JohnHowardReid Director: HAL ROACH. Associate directors: Gordon Douglas, Hal Roach, junior. Screenplay: Arnold Belgard, Harry Langdon, Mickell Novack. Based on the novel by Eric Hatch. Photography: Norbert Brodine. Film editor: Bert Jordan. Art director: Charles D. Hall. Music: Georgie Stoll. Songs: Hoagy Carmichael (music), Stanley Adams (lyrics). Special effects: Roy Seawright. Producer: Hal Roach. Copyright 9 January 1941 by Hal Roach Studios, Inc. Released through United Artists. 87 minutes. SYNOPSIS: When he fails to go through with a wedding, a handsome, personable millionaire is confined in a lunatic asylum.COMMENT: As in the later Hi Diddle Diddle, the Menjou character is a bogus colonel type here (or is he?). Indeed this movie is almost as high-spirited as Diddle, though the players don't practice double takes, nor do they sling raspberries at the audience, nor do they draw attention to the casting of the director's girl friend. John Hubbard tries hard, but seems rather stiff compared to Dennis O'Keefe (who would have made a much better job of the role), but if he misses out on the scenes with the lunatics (his playing is both too pat and too flat), he does have some fun with the lions. Certainly the lovely Carole Landis seems prettier and much less formal than Martha Scott. Most of the laughs, however, are generated by Menjou, Kelly, Best and Butterworth, assisted by a goodly array of cameo turns from the likes of Shemp Howard, Jack Norton and Clarence Wilson. Admittedly, Butterworth disappears for most of the movie, but fortunately contrives to return for the grand climax. Most of the songs — pleasant enough, if rather ordinary — are supplied by The Charioteers. Roach's direction appears remarkably fluid at times. Road Show was presumably designed as just that: a smooth-as-silk prestige attraction. Photography is appealing and production values rate high.

mark.waltz I started watching this with a great deal of interest after seeing several "streamlined" Hal Roach comedies and a few of his "A" budget films that were precursors to much later hysterical farces such as "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun". With the exception of a few (the "Topper" series, "Merrilly We Live", "Turnabout"), they are not great films, but they offer enough screwball antics to give one chest pains after laughing so much. This one had some major laughs throughout, but they were further apart than the films I just mentioned as well as such 45-50 minute "featurettes" such as "Miss Polly", "The Devil With Hitler" and "All-American". To say disappointment followed is an understatement considering a cast of some of my favorite comical character actors.The storyline is set up for farce. A millionaire (John Hubbard) with a gold digging fiancée whom he is prepared to jilt at the alter is put into a mental institution for a "rest" when he starts "baahing" like a sheep after running out of the church. This sets up promise for a funny film, but it sorely disappoints. At the mental institution, he meets wacky Adolph Menjou almost by accident and they escape, only to get involved in Carole Landis's traveling carnival. Patsy Kelly, a Hal Roach regular since 1933, is present, giving her usual hilarity as a carnival woman from Brooklyn (where else would a Patsy Kelly character be from?) who is posing as a Native American selling a cure-all tonic. An actual Native American falls head over heels for her, presenting her with a portrait of himself (a stick figure) with her (a portly and obviously pregnant Indian woman). That is probably the funniest segment of the film as a recurring gag which has a typical Hal Roach payoff.Throw in Charles Butterworth as Menjou's eccentric wealthy cousin who loves riding on firetrucks who ends up encountering the carnival while Menjou is on the run. Then there is the wonderful Florence Bates in a bit role as Hubbard's social climbing mother-in-law not-to-be. Sadly, she is wasted in only the opening segment. There are some genuinely funny farcial moments towards the end with a gang of ruffians who try and break up the carnival only to find themselves surrounded by the group of wackos who have some surprises up their sleeve. Willie Best, an able black comic of the 30's and 40's, is funny as one of the carnival workers who encounters a battle with the carnival lion Hubbard has been forced to "train".I wish I could give this a higher review. It has a lot of potential to be a lot funnier than it is. I saw this years ago and thought it was funnier back then, but after recent screenings of some of Roach's other comedies of the same era have to mark it as a disappointment.

Terrell-4 When millionaire society playboy Drogo Gaines (John Hubbard) backs out of his marriage in front of the minister by pretending to be crazy, his society gold digger fiancé has just the answer. She has him committed. He can't talk his way out of this one. He meets fellow patient Colonel Carleton Carroway, of the caraway seeds Carroways (Adolphe Menjou, who is top billed). After several amusing situations involving loony jokes, the two break out. They find themselves in a traveling road show company of good-hearted, small-time entertainers that the local police always want to close. After songs, jokes, romance and an apparent shared taste for salting their apple pie slices, Drogo and road show manager Penguin Moore (Carole Landis) bring the road show to the old manse and find true love. Drogo's money and the Colonel's fast talking save the carnival. Along the way we've had a chance to see the carnival in action, a fine comic riot and some first-class second bananas doing their stuff...people like Patsy Kelly, Charles Butterworth, George E. Stone, Florence Bates...and Menjou. In his day he was a first-class comic actor. Just watch him in Roxie Hart. Unfortunately, there's also some "ya suh, boss," quivering-knees-in-front-of-the-lion, fried-chicken humor involving Willie Best. Why push on through this pleasant, unexceptional time killer, even if it was co-written, or, more probably, had some of the jokes developed by Harry Langdon? Two words: Hoagy Carmichael. He wrote three songs for this movie. If you're as much a Carmichael fan as I am, you'll know the chances of ever hearing these three if you don't watch the movie are probably zero. "Yum Yum" (20 minutes in) and "Calliope Jane" (34 minutes in) are performed by the four-member African-American close-harmony group, The Charioteers. They're excellent upbeat songs. Carmichael wrote the lyrics for both. "I Should Have Known You Years Ago" (58 minutes in) has a nice melody of yearning, dubbed by Martha Mears for Landis, but is marred by the conventional, syrupy lyrics of Harris Robison.

bkoganbing I have to agree with the two previous reviewers. I can't believe this film hasn't got more of a reputation than it does. It's a non-stop laugh from start to finish.The players in Road Show look like they're having a marvelous time in this film. Hal Roach must have kept a really loose and happy set for these people to have put in the work they did.Millionaire playboy John Hubbard gets cold feet at the altar and his gold digging bride gets him committed to an asylum. While there he meets Adolphe Menjou who's another millionaire there for a rest cure from his grabby family.The two make an escape and wind up in a carnival owned by Carole Landis and from then on it's one mad plot situation after another.Adolphe Menjou was a player of extraordinary range. In silent films with that waxed mustache he was usually villains, but in sound he played a good range of serious characters. Yet he had a funny side to him that when it was displayed could be hilarious. We saw more than hints of it in films like Broadway Gondolier and Gold Diggers of 1935. But here as the center of the film, he really explodes on the screen. I've never seen him funnier.Possibly because it did not star any of the great comic actors, just a whole lot of good players doing their shtick, Road Show does not stand out in the Hal Roach list of comedy masterpieces. That's a pity because this shows what Roach could do without people like Laurel and Hardy to star in a film for him.Don't ever miss this if it's broadcast again.