Every Day’s a Holiday **** (1937, Mae West, Edmund Lowe, Charles Butterworth, Charles Winninger, Walter Catlett, Lloyd Nolan, Herman Bing, Chester Conklin, Louis Armstrong) – Classic Movie Review 7545

Director A Edward Sutherland’s 1937 comedy Every Day’s a Holiday offers an eagerly grabbed double role for Mae West as confidence trickster Peaches O’Dea, who sells New York’s Brooklyn Bridge to Fritz Krausmeyer (Herman Bing) and French singing sensation Mademoiselle Fifi, who is set to trap corrupt mayoral candidate John Quade (Lloyd Nolan).

It is the Gay Nineties. Why it is called the Gay Nineties, I’m not sure, but Mae West certainly is a big factor in making them gay. Peaches befriends police captain Jim McCarey (Edmund Lowe), who makes her leave New York City, but she returns as sultry brunette Fifi, only to find Quade tries to close her show  when she declines his romantic overtures.

Every Day’s a Holiday is one of the best of the West, with nimble direction, a lively screenplay by the campy lady herself, and a wonderful cast of old stalwarts in Charles Butterworth, Walter Catlett, Charles Winninger and Chester Conklin, who are guaranteed to get their laughs. And West performs Jubilee, Fifi, Little Butterfly, Every Day’s a Holiday and Along the Broadway Trail.

Also in the cast are Edmund Lowe, Roger Inhof, Lucien Prival, Adrian Morris, Francis McDonald, and John Indrisano and Louis Armstrong and George Rector as themselves.

It is very nicely produced in a most handsome production by Emanuel Cohen Productions. Wiard Ihnen was Oscar nominated for Best Art Direction.

Unfortunately, the Legion of Decency was relentlessly dogging Mae and her risqué brand of comedy, and her studio Paramount Pictures nervously let her go after this one did only medium box office. Just a couple of years earlier, her films had saved Paramount.

She did four more films before her death in 1980: My Little Chickadee, The Heat’s On, Myra Breckinridge and Sextette.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7545

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