Don't Believe the Hype

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

NEVER SAY DIE—8 One of Hope's Best. The plot of this Bob Hope comedy is very familiar, but I cannot hold this against the film. In the 1950s and 60s, many TV shows ripped off the plot—including "The Honeymooners" and "The Flintstones"! So, while it might seemed clichéd, I think it's one of the first films to use this plot, so its familiarity cannot be held against it.The film begins with a very cute scene involving a health spa in Switzerland and their water with magical properties. You just have to see it to appreciate it. As for Hope, he plays a millionaire hypochondriac who insists he's ill when he's actually in fine condition. However, though a silly mistake, doctors now assume he's going to soon die.In the meantime, Hope is pursued by a rather scary woman with a history of husbands who die under mysterious circumstances. She insists they marry and Hope is too cowardly to say no. But, on the day of their wedding he meets another woman (Martha Raye) who is also being forced into a marriage she doesn't want and Hope proposes that they marry each other. After all, it will save both of them and he's expected to be dead within a month—so it's a no-lose proposition. Shortly after their wedding, Raye's true love (Andy Devine) arrives to wait for Hope's demise. Soon, the black widow and Raye's fiancé arrive as well and so the countdown begins.What sets this apart from most Hope films is the writing—it's just better than usual and the film abounds with laughs. Plus, surprisingly, the chemistry between Raye and Hope was nice—and a bit romantic. It's a swell film that you can't help but enjoy.

Bob Hope and Martha Raye continually keep the viewer off balance with regard to their romantic intentions in "Never Say Die", even though they start out by getting married and then go about falling in something like love by the movie's finale. In between, the story ping pongs back and forth between scenes of frustrated would be spouses who don't get their way. Andy Devine takes a wrong turn off the last stagecoach and winds up here as Raye's good old boy from back home who try as he might, never quite seems to get things right between himself and his fiancée. Someone should have thought of slipping him a Mickey.I had to rewind and listen closely a couple of times for a line Hope slid past the censors. When gold digger Juno Marko (Gale Sondergaard) tries to trap John Kidley (Hope) with her matrimonial snare, she alludes to what might have been an indiscreet night of passion. Hope's response - "..., well that was the elevator you see, I just went and I got off, it'll happen." I probably got a kick the most from Kidley's butler Jeepers, played in great understated comic fashion by Ernest Cossart. His deadpan delivery was reminiscent of E.E. Clive's portrayal of Tenny in the Bulldog Drummond franchise.If all the hijinks wasn't enough, the story takes place at a health spa in the Swiss Alps named Bad Gaswasser. You just knew that Hope would get some mileage out of that. Martha Raye's at her frenetic best trying to say good by to her beau Henry Munch (Devine) as she scrambles to catch the honeymoon rendezvous with Kidley. If you pay close enough attention, you might even be able to keep it all straight without benefit of a cross on a muzzle.

No masterpiece, but interesting in its own right. Martha Raye, for once, is playing it straight, and not doing the broad comedy/singing routine that was part of her 1930s Paramount films. (She really didn't show this side of her talent again until she had her regular TV variety show in the 1950s. Bob Hope had not yet become the familiar "Bob Hope", wise-cracking and egotistical; rather, here he plays a light comedy romantic lead rather in the British music hall manner. The love scenes between the two are often rather touching in their sincerity. The supporting cast is excellent, especially Gale Sondergaard, the predatory villianness whose shooting skill, which hangs ominously over Hope's head as she forces him into marriage during the entire film, provides the deus ex machina to resolve the romantic plot in a surprise turnabout. The fact that all other roles are played so broadly helps highlight the relatively subdued Raye and Hope performances. In fact, there are several surprises along the way, including the fact that boy and girl marry at about a third of the way through the movie; then fall in love. Very enjoyable.

This supposedly light-hearted romp through Switzerland seems more like spending the weekend at Berchtesgaden with Adolf and Eva.This is quite a surprise when you consider that the script was co-authored by Preston Sturges, and that the cast includes Bob Hope and Andy Devine. I only have to imagine Andy saying "Wild Bill" in that puberty-stricken voice of his, and I laugh. Unfortunately, this is not the old Wild Bill Hickok show.The next Preston Sturges project to misfire as badly as this one would probably be The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend in 1949, with all of those masterpieces still to come lying in between.The film has one interesting sequence, the duel scene, which contains this dialogue: "There's a cross on the muzzle of the pistol with the bullet and a nick on the handle of the pistol with the blank." When you hear this in the movie, said with the proper rhythm, you will recognize it immediately as the "chalice from the palace has the brew that is true" bit in "The Court Jester" with Danny Kaye from 1956. I suppose Melvin Frank and Norman Panama knew a good idea when they heard one and helped themselves. Or do both scenes derive from an even older vaudeville routine?