Thanks for the Memory *** (1938, Bob Hope, Shirley Ross, Charles Butterworth) – Classic Movie Review 10,689

‘A GAY STORY OF LOVE AND LAUGHS ‘

Director George Archainbaud’s 1938 black and white comedy Thanks for the Memory stars Bob Hope as writer Steve Merrick, whose marriage to bohemian Anne Merrick (Ross) is in difficulty when he stays at home as a house husband and she goes out to work for her former fiancé and Steve’s publisher (Otto Kruger), who still loves her.

This pleasing, relaxed sitcom does not push very hard so it wins smiles rather than laughs, but it is expertly played, and it is always amusing and entertaining, and sometimes charming.

Hope and Ross reprise the Oscar-winning song ‘Thanks for the Memory’ (Hoagy Carmichael-Frank Loesser), which they performed in Hope’s début film The Big Broadcast of 1938, and they also sing the marvellous ‘Two Sleepy People’ (Ralph Rainger-Leo Robin) as well, the movie’s main highlight. And there is good character work from Charles Butterworth, Hedda Hopper, Roscoe Karns, Laura Hope Crews and Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson.

It is a remake of 1931’s Up Pops the Devil, with Lynn Starling’s screenplay based on Frances Goodrich’s and Albert Hackett’s 1930 stage play Up Pops the Devil.

Also in the cast are Charles Butterworth, Emma Dunn, Edward Gargan, Jack Norton, William Collier Sr, and Patricia Wilder.

The Bob Hope Thanks for the Memories collection featuring six Hope films made in the 1930s and 1940s was released by Universal Studios Home Entertainment on 8 June 2010, [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]. Three of the films, Thanks for the Memory (1938), The Cat and the Canary (1939), and Nothing but the Truth were making their DVD debuts. Also included are The Ghost Breakers, Road to Morocco and The Paleface.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,689

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