Charley's Aunt

Jack Benny is "Charley's Aunt," in this 1941 film version of the famous play, one of several film re-creations that exist.

Benny plays Fancourt Babberly, a somewhat older student at a British university in the late 1800s who, through a series of complications, winds up playing Donna Lucia of Brazil, the aunt of another student, Charley, because Charley and his friend Jack need a chaperone in order to have the dates they've planned.

The late-arriving aunt is actually portrayed by the lovely Kay Francis, and wait until you catch the look on her face when she sees what's been impersonating her. As ridiculous looking as Fancourt looks in his drag attire, he manages to win the hearts of both the ward of one of the young women and the father of Jack Chesney, who pursue him relentlessly. Fancourt, meanwhile, finds the real Donna Lucia quite a strudel.

There's nothing like a man in drag for laughs, and when the man is Jack Benny, watch out! Benny, famous for his long takes, is delightful here, and what makes him even funnier is that every once in a while, he says one word or another with a British pronunciation in the middle of a sentence where he's using his typical American accent. It had to be on purpose.

The DVD of the film has a short publicity reel shown in theaters called "Three of a Kind," which has Benny in the 20th Century Fox commissary trying to explain his role to Tyrone Power and Randolph Scott as a bellhop asks his approval on a girdle, a dress and shoes. It's very good.

Jack Benny was a wonderful actor and comedian with a great, dry, sometimes exasperated delivery. He made audiences laugh for years. Thanks to the existence of his radio shows and movies, he's still doing it.

Lousy copy on CD from ebay that wouldn't play all the way through but from what I could see it looked funny. I've seen the 1930 version starring Charlie Ruggles so I already knew the story.

Jack Benny masquerades as Charley's aunt and gets involved in several scrapes while a student at Oxford. Good cast with Jack Benny in one of his best roles. Kay Francis as the real aunt. James Ellison and Richard Haydn as the school friends, Anne Baxter and Arleen Whelan as the girls. Laird Cregar and Edmund Gwenn vie for Benny's hand. Reginald Owen is a professor.

Best scene (I could see) had Cregar teasing Benny with a bottle of champagne and spilling it on a table. Benny (in old lady clothes) leaps onto the table to lick up the booze.....

Oh well.....

During his life Jack Benny often joked about the poor quality of many of his films, but "Charley's Aunt" doesn't deserve such criticism. This "drag" comedy never drags!

Benny's humor, perhaps a bit subdued for today's audiences, nevertheless shines in "Charley's Aunt." It doesn't hurt that he's in drag for a good part of the movie...A man in a dress can always be counted on for a few laughs!

But the basic story is amusing in itself, with Benny (broadly!) impersonating a maiden aunt and chaperoning for his buddies and their girlfriends. Naturally, there are a couple of older gentlemen who take a fancy to the "aunt" adding more complications to the story.

"Charle's Aunt" is rarely shown on television, but worth a look if you happen to stumble upon it.

A couple reviewers have commented that this film is not available, though it is now available on DVD. Unfortunately, some of Jack Benny's other films (such as THE MEANEST MAN IN THE WORLD) are not.

Jack Benny plays perhaps the oldest college student ever filmed. At 47 years of age, casting this comedian seemed like an awfully big stretch. Through a series of mistakes, Benny pretends to be a rich widow in order to avoid being kicked out of college. Unfortunately, this ruse snowballs when two men fall for "her" and the real lady widow appears on the scene!

CHARLEY'S AUNT is a film that is based on a play produced in 1892 and has been filmed on several occasions. This is the second American sound version and it is quite polished and clever (with an excellent supporting cast)--though the film also shows a bit of its age. While funny, it also seemed rather old fashioned and familiar--perhaps too familiar--with much similarity to many other films involving a man dressing up as a lady. Perhaps in 1941 it was a hit, but today it just seemed very reminiscent of too many other films, such as SOME LIKE IT HOT and TOOTSIE--both of which are better films. One of the main reasons is not just the script but Benny seemed miscast due to his age AND he just didn't look or sound like a lady. Dustin Hoffman and Jack Lemmon definitely seemed more suited for their parts.

Still, despite these shortcomings, it's a pleasant time-passer and a film that is hard to hate.

Since Brandon Thomas's play Charley's Aunt debuted on the London stage its popularity is unabated to this day. Somewhere in this world there's a stock company doing this material and some actor regaling his audience with the image of that cigar smoking matronly aunt in drag.

For an English play this 1941 version boasts a mixed cast of Americans and English players that 20th Century Fox assembled. Purists would surely object to this mixed cast. But Darryl Zanuck in casting Jack Benny in the lead had guaranteed box office with one of the most popular radio stars around.

James Ellison and Richard Haydn are trying to make time with a pair of young girls visiting Oxford played by Anne Baxter and Arleen Whelan. They kind of blackmail their roommate Jack Benny into donning the drag he will be using for one of the Oxford theater society plays into being Haydn's long lost aunt from Brazil.

Trouble is that the long lost aunt has at the same time turned up in the United Kingdom. Kay Francis for reasons of her own has decided to visit her nephew Richard Haydn at Oxford. After this the story becomes hilariously confusing as both Edmund Gwenn as Baxter's guardian and Laird Cregar as Ellison's father become quite taken with Benny in drag. Think of Joe E. Brown in Some Like It Hot.

Gwenn is an old miser who enjoys a rich income being the guardian of Baxter and her fortune. As for Cregar in real life he was three years younger than Ellison his son. But Cregar was a classically trained character actor could play a variety of parts. Back in the day Charles Laughton whose career Cregar's was starting to resemble said that the censor's could never censor the gleam in his eyes. Cregar had an exponential gleam in this and other parts. Sadly he would die within a few years.

Probably an English production would capture the entire essence of Charley's Aunt. But the British were never blessed to claim Jack Benny as one of their own.