Never Say Die (1939)

Disappointment for a huge fan!

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

NEVER SAY DIE—8 One of Hope's Best. The plot of this Bob Hope comedy is very familiar, but I cannot hold this against the film. In the 1950s and 60s, many TV shows ripped off the plot—including "The Honeymooners" and "The Flintstones"! So, while it might seemed clichéd, I think it's one of the first films to use this plot, so its familiarity cannot be held against it.The film begins with a very cute scene involving a health spa in Switzerland and their water with magical properties. You just have to see it to appreciate it. As for Hope, he plays a millionaire hypochondriac who insists he's ill when he's actually in fine condition. However, though a silly mistake, doctors now assume he's going to soon die.In the meantime, Hope is pursued by a rather scary woman with a history of husbands who die under mysterious circumstances. She insists they marry and Hope is too cowardly to say no. But, on the day of their wedding he meets another woman (Martha Raye) who is also being forced into a marriage she doesn't want and Hope proposes that they marry each other. After all, it will save both of them and he's expected to be dead within a month—so it's a no-lose proposition. Shortly after their wedding, Raye's true love (Andy Devine) arrives to wait for Hope's demise. Soon, the black widow and Raye's fiancé arrive as well and so the countdown begins.What sets this apart from most Hope films is the writing—it's just better than usual and the film abounds with laughs. Plus, surprisingly, the chemistry between Raye and Hope was nice—and a bit romantic. It's a swell film that you can't help but enjoy.

Bob Hope and Martha Raye continually keep the viewer off balance with regard to their romantic intentions in "Never Say Die", even though they start out by getting married and then go about falling in something like love by the movie's finale. In between, the story ping pongs back and forth between scenes of frustrated would be spouses who don't get their way. Andy Devine takes a wrong turn off the last stagecoach and winds up here as Raye's good old boy from back home who try as he might, never quite seems to get things right between himself and his fiancée. Someone should have thought of slipping him a Mickey.I had to rewind and listen closely a couple of times for a line Hope slid past the censors. When gold digger Juno Marko (Gale Sondergaard) tries to trap John Kidley (Hope) with her matrimonial snare, she alludes to what might have been an indiscreet night of passion. Hope's response - "..., well that was the elevator you see, I just went and I got off, it'll happen." I probably got a kick the most from Kidley's butler Jeepers, played in great understated comic fashion by Ernest Cossart. His deadpan delivery was reminiscent of E.E. Clive's portrayal of Tenny in the Bulldog Drummond franchise.If all the hijinks wasn't enough, the story takes place at a health spa in the Swiss Alps named Bad Gaswasser. You just knew that Hope would get some mileage out of that. Martha Raye's at her frenetic best trying to say good by to her beau Henry Munch (Devine) as she scrambles to catch the honeymoon rendezvous with Kidley. If you pay close enough attention, you might even be able to keep it all straight without benefit of a cross on a muzzle.

Bob Hope at the point in time that Never Say Die was released was not the big name star he became, but he was definitely getting there. Please note that Martha Raye is billed above him in the credits.Preston Sturges, year away from getting his first film as a director as well as writer, wrote a pretty funny and witty script, not an easy thing to accomplish both. Bob Hope temporarily escapes the clutches of a predatory widow played by Gale Sondergaard who has him picked out to be her latest rich husband who have a knack of dying. In fact it's a mixed up diagnosis with a dog that makes Hope think he is dying.Enter Martha Raye who's a nouveau riche daughter of a nouveau riche Paul Harvey who's a new Texas millionaire. He wants her to marry Alan Mowbray who's one no-account count. His daughter with a title will get him into society. She wants to marry her boyfriend Andy Devine back in Texas.When Hope and Raye meet up they decide to marry each other and solve all their problems. I can't mention the rest but take it on faith that the players here perform to the stereotypes we have of them.Even with Hope and Raye in the cast, my favorite moment is with Gale Sondergaard trying to vamp Andy Devine. Among other things Gale is the Olympic pistol target shooting champion. Poor Andy doesn't have a prayer in every sense of the word.In two years, both Preston Sturges and Bob Hope were at the top of the Paramount pecking order. It begs the question why they never worked together at that period. Was it that they couldn't find a mutually agreeable project or was it a question of a couple of egos clashing. Hope and Sturges did in fact work together, but it was Hope's film Paris Holiday where Sturges had a brief acting role. Sturges was living in Paris at the time and living what could be described as genteel poverty. Anyway I think it's a real loss that Never Say Die and Paris Holiday are their only joint credits.

This supposedly light-hearted romp through Switzerland seems more like spending the weekend at Berchtesgaden with Adolf and Eva.This is quite a surprise when you consider that the script was co-authored by Preston Sturges, and that the cast includes Bob Hope and Andy Devine. I only have to imagine Andy saying "Wild Bill" in that puberty-stricken voice of his, and I laugh. Unfortunately, this is not the old Wild Bill Hickok show.The next Preston Sturges project to misfire as badly as this one would probably be The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend in 1949, with all of those masterpieces still to come lying in between.The film has one interesting sequence, the duel scene, which contains this dialogue: "There's a cross on the muzzle of the pistol with the bullet and a nick on the handle of the pistol with the blank." When you hear this in the movie, said with the proper rhythm, you will recognize it immediately as the "chalice from the palace has the brew that is true" bit in "The Court Jester" with Danny Kaye from 1956. I suppose Melvin Frank and Norman Panama knew a good idea when they heard one and helped themselves. Or do both scenes derive from an even older vaudeville routine?