MGM teamed Wallace Beery and Marjorie Main for a nice if dated comedy about Rationing during the World War II home front years. The two are bitter enemies since the first war when fate kept them apart. But now they have a son and daughter respectively who are taking up where the parents might have left off.
First and foremost the film is about Rationing and in her local town Marjorie Main is the head of the Office Of Price Administration Board and Beery is a grocery store owner drowning in forms and regulations concerning what and how much he can sell to his customers. When I say that the film is dated I mean that a lot of the jokes about the color codes and ration points would not be gotten at all by today's audience. Even with that Beery's and Main's comedy is still eternal.
The Truman administration wanted to keep the Office of Price Administration around post war. But the demands of the public who was fed up with what you see in Rationing forced them to dissolve the OPA before they wished to.
Rationing also marked the farewell appearance of Gloria Dickson who died way too young and tragically in a fire. She plays the lady barber and local femme fatale of the town. Beery has a hysterically funny scene trying to retrieve a rationed girdle that fell in her hands.
Rationing though its inside humor is lost, still is a very funny film showing Beery and Main to their best advantage.
