Thanks for the memories!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Grumpy newspaper owner Minor Watson hasn't smiled in years, let alone laugh, and his daughter Ellen Drew is worried about him. It all started when his wife left and now he can't even bear to look at the comics in the paper without cracking up. To try and get dad in a better mood, Drew and her beau Richard Arlen get dad to allow a bunch of vaudeville acts into his home for the employee banquet. Dad still doesn't smile but he refuses to stop looking at the acts which run the gamut from silly and dated to quite ingenious. Most impressive is a model who changes wardrobes, basically having a tablecloth draped around her without safety pins, going from evening wear, afternoon wear and finally a wedding dress, with none of the outfits falling off or looking like they were created for some tacky drag queen. There's also a brief bit of break dancing which seems way before its time, although the Barry Brothers did similar moves in some of the early 40's musicals at MGM and 20th Century Fox.Over half of the plot is filled with specialty acts or comic routines which includes a nutty psychiatrist analyzing the reasons behind Watson's mood swings. It's not a coincidence that pop's last name is Moody, a name which fits him to a tea. Drew and Arlen realize the only way to chance dad's mood for good is to find mom, and they do in the most ironic of places. The last 10 minutes of the film where mom tries to find one of dad's old drawings underneath the new wallpaper in a swank restaurant and the re-creation of that drawing into a cute cartoon is a charming finale, which shows that you can change an old crank into a happy hipster, and all he really needs to change is that old fashioned emotion called love.

Betty Moody (Ellen Drew) tries to cheer up her father (Minor Watson) who is feeling melancholy by gathering together entertainers to perform for him. A psychologist, Dr Svatsky (Leonid Kinsky) is also at hand to help in the proceedings. Can anyone make Mr Moody laugh again....? This is a really stupid story of no interest and doesn't make sense, especially the part where Ellen Drew meets her mother Hettie (Madeline Grey). It's all so appallingly fake. The best lines come from Mr Moody when he tells people to get out coz they are annoying him. And he's right. The last thing he wants is an intrusion of crappy entertainers in his front room. The film is an excuse to string together some acts of the time. Unfortunately, the most interesting of these, Peppy and Peanuts (P&P), is interrupted by that nuisance of a doctor played by Leonid Kinsky. He is unbearable throughout the film and it is criminal how the film cuts from away from P&P for more irritating footage of Kinsky. The four stars are for Gene Rodgers (boogie woogie pianist), 'Pigmeat' the butler and Peppy & Peanuts (cabaret dance act).

There's nobody named "Peggy" in the cast, that's "Peppy" the tall jitterbug clown-dancer.Plus, "Peanuts" is not playing "himself" but "herself," she's the tiny jitterbug dancer.The team were called "Peppy and Peanuts" and they appear in a couple of soundies and two films, very obscure, but were once popular on the burlesque circuit as burlesque included comedy dance teams pretty regularly.They had a really a charming act, and it's great to see part of it preserved in this little film. How sad they're so forgotten, and even miscredited.The film also provides a chance to see part of the act of Mike Riley and His Musical Maniacs. The "Crying" routine was one of his best known. It's awful, but it reportedly made audiences hysterical in the burlesque houses.Riley owned The Madhouse in Hollywood, a tavern never forgotten by anyone who ever saw the inside, designed to be packed with sight gags.-paghat the ratgirl from the weird wild realm

Father runs a big corporation but is suffering from a severe case of melancholia. Daughter and persona non grata boyfriend cook up a plan to have every ex-vaudevillian and dancer on the club circuit that they can find attempt to make him smile. Groan. Scatterbrained ex-wife finally saves the day by remembering that father once had ambitions to be a newspaper comic illustrator (!) Nevermind, it doesn't make that much sense.Not the most enjoyable movie ever made, but an amazing time capsule of vaudeville acts: Gene Rodgers, the stupendous boogie-woogie piano player; Mitchell & Lytell, Abbot and Costello wannabees; Alphonse Bergé & Doris Duane, a must-be-seen inverse striptease act; Al Mardo and his priceless bulldog; and most of all Dewey "Pigmeat" Markham, who steals the show with his break dancing.