weezeralfalfa There's a lot going on at the Merchant's hotel. A magician's convention is just breaking up, while a mortician's convention is about to get started. In addition, a mediation between aircraft manufacturers and workers will soon take place. There is no obvious connection between these 3 groups in the beginning, but each will have some relevance to the central plot of a body being discovered in one of the guest rooms, and the hotel personnel trying to hush up the incident, fearing it will harm the hotel's reputation. To accomplish this, the body is moved around from place to place, trying to keep the police from finding it. This is sometimes accomplished by 2 hostess sisters(Hope and Faith Banner, played by Joan Blondell and Binnie Barnes)or by the hotel manager Puddle(Robert Benchley) or by Tommy (John Howard): the hotel's press agent. In addition, there is a bonkers magician(Eric Blore) who hasn't left because he's looking for "Charlie".Frank McGlynn plays the chairman of the morticians convention.. looking appropriately creepy, fitting the Hollywood stereotype of what undertakers should look like.Janet Blair(as Charity) plays the much younger sister of Hope and Faith. She's been going to an all girls private school, financed by Hope. Evidently, she's been man-starved, as she throws herself at most any man, giving Tommy a passionate kiss or two. Hope and Tommy have occasionally talked about marriage, but when Hope catches Charity and Tommy kissing, she assumes Charity has taken her place. Charity says she doesn't want to go back to school; she wants to be a hostess, like Hope and Faith.Robert Benchley plays his usual role as hotel or apartment manager, or a similar type of profession. Unfortunately, he's not as funny as in some films I've seen....I was impressed with John Howard as Tommy.In the incident where the body, abetted by Tommy, is playing poker with several men, the body keeps winning: "He's a lucky stiff" one remarks. But Tommy wants to lose so he has an excuse to leave with the body.I won't tell you how the magician, the morticians and the labor mediation conference further fit into the story. See the film on YouTube to find out how things work out. I rate this film as a lesser screwball comedy, which may be worthwhile for you to check out. The title is misleading, as the action all takes place within or just outside of a hotel.

mark.waltz It's "Convention City" time for Joan Blondell again, and this time, her movie has managed to survive the ravages of time, "Convention City" apparently having offended so many people back in 1936 that Warner Brothers allegedly destroyed every print. Along with Blondell are Janet Blair and Binnie Barnes as the three tough-talking "Convention Girls" who discover a dead body in one of the rooms. He was ironically there for an undertaker convention, and the girls disguise themselves as charwomen in order to get rid of the corpse. "Just dump him any place. We know you've got good taste", Barnes tells Blondell's boyfriend John Howard. With all this going on, the farce just gets even zanier, leading the girls into a situation that they fear they might not be able to drag themselves out of.In a case of art imitating life, Blondell mentions singer Dick Powell being in the hotel, this ironically coming during the last years of their marriage. The film is loaded with famous character actors: Charles Lane and Bess Flowers as a mortician and his wife who discover the dead body in their hotel suite; Almira Sessions and Una O'Connor as the spirited charwomen who keep finding the corpse; Larry Parks, Bruce Bennett and Lloyd Bridges as reporters; Vera Lewis and Sarah Edwards as busybody members of a moral society, and Eric Blore as a drunken convention member who has an amusing encounter with Howard that brings on a rather "gay" reference."Will all those planes and bombs dropping, a dead body ain't safe anymore", one potential coffin customer tells Lane while shopping, giving a timely war feel to the film. Another highlight is a card game with the corpse as one of the players where the others don't even know the man is dead! The film just proceeds to get sillier and sillier as it goes along, and when the dead card player is complemented as being "a lucky stiff", it reaches the nadir of good natured bad humor. At a very short running time, this doesn't outstay its welcome, and even if similar plots were done in two reel shorts, the "A" list cast makes this worth being a feature.

dougdoepke The director (Leigh Jason) keeps up the madcap pacing, while the scriptwriter comes up with a clever premise (hiding a body during a morticians convention). Then too, add some very capable performers, Blondell, Barnes, the incomparable Robert Benchley, and an extremely winsome Janet Blair. It looks promising, yet, the results are mixed at best, at least in my little book. It seems to me, a key element of screwball or madcap is flustered frustration. The classics—Bringing Up Baby (1939); Murder, He Says (1945), for example—get laughs from comedic exasperation. Petty annoyances keep thwarting a Grant or a MacMurray as they try to accomplish their goals, whether catching a big cat or escaping a deranged family. We laugh at the way everything seems to work against them, in a light-hearted way, of course. But it's that sense of comedic frustration, mounting over time and petty adversity that carries the momentum.Now, there's a rich source of frustration here with getting the body out of the hotel. One problem is that the focus switches back and forth too often among the players, so that the crucial sense of comedic exasperation is dissipated among Blondell, Howard, the cleaning ladies and the police chief. Note that the one scene that really works, the poker-playing skit, keeps the focus on Howard and his mounting frustration in trying to get away. In short, the movie suffers because there's no one person (a Grant or a MacMurray) to identify with as he or she encounters the series of petty plot adversities. Thus, a key element of comedic continuity is lost, as, for example, when the cleaning ladies booze it up, an amusing but unconnected event. Add to that, Howard's limitations as a comedic performer and the really unfortunate casting of an inapt Hugh O'Connell as the police chief. In fact, O'Connell's role turns out to be much bigger than expected and really requires the flustered antics of an expert performer, say, a Donald McBride or a James Burke, familiar cop faces from that era.Anyway, the movie does have its compensations, especially the clever twist ending. I'm just sorry that so many promising elements produce such a generally mild result.

blanche-2 A wonderful cast stars in this 1941 screwball comedy, "Three Girls About Town," which seems to have come onto the scene a little too late. By 1941, the screwball era was over. But when a film stars Joan Blondell, Binnie Barnes, Robert Benchley, Eric Blore, Janet Blair, Una O'Connor, and John Howard, it's worth at least a look.Blondell and Barnes play sisters, Hope and Faith, who are convention hostesses at a hotel. They're in trouble with the local moral yardstick, though being 1941, it's doubtful they've done anything more than stay up late and party with the guests. They have their younger sister Charity (Blair) in private school, and when she shows up unexpectedly, one wonders what she's learning there. She flirts with Tommy (Howard), Hope's fiancée, and likes hanging around in lingerie.At this particular time, a magician's convention is just exiting the hotel and a mortician's convention is coming in, when a body is found in the room next door to the girls' room. The hotel manager (Robert Benchley) tries to help them get rid of it before Tommy, who is a reporter covering labor negotiations at the hotel, finds out about it.This film gets a little tedious after a while, though there are some funny scenes and the acting is very good. You really can't go wrong with pros like Blondell, Barnes, Benchley, and Blore, even when the script doesn't support them.