Friday, January 17, 2014

GEORGE WASHINGTON SLEPT HERE (1942)

"George Washington should have chopped this house down instead of the cherry tree."

After the initial shock of seeing the beautiful Ann Sheridan married to Jack Benny, I enjoyed this film and even laughed out loud a number of times, especially when Benny first sees the house: "I couldn't warm up to this place if I was burned alive in it!"

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Benny and Sheridan are apartment dwellers in NYC. Benny is happy, but Sheridan wants to own a home in the country. After their dog (Terry a.k.a. "Toto" from THE WIZARD OF OZ!) chews up a rug and cause their landlord (Franklin Pangborn) to fall down, they're forced to move. Without consulting her husband, Sheridan buys a 200-year-old run down money pit out in the middle of nowhere. He hates it from the moment he sees it (and falls through it's floors and even a few times into the well), but after all kinds of wacky misadventures he begins to like it.

It's not the most original script ever written, but I got quite a few laughs out of it and will definitely watch it again. Good supporting cast also: Hattie McDainel, Franklin Pangborn, Charles Coburn and Percy Kilbride.  Highly recommended, it's probably my favorite of the repairing-a-dilapidated-house subgenre.

I could be wrong, but to me the interior shots looks a lot like the interior shots from ARSENIC AND OLD LACE.