Miss Tatlock's Millions

This movie is a dandy. Itis extremely underrated,and even more difficult to find. I happen to have a poor copy on VHS. Watch it if you have the opportunity.A classic screwball comedy, with a great cast,Barry Fitzgerald is top notch as usual, in a supporting role. This is a movie that deserves to be restored, shown on Turner Classic Movies, and given the respect it should have been given years ago.This is a perfect example of "they don't make em like that anymore". I first viewed this movie when I was about ten years old. Naturally I was curious to see if time and maturity had changed my mind. It hadn't. John Lund and Wanda Hendrix never achieved stardom, this movie would have advanced that cause.Made in the late forties it embodies the optimism of that era. This movie has a sweetness that is sorely lacking in today's film. Films of similar likeness would include Bringing Up Baby, and maybe the Topper series of movies.It is the only movie veteran character actor Richard Haydn directed. I wish he would have directed more.

Screwball comedy that loses its steam and becomes a strange love story. The early scenes with Monty Dooley are the best. After that the witty dialogue and slapstick taper off.

It us still a pleasant watch.

I saw this movie on its release when I was about 12 years old. It was a wild riot, and a big neighborhood hit. Kids would be singing "I don't want to set the world on fire" in school. That was it! If it reappeared on TV in the 60's, I wasn't watching TV then, so I only had the late 40s memory of it. Lately, I started wondering how the movie would affect me today, but it had disappeared. I assumed that the movie was a victim of political correctness; it had probably been pulled from circulation because the lead character imitated a developmentally disordered/cognitive impaired psychotic person.

However, after some internet searching, I got a good enough copy to view.

It is a mild enough comedy. As a child, I was convulsed at the weird behavior of Skylar. This must have been why I remembered it as being so funny. Today, it seems that John Lund did a Jerry Lewis type bit before Jerry Lewis became famous doing it. So, now, the crazy guy didn't seem all that wildly crazy after all those years of watching Jerry Lewis doing the same shtick Still. There are funny lines, good performances, and a tight script..and...wasn't Wanda Hendrix super cute? That must have also affected me when I was 12. Oh, yeah!

Saw this one years ago and thought it was an uproarious screwball comedy with the talented John Lund doing wonders with his role, pretending to be a bumbling idiot. He is doing his "act" in order to help Wanda Hendrix inherit her millions. Directed by the wonderful actor, Richard Haydn with a wonderful cast, including Robert Stack, Ilka Chase and Monty Woolley.

John Lund was an excellent actor who never found his true potential on film--an actor with a Broadway background who won him his first screen role opposite Olivia de Havilland in 'To Each His Own'.

But here his comic timing is perfect. In 'The Perils of Pauline' he was merely a foil for the antics of Betty Hutton--but here he has the primary comic role and he does a smashingly good job. Too bad more couldn't be made of his multi-talents in later films.

Where is the video version? Another great Paramount film never transferred to home video.

I'm told that when "Miss Tatlock's Millions" came out in 1948, it was a medium-size hit that had a small but extremely loyal cult following (sort of like the original "Bedazzled" in 1967). It's too bad that it's now almost completely forgotten -- a result of having never come out on video (except for a poor-quality bootleg dupe), a fate it shares with many late '40s Paramounts -- "The Great Gatsby," "The Big Clock," "Alias Nick Beal," and others. Like them, "Miss Tatlock's Millions" was long a staple of late-show TV but has now seemingly dropped off the face of the earth.

"Miss Tatlock's Millions" is, not to mince words, a riot. Another commenter here compares it to Preston Sturges, something that had never occurred to me before but which is very apt. It has the same kind of screwball pacing, distinctive characters, and brilliant dialogue (of course, Sturges remains peerless, but this one is in the same tradition and a very respectable specimen).

John Lund is wonderful as the fake "Skylar" and it's a pity he didn't get more challenges like this. I think he was a victim of his own good looks; the gang at Paramount decided he was a wooden pretty-boy, so that's all they gave him to do. But he sure delivers the goods here.

And the rest of the cast! Monty Woolley, Ilka Chase, Robert Stack, Barry Fitzgerald, Dan Tobin, Dorothy Stickney. That bunch would be fun to watch in anything, but give them Charles Brackett's dialogue and the combination is unbeatable. (The film, by the way, has at least one line that was, for a while anyhow, quite famous and oft-quoted by people who had no idea where it came from. Spoken by Monty Woolley: "I hate California. It's the only place on earth where you can fall asleep under a rosebush in full bloom and freeze to death.")

As the comments here attest, there is no one who's seen "Miss Tatlock's Millions" who doesn't love it and remember it as one of the funniest movies they ever saw. The only reason it's not up there with the great comedies -- the only reason, for example, that it placed nowhere on AFI's list of the (supposed) 100 greatest comedies -- is that not enough people have seen it.

Bring it back!