The Naughty Nineties (1945)

Another collaboration between Abbott & Costello and director Jean Yarbrough provides fans with another one of their better comedy outings.

The plot sees the comedy twosome working on a steamboat that's captained by the kindly Capt. Sam Jackson (Henry Travers, probably most recognised by people of all ages as Clarence the angel from It's A Wonderful Life). We get the usual knockabout first reel before the major plot development - poor Captain Jackson loses most of the rights over his boat when he's tricked by a bunch of scheming gamblers. The gamblers then go on to use the steamboat as a base of operations, fleecing crowds of people who come on board, trusting in the good name of the captain. Can the devious villains be stopped and can Bud and Lou help in any way?

It becomes clear while watching numerous A & C movies that some people just knew how to get the best out of them. Erle C. Kenton was one and Yarbrough was certainly another. The Naughty Nineties starts off amusingly enough and rattles through a number of enjoyable set-pieces en route to a fast and funny finale. The fact that it features what many people consider to be the best version of the famous "Who's On First" routine is another HUGE bonus - I could quite honestly watch that routine on a loop from now until the end of time.

Edmund L. Hartmann, John Grant, Edmund Joseph and Hal Fimberg wrote the screenplay, with some extra material from Felix Adler, and the quantity of laughs onscreen certainly benefits from the talented wordsmiths who managed to work with Abbott & Costello to add gags wherever they could. At least, that's how it seems from this perspective.

The leads are up to their usual standard (which means that if you still don't like them by now then you're never going to) while the supporting players make more of an impression than usual. Henry Travers is wonderful, Lois Collier is lovely and Alan Curtis, Rita Johnson and Joe Sawyer make a good trio of potential baddies.

This is a very enjoyable movie and the more I think about it the more I am tempted to rate it even higher. So I'll just stop now before I get carried away.

8/10

http://www.amazon.com/Costello-Society-Naughty-Nineties-Privates/dp/B0001FGBZM

Who Done It? (1942)

Abbott & Costello play two soda jerks who are really just killing time until they can get a chance to impress their local radio station with one of their murder mystery radioplays. They get lucky and gain entrance to the station, just in time for a reading of an entertaining murder mystery, but are then unlucky enough to become suspects when a murder is committed. Our two leads try to solve the case to make their names but, more importantly, try to stay alive while doing so.

Who Done It? is a lot of fun. It's a great mix of comedy and murder mystery and certainly works a LOT better than the earlier Hold That Ghost. The two leads are on great form and the plot pauses now and again for a few fun routines (including Lou being scammed a number of times by Walter Tetley, a discussion about volts and watts and some fun with well-timed recordings).

The script is by Stanley Roberts, Edmund Joseph and John Grant and it moves along at a fairly brisk pace indeed, helped by the fact that there are no musical numbers padding out the runtime. Erle C. Kenton returns to direct the laughs and certainly confirms that he's well-suited to the job.

But the script and direction and leads make up only half the story. Who Done It? benefits from a supporting cast that are all great fun and just as watchable as the leads. William Gargan and William Bendix are standard cops taking no nonsense and it's fun to see the rare times when A & C manage to get the better of them. Walter Tetley, as previously mentioned, gets a few great moments and then we have Mary Wickes easily holding her own in the role of Juliet Collins, a great character brought to life by a great actress.

It's not quite as good as the previous outing but this is entertaining enough from start to finish and easily stays a few notches above the weaker movies in the A & C filmography.

7/10.

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