Laugh and Get Rich

Edna May Oliver runs a boarding house. Husband Hugh Herbert hasn't worked in years. Daughter Dorothy Lee is in love with no-account inventor Russell Gleason.

Director Gregory La Cava makes do with a patchy script that uneasily combines desperately unhappy situations with the sort of wackiness that you'd expect of the three main performers. Although Miss Oliver is, as expected, believable in both registers, Herbert is surprisingly good without his familiar comic tics. The script looks like a patchwork, more like a series of shorts strung together than a finished script, but the movie has enough bright moments to make it amusing.