Bring 'Em Back a Wife

Bring 'Em Back a Wife (1933)

*** (out of 4)

Entry in Hal Roach's "Taxi Boys" series has Billy (Billy Gilbert) trying to win the heart of his dance instructor who just happens to be wanted by Billy's boss. The boss decides to make a rule where if you're not married by midnight then you're fired from your job so Billy has to pretend he's married so he puts Ben (Ben Blue) in drag. This is a pretty strange little comedy, the first I've seen from the series, but there were enough good laughs to make it worth sitting through. The thing that really sticks out is the pre-code humor, must of it sexual, and just look at the way the film plays off the big boobs given to Ben in drag. The film has a lot of fun with his sexuality and this is where some of the biggest laughs come from. I found the first half of the film to be rather slow but things really pick up during the second part as the meeting between Billy, his "wife", the boss and the dance girl gets moving with some nice laughs. The highlight would have to be the sequence when the dance girl learns about who the wife really is and the aftermath from it. Gilbert and Blue make for an interesting team, to say the least, but it's Geneva Mitchell who really steals the show as the dance girl.