom mic then hits something, presumably the auto gyro, making a noise which makes Prof. Henry R. Quail and Peggy Joyce look up.
- Quotes
Professor Quail: Hey! Where am I?
Woman: Wu-Hu.
Professor Quail: Woo-Hoo to you sweetheart. Hey Charlie, where am I?
Hotel Manager: WU-HU!
[Professor Quail removes the flower from his lapel]
Professor Quail: Don't let the posey fool you!
- ConnectionsFeatured in Too Much Harmony (1933)
- SoundtracksShe Was a China Tea-cup and He Was Just a Mug
(1933) (uncredited)
Lyrics by Leo Robin
Music by Ralph Rainger
Sung offscreen by an unidentified man and danced by Sterling Holloway, Lona Andre,
Mary Jane Sloan, Gwen Zetter and Chorus
Featured review
"Careless, My Little Love Cake, Careless"
W. C. Fields and an all-star cast triumph (albeit barely) over a dated attempt at kitchen-sink comedy that might be described as "Grand Hotel" meets "Saturday Night Live" if the latter went to air in the early days of the Roosevelt Administration.
I enjoyed it, anyway.
In Wuhu, China, an inventor of something called radioscope, not exactly television but rather a video medium that "needs no broadcast station, and no carrier waves" puts his device up for auction. His desired buyer is something called the American Electric Company, but alas, the American agent for same, Tommy Nash (nominal lead actor Stuart Erwin) struggles to get his would-be wife to accept the fact he's not really there to win the hand of celebrated man-killer Peggy Hopkins Joyce, playing herself.
All this of course falls by the boards when Professor Quail (W. C. Fields) arrives via an autogyro dubbed "The Spirit Of Brooklyn."
"What is Wuhu doing where Kansas City ought to be?" Quail demands.
"Maybe you're lost," somebody suggests.
"Kansas City is lost!" the professor replies. "I am here!"
And so he is. Fields' arrival kick-starts the anarchic film into a more enjoyable gear.
Not a great film. But at times a good one, funny if dated. The cast includes Franklin Pangborn as the frustrated hotel manager, George Burns as the hotel doctor, and Gracie Allen as his dopey nurse, whose brother fell off an ironing board because he forgot to take his pants off before pressing them.
"I've got a good mind to get a different nurse," Burns exclaims.
"Oh, no, no," Pangborn replies. "This one is different enough."
Joyce, a real-life gossip-page celebrity starring here in her only movie, is often mentioned as the big detraction in this movie. But she's actually pretty good, whether flirting with Erwin or discovering herself accidentally in bed with a bumptious Fields. She shows more comedy chops in her reaction shots then you expect from a novice.
Also fun in an unconventional role is the one and only Bela Lugosi, here Joyce's ex-husband who wants both the woman and the invention, and pledges vengeance against "that loose-living American jackal" she seems to fancy. Lugosi knows how to deliver menace, but here he does with some surprisingly enjoyable comedic turns, like struggling to open a window so he can shoot Fields with his mangled revolver.
The radioscope is used here as a device to introduce some musical variety bits that bkoganbing says in another review here was based on the Big Broadcast films that Paramount Studios was producing at the time. I think it was also inspired by "Elstree Calling," a British film for which Alfred Hitchcock directed interstitial segments that also used the invention of television as an excuse for serving up a variety- show type film.
Director A. Edmund Sutherland and his team of writers find room for songs by Rudy Vallee, Cab Calloway, and kiddie singer Rose Marie (later of "The Dick Van Dyke Show"), all of which add something to the general merriment even as they also water down the weak plot. Nothing in this film lasts more than a few minutes, because nothing can sustain our interest longer.
Ultimately, what you get here, after a half-hour intro, is one of Fields' better comedy showcases before he got too drunk for Paramount and moved on to Universal to make his finest comedies. If the test of a great comic is getting solid laughs with second-rate material, Fields nails it here.
I enjoyed it, anyway.
In Wuhu, China, an inventor of something called radioscope, not exactly television but rather a video medium that "needs no broadcast station, and no carrier waves" puts his device up for auction. His desired buyer is something called the American Electric Company, but alas, the American agent for same, Tommy Nash (nominal lead actor Stuart Erwin) struggles to get his would-be wife to accept the fact he's not really there to win the hand of celebrated man-killer Peggy Hopkins Joyce, playing herself.
All this of course falls by the boards when Professor Quail (W. C. Fields) arrives via an autogyro dubbed "The Spirit Of Brooklyn."
"What is Wuhu doing where Kansas City ought to be?" Quail demands.
"Maybe you're lost," somebody suggests.
"Kansas City is lost!" the professor replies. "I am here!"
And so he is. Fields' arrival kick-starts the anarchic film into a more enjoyable gear.
Not a great film. But at times a good one, funny if dated. The cast includes Franklin Pangborn as the frustrated hotel manager, George Burns as the hotel doctor, and Gracie Allen as his dopey nurse, whose brother fell off an ironing board because he forgot to take his pants off before pressing them.
"I've got a good mind to get a different nurse," Burns exclaims.
"Oh, no, no," Pangborn replies. "This one is different enough."
Joyce, a real-life gossip-page celebrity starring here in her only movie, is often mentioned as the big detraction in this movie. But she's actually pretty good, whether flirting with Erwin or discovering herself accidentally in bed with a bumptious Fields. She shows more comedy chops in her reaction shots then you expect from a novice.
Also fun in an unconventional role is the one and only Bela Lugosi, here Joyce's ex-husband who wants both the woman and the invention, and pledges vengeance against "that loose-living American jackal" she seems to fancy. Lugosi knows how to deliver menace, but here he does with some surprisingly enjoyable comedic turns, like struggling to open a window so he can shoot Fields with his mangled revolver.
The radioscope is used here as a device to introduce some musical variety bits that bkoganbing says in another review here was based on the Big Broadcast films that Paramount Studios was producing at the time. I think it was also inspired by "Elstree Calling," a British film for which Alfred Hitchcock directed interstitial segments that also used the invention of television as an excuse for serving up a variety- show type film.
Director A. Edmund Sutherland and his team of writers find room for songs by Rudy Vallee, Cab Calloway, and kiddie singer Rose Marie (later of "The Dick Van Dyke Show"), all of which add something to the general merriment even as they also water down the weak plot. Nothing in this film lasts more than a few minutes, because nothing can sustain our interest longer.
Ultimately, what you get here, after a half-hour intro, is one of Fields' better comedy showcases before he got too drunk for Paramount and moved on to Universal to make his finest comedies. If the test of a great comic is getting solid laughs with second-rate material, Fields nails it here.
helpful•60
- slokes
- Oct 12, 2012
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Details
- Runtime1 hour 8 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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