Mama Steps Out

Wealthy American businessman Guy Kibbee takes his family on that broadening trip to France. Kibbee is content to take what comes but his wife Alice Brady is downright annoyed by the number of Americans they run into over here. She wants to see some foreigners.

Meanwhile, daughter Betty Furness has spotted old school friend Dennis Morgan, who is now a band singer - talented but not living up to his potential. Morgan is not interested in Betty but she keeps chasing him, seeing something good.

Brady finally meets some artistic types, who hang around the rented villa and make life difficult for the servants. Furness persists in encouraging Morgan to be his best self and eventually he starts to come around. Kibbee, meanwhile, does his best to keep the wife happy but finally reaches his limit.

It's an okay plot but unfortunately this riotous comedy is not so much hilarious as just noisy. Alice Brady is funny but also a little shrill, even for a ditzy rich lady. The three European artists are eccentric - but not that eccentric, and not that funny either.

Betty Furness is fine, and Dennis Morgan (billed as Stanley Morner at this early point in his career) is actually fun to watch - his arrogance turns to uncertainty as he reconsiders his plans and attitude. Guy Kibbee is excellent as usual, although a stronger role for Kibbee might have made this picture stronger as well.

The whole thing was played at top-pitch, without mercy; "over-the-top" pitch, actually. As with most of the 1930s "Screwball" comedies, they assumed that LOUD is funny - but it's just idiots yelling at each other.

It's also impossible laugh at anyone you'd rather strangle; the Mama is a driveling moron who spends the entire European trip in their rented house. Go outside and look around! When a Guy Kibbee character is the most intelligent in the whole film, you're in trouble.

Mama Steps Out (1937)

** (out of 4)

Alice Brady plays a wife from Indiana who drags her husband (Guy Kibbee) and daughter (Betty Furness) to Europe so that they can catch up on what she believes is proper society. To her horror the daughter falls in love with an American musician (Dennis Morgan) but he isn't quite as affectionate to her. MAMA STEPS OUT is pretty much a comedy version of DODSWORTH, although it's certainly not as good as that Oscar-winning film. I think there are a few nice things scattered among the 63-minute running time but in the end there's just not enough laughs to make it a complete winner. What makes the film mildly amusing are the performances, which are all extremely good. Both Brady and Kibbee give it their all and I think they make for a wonderful couple. The two of them are amusing as they play off one another and I especially liked the way Kibbee played his typical brain dead character with a little twist. There's a sequence where the wife wants him to keep going to a bar to meet the "proper" type of people and he gives a little speech about becoming a drunk and the actor delivers it perfectly. I also thought both Furness and Morgan were good in their parts but there's no question that the entire love story just really drags this thing down as it's pretty silly and predictable. Gene Lockhart plays a brief supporting role and is fine too. The screenplay starts off with some nice dialogue and situations but it quickly falls apart when the story goes from this mid-West family crashing Europe to a predictable love story. Fans of the cast will still want to check it out but others will want to skip it.

I caught this movie on Turner Classic Movies, not expecting much, but was surprised to find one of those classic daffy family comedies of the 30's, where a bunch of disparate people come together in a household and play out their lives amid what seems like chaos. Think of HOLIDAY. Guy Kibbee and Alice Brady provide the broken eggs to bind everything together.

Betty Furness, well before her Westinghouse commercial days and NBC Today duties, provides the ingénue role opposite a very young Dennis Morgan who would exercise his vocal chords in MGM productions.There's a Russian character around who makes you think of Micha Auer in MY MAN GODFREY and some characters who are reminiscent of those in the much later YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU. A well timed servants strike helps to bring matters to a close. So, a revolution helps? Well, that's all a subtext.

Those of you familiar with Kibbee's screen appearances with Aline MacMahon might be delighted at seeing how he plays against a ditz (Alice Brady) instead of a capable woman (Aline). Kibbee blusters well, as we know he can, but here he has to become a virtual drunkard to match up with an actress whose dithering and screen stupidity make Marion Lorne look like a TV parody. (Aline, by the way, for those not all that familiar with her can be seen in many a Kibbee film. Her consummate role, repeated many times, was that of the rock bottomed "mater" of the family who provided the ballast while Dear Old Dad, sailed about).

The movie's enjoyable, but catch it during a time when you need a brief and pleasant diversion from bombs bursting in air and the blood and gore films, and are not expecting an AA award nominee.

"Mama Steps Out" has two very good Hollywood supporting actors in the lead roles. Guy Kibbee plays Leonard 'Len' Cuppy, and Alice Brady plays his wife, Ada. The wealthy couple and their daughter, Leila, are going to Europe to live for six months. It's Ada's dream for them to get away from the Americans in their home town of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and meet, mix and mingle with Europeans. She wants them to absorb some "real" culture. Other reviews mention that this is a takeoff from the 1936 movie, "Dodsworth."

A second plot is Leila's crush since high school on Chuck Thompson, a hometown boy who has succeeded as a singer with a band that tours on the performing circuit. The band and singer happen to be on the ship the Cuppy's are taking to Europe, so Leila makes sure that they stay where the band and Chuck are appearing. Much to Ada's consternation, that means leaving Paris behind and going to the Riviera where Chuck and the band perform at a casino in Antibes.

Leila keeps chasing after Chuck, who keeps rebuffing and trying to avoid her. And Ada keeps sending hubby Len to the Casino to bring back a Frenchman or two. When they finally do have three younger people of the nuevo (swinging) culture visit, the trio bring a little mayhem to the household which leads the French chef and maid to go on strike.

There isn't much plot here, and the screenplay bounces around quite a bit. Kibbee and Brady are very good in their roles. Brady won the supporting actress Oscar in 1938 for portraying Molly O'Leary in the 20th Century Fox blockbuster, "In Old Chicago." An all-around good actress, Brady excelled in one type of character. She could play a discombobulated, harried, and frenzied woman within comedies better than anyone else. Her role in this film isn't as funny as in some others. Perhaps the best example of that is her role as Bridget Drake in the 1933 film, "When Ladies Meet." Brady would die of cancer within two years of this film, at age 46.

The best thing about this film, though, is the singing of newcomer Dennis Morgan. He had a great singing voice, although he didn't pursue singing parts much beyond this film. He did play Irish tenor Chauncey Olcott in the 1947 movie about his life, "My Wild Irish rose." This was Morgan's seventh film and biggest part to that time. He was then going by his real name, as Stanley Morner. By 1940, Morgan was getting leading roles at Warner Brothers, and his role opposite Ginger Rogers in "Kitty Foyle" of 1940 (for which she won the best actress Oscar the next year), lifted Morgan to star status the rest of his career.

With a tighter and better screenplay and much better script with witty and funny dialog, this could have been a very good comedy. But, there are so few instances of anything funny, that it doesn't even get a fair rating for comedy.