User reviews

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!

The Tatlock Family who are a more comic version than the greedy grasping Hubbards of The Little Foxes are most concerned about the will of their family patriarch who didn't think all that much of them. Brothers Monty Woolley and Dan Tobin and their sister Ilka Chase are as grasping a trio as you'll ever find. And like the Hubbards, Ilka Chase is the most ruthless of the lot.

The only nice one is the daughter of a deceased son and his wife Wanda Hendrix. She's not quite of age and that's a recipe for intrigue.

There's another joker in this deck, a literal one. Hendrix has an older brother who is the village idiot. I actually knew someone like that and like the Tatlocks his parents kept him far away and on some tight purse strings.

Now he has to be produced for the reading of the will. But there's a problem with family retainer Barry Fitzgerald who took the idiot to Hawaii. He's believed dead and Fitzgerald has been lying for about two years and living off the stipend.

Whereupon Fitzgerald hits on the solution to find someone who can pass and it's movie stunt man John Lund. But a lot of things interfere in this scheme not the least of which is Lund falling for Hendrix.

This comedy is skillfully directed by Richard Haydn who reserved himself a nice small role as the lawyer for the estate. John Lund whose forte really is not physical comedy does his best and is reasonably successful. Ironically though the following year that Miss Tatlock's Millions came out there arrived at Parmount just the actor for the role.

This would have been a great Jerry Lewis vehicle either for himself later on in his career or with Dean Martin possibly playing Fitzgerald's part. You watch Lund's more strenuous routines and you'll agree I'm sure.

There's also a nice role for Robert Stack, Chase's spoiled son and Hendrix's cousin who'd like to tie up that end of the inheritance with a wedding ring. A surprise for Stack who usually played nice guys on the big and the small screen.

Miss Tatlock's Millions has retained its laugh quotient after 70 years. Try to see this one.

MISS TATLOCK'S MILLIONS just misses genuine classic status despite the ministrations of some of the best in the studio system - a screwball comedy which remains a little too sane for too much of the time - and the problems are essentially at the undeniably entertaining top.

John Lund, making his first real impact in Hollywood, came to the task with solid Broadway training from Shakespeare (an AS YOU LIKE IT in 1941) to musicals (a NEW FACES revue as writer and performer! and the Fatts Waller hit EARLY TO BED in 1943) to the play which made him a star, THE HASTY HEART (in 1945). Unfortunately, Hollywood never quite knew how to take advantage of this wealth of talents packaged in a slightly bland handsome face. When they got around to filming THE HASTY HEART in 1949, Ronald Reagan was in Lund's role while Lund was stuck in another "wacky" comedy, MY FRIEND IRMA.

Here, made up to look like Cary Grant in BRINGING UP BABY, he is directed to give a version of the persona Jerry Lewis would torture a generation of film goers with when he got to Hollywood in the "crazy" half of Lund's dual role of a Hollywood stuntman hired to impersonate a missing heir only to fall in love with his "sister."

The titular "Miss Matlock" is another studio near miss, Wanda Hendrix who, after a dozen so-so films would become a television regular, but here gives a very pleasant impersonation of Jean Arthur. Her grasping relatives are trying to foist her off on a somewhat slimy cousin (an almost too pleasantly suave Robert Stack) while Lund, playing the "emotionally challenged" brother who has actually inherited her millions, longs for her.

Where the film absolutely shines however is in the solid studio line up of supporting players who consistently spin gold out of dross. From Barry Fitzgerald as Lund's slightly larcenous "keeper" to Monty Wolly as a fully larcenous uncle, Ilka Chase, Dorothy Stickney, Leif Erickson, Dan Tobin and actor/director Richard Haydn (the first of three directoral efforts - it was not his greatest strength), the solid comedic underpinnings of the film very nearly make up for any other weaknesses of style.

Still there IS that style. Charles Brackett (midway in a 35 year career that included such genuine screen writing classics as NINOTCHKA and SUNSET BOULEVARD) and his frequent collaborator Richard Breen, just starting his, with the unbilled input of the cream of the studio contract writers - all "names" today - turned Jacques Deval's Broadway flop OH, BROTHER! (23 performances at the Royale Theatre, June 19-July 7,1945) into something almost unrecognizable - bigger and probably better - but the great cinematographer Charles Lang (17 nominations and one Oscar for A FAREWELL TO ARMS) makes the film (at least in the excellent print seen) look more like the 1945 AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (a classic Agatha Christie mystery) than a bright, crisp screwball comedy - an impression not diminished by the presence of Fitzgerald and Haydn in both films.

It IS definitely a film to seek out and enjoy. It may be slight and not as funny as the studio promotion (which tried to paint it as "'Funnier than Bergan in long underwear' -Charley MacCarthy") would have liked (until the last 10 minutes, which are everything a screwball fancier could wish!), but it is charming and consistently entertaining. Not a classic, but a lot of diverting fun.