Topper Takes a Trip **** (1938, Constance Bennett, Roland Young, Billie Burke, Alan Mowbray) – Classic Movie Review 7204

Roland Young returns for director Norman Z McLeod’s polished and highly amusing 1938 Topper Takes a Trip, the sequel to the 1937 supernatural fantasy comedy Topper, as haunted banker Cosmo P Topper, who goes to the Riviera for a holiday, hoping to persuade his wife Clara (Billie Burke from divorcing him, as suggested by her friend, Mrs Parkhurst (Verree Teasdale). It received one Academy Award nomination in 1939 for Best Special Effects for Roy Seawright.

Producer Hal Roach conjures up another constantly entertaining vintage movie based on the novel by Thorne Smith, full of relishable lines and interpreted with deliciously funny performances from Constance Bennett as ghostly Marion Kerby, Franklin Pangborn as Louis the Hotel Manager and Alan Mowbray as Wilkins, Topper’s butler.

Happily Bennett, Young, Burke and Mowbray all reprise their original roles. However, it is such a shame that Cary Grant, from the original Topper, only makes a brief appearance in flashback in a few shots taken from Topper. His screen wife Constance Bennett’s new chum is her pet dog, Mr Atlas, played by Wire Fox Terrier dog actor Skippy, aka Asta, the terrier from the first three films in The Thin Man series. Skippy was trained by his owners Henry East and Gale Henry East, and by Frank Weatherwax and assistant trainers Rudd Weatherwax and Frank Inn. His weekly salary was $250. Other terriers, trained by the Weatherwax family and Frank Inn, took on the role in later Thin Man films, and in the later TV show.

Also in the cast are Alexander D’Arcy as Baron de Rossi, Paul Hurst, Armand Kaliz, Eddie Conrad, Spencer Charters, Irving Pichel, Leon Belasco, Georges Renavent, George Davis, Paul Everton, George Humbert, Alphonse Martell, Torben Meyer, James C Morton, Duke York, Bess Flowers, Bud Jamison and Paul Porcasi.

It is followed by the third and final entry in the series, Topper Returns (1941).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7204

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