Apples to You!

In this Hal Roach musical comedy, the star is Billy Gilbert...and the rest are relative unknowns. The plot idea is pretty funny....but what follows just isn't.

When the story begins, the local opera company is heavily in debt with no relief in sight. To deal with this, the board of directors trick the very drunk Mr. Stanton into owning the theater...and assuming the $1,000,000 in debt! But the drunk guy has a plan....to get the very successful Pinsky burlesque troop next door to relocate to his theater and put on operas with a bit of skin.

How this really could have been funny...but, sadly, it wasn't. The singing isn't good and the cheesecake surprisingly muted for a pre-code film about burlesque entertainers! To me, this is like a basic story idea which hadn't been worked out nor given punch lines. Not terrible...but it should have been so much funnier....and it leaves you wondering where all the jokes went.

So, a drunk patron of the opera finds himself with a million dollar debt and a production of THE BARBER OF SEVILLE. He hires burlesque house manager Billy Gilbert to manage it for him. This may not be a good idea for opera -- there are several shots of the conductor ripping up scores and breaking batons --but it does make a moderately good comedy, as the burlesque comic takes over the lead, along with a chorus of 40 beautiful barberettes, and burlesque lyrics.

Billy is as funny as ever. His character is "Pinsky", a variation on the Minsky who ran the famed Minsky's Burlesque House.

This off-the-wall, pre-code Hal Roach offering concerns the Cosmopolitan Opera House which is faltering at the box office and owes over a million dollars to its creditors. The board of directors meets and they sign over their stock to one drunken member who then ends up with the debt. In despair he looks out the window and sees Pinsky's Burlesque Theatre doing a land office business. Of course he teams with Pinsky (Billy Gilbert) to get things moving again. And do they! The dull production of The Barber of Seville (why do they always pick on that opera?) is now set in a Barber College, of all places, and features a midway with "20 Beautiful Barberetts," whose dresses go sailing into the audience before the overture is over. Bump. Grind. Then the "opera" begins, complete with shrill soprano Lillian Miles, plus plenty of leering vaudevillians taking various roles - ones Rossini never imagined when he wrote the opera. Opera mavens will recognize themes from various Verdi and Donizetti operas woven into the proceedings. The chaotic finale, a strange number called "Would You for a Big Red Apple?" ("Would you what?" is the question that dares not be asked) is presented as the `Barberetts` lose their dresses once again. It is 100% farce, but has a grittiness to it that seems highly unusual for a Hal Roach comedy. At a recent screening, one audience member summed it up, "My but there is a lot going on in that one!" She understated. This wild comedy possesses an earthy realism that tells more about backstage life than one might expect to see in such a film. The unusual cast is not the usual Hal Roach stock company, with the exception of Billy Gilbert. The others are either players whose appearances usually go uncredited or what appear to be rank and file vaudeville performers. This reviewer found it both entertaining and educational and recommends it highly - if the reader is lucky enough to find it playing somewhere.