Bob Hope is a Pulitzer-prize winning Robert Kittridge reporter who, after assuring his editor that Germany will not invade Russia loses his job in "They Got Me Covered." He thinks that this minor infraction can be forgiven if the man who won him the first Pulitzer, his contact Vanescu, will just come through with the story he says he has. But he's too nervous and tells Kittridge to have a stenographer (Lamour) meet him and she should carry a red bag and a green umbrella. His girlfriend/secretary calls home and arranges to have her roommate meet them - but Kittridge has the meeting place mixed up and by the time they get to the right place, the roommate has been taken away in a car. She gets the story in shorthand but the Nazis can't decipher it. They bring in decoder after decoder who look at the notes in dismay and say things like, "This isn't Gregg shorthand...this isn't Pittman....this isn't speedwriting..." - a very funny scene that probably had the secretaries in the audience laughing. The poor roommate then becomes a target.
The script is loaded with war jokes about rationing, the swing shift, etc., and Hope pops them off in his usual wry manner. When he hears Crosby on the radio, he turns it off and says, "That guy is haunting me." Lamour sports a big, high hairdo that almost looks like she's got it intertwined with a fur piece. She gives Hope great support. The Axis powers are a scream - Otto Preminger, Eduardo Cianelli, and Philip Ahn. In one very funny scene, Hope, disguised as a dummy, is eavesdropping on them at a health club when Preminger decides to show his skill with a knife - at the dummy.
Wartime audiences must have loved this, and much of "They Got Me Covered" still holds up even if that particular war is over. Great comedy delivered by masters.
