Half Shot at Sunrise

RKO gave the vaudeville comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey a second starring feature with this fairly funny piece set in Paris during the Great War. The boys are AWOL from their lowly ranks in the army and running amok amongst the girls in the wicked city. Meanwhile the colonel (former singer George MacFarlane) is juggling a romance with the sparky Olga (scene-stealing Leni Stengel) and the suspicion of his wife (Edna May Oliver's film debut), while his youngest daughter (the team's resident cutie, Dorothy Lee, fixing on curly-haired Wheeler as usual) is on the prowl for someone to ‘be nice' to her.

The movie has a watchable mix of pure comedy (the roller skating waiter, the scented letter, the café scene), songs (the usual duet for Wheeler and Lee; plus a fun bit for Woolsey and Stengal where he ends up dancing in a fountain in his underwear), and romance – with the obligatory happy endings after all the mayhem. What does jar though is the attempt to signpost the war by sending the boys to the Front – this section just doesn't fit somehow.