Three Girls About Town (1941)

Dreadfully Boring

Boring

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Hope (Joan Blondell), Faith (Binnie Barnes) and Charity (Janet Blair) are three oddly named sisters. The first two work at a hotel and the third has arrived for a visit. This hotel specializes in hosting conventions and exactly what their job entails is a big vague (perhaps it was implied that they were 'good time girls'). One group of conventioners are morticians and another is a meeting of a labor and management with a federal mediator. However, the mediator never arrives...and Tommy Hopkins (John Howard) is a reporter waiting and waiting and waiting. However, suddenly and without warning, a body appears...it's the mediator! Well, since he is a reporter, Tommy is planning on exploiting this to the max...but then the body disappears...and keeps appearing and disappearing...much like in the film "Weekend at Bernies".This film's biggest problem is that it tries way too hard. It's supposed to be a screwball comedy but continually bashes you over the head as if to say "now you MUST laugh". The ending is even worse, as the actors seem to have no idea what to do and start mugging badly at the camera...as if they are begging for more laughs. As a result, the film really grates on you when it should have been funny and Eric Blore (a very funny guy) is sadly wasted here as well.

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.

A lot of the screwball comedies leave me wondering what was funny. This one, while not a classic, was very pleasant to watch and had lots of silly chuckles. My favorite scene was the one described by another reviewer, where the reporter and the dead man play poker. Having won the first hand, the other players won't let our hero take his "friend" "Joe" away. Desperate to get away, he tries everything to get his dead friend to lose a hand, but keeps winning.I mostly remember Joan Blondell as Lottie on Here Come the Brides. She was a standout there and I can't help but think if given a chance, maybe in the 50s or early 60s, she could have easily been a huge TV star of a comedy series. I think she was a truly talented actress.

This film is an undiscovered classic comedy. Robert Benchly is the desk clerk of a hotel where a wild magician's convention is breaking up at the same time a somber mortician's convention is starting. Joan Blondell and Binnie Barnes play two hostesses at the hotel who are in hot water with the local moral guardians. To complicate matters even more, their little sister arrives after escaping from a "proper" private school. All she does is wear lingerie and make passes at older men.Joan's boyfriend John Howard is at the hotel covering the negotiations for a labor strike. When the mediator turns up dead, the girls try to spirit the body out of the hotel to avoid bad publicity. This breathless comedy is just fantastic, as the body is continually being moved, either intentionally or unintentionally. The ending of this film is definitely a surprise, but it fits the film perfectly.In one of the best scenes, Howard and his dead "buddy" duck into a poker game just to avoid the police. He wins a hand while the police go by, but the other players won't let him out of the game. Howard does everything he can to lose, but still wins all the hands anyway!