Warner Comedy With Accelerators Down

What Got Laffs in 1941: Honeymoon For Three

Romance writer George Brent outruns his femme fans to hotel retreat with secretary Ann Sheridan, but his troubles aren't over yet. Were authors then like rock stars now? You'd think so watching Honeymoon For Three. There were active fan clubs for wordsmiths, some of them print equivalent of movie names. George lectures for lady clubs and book nooks with membership seeking to bear his child. Would it pay similarly to be a famed writer now? Honeymoon For Three was remade from Goodbye Again, fresh tread on old tires being Warner way. It's fun for brevity (75 minutes) and infinitely the better of empty loudness that was same year's Affectionately Yours, all WB comedies not being created equal. Like most studio bids for fun, Honeymoon is salted with comic vets who could lift silliness over wires, Charlie Ruggles a cheapest skate haggling over Dutch treat with Sheridan as waiter Walter Catlett registers incredulity. Youngsters William T. Orr (a future Warner son-in-law and TV powerhouse), Herb Anderson (he's everywhere in WB "B's,"), and Our Ganger of silent-era Johnny Downs look in and bid for laughs. Dialogue was punched up by those same Epstein brothers who similarly enhanced Casablanca and other Warner to-be classics. Top-billed Ann Sheridan is a most attractive ever here: what happened between this and 1948's Silver River? Were cigarettes and too much sauce the culprits? Stolid Brent cuts loose to alarming degree --- you get a feeling he was starved to do comedy. Honeymoon For Three comes on TCM, but should turn up eventually at Warner's DVD archive.