This movie is about how different situations like things that make you nervous make you loose your appetite. It is kind of a pointless short that just states the obvious. I watched this short on the Turner Classic Movies web page.
5 Reviews
A more accurate title would be "How to Not Eat".
llltdesq20 June 2015
Warning: Spoilers
This is one of the series of shorts featuring Robert Benchley. There will be spoilers ahead:
Robert Benchley was a humorist, critic, et cetera, who, among other things, did a series of humorous shorts for MGM. I happen to like the Benchley shorts and consider some of them to be incredibly funny and classics of the type. This one has more misfires than is typical of the shorts as a whole, but I still enjoyed it myself.
Benchley is talking about eating from the standpoint of gaining pleasure as well as nourishment from consumption of food and, more to the point, how various things can spoil the pleasure in having a meal. Given that I could probably eat under almost any circumstance which isn't immediately life-threatening, I can't relate to most of these, though there's one specific instance he refers to where I fully understand his point.
The short has Benchley shown sitting at a desk eating at the start, then shows visually the situations he discusses in the narration, with Benchley himself featured in those situations. The best of these show Benchley trying to eat pasta after hearing distressing news, trying to eat in bed with a tray balanced on his knees, spoiling his dinner by snacking beforehand and trying to eat in a dining car on a train (the man seated across from him looks as though he's a cat which has eaten a sour mouse). Eating in bed, for me, is no fun, but it doesn't kill my appetite.
The ending is a typical Benchley one-liner. The short is enjoyable and worth watching.
Robert Benchley was a humorist, critic, et cetera, who, among other things, did a series of humorous shorts for MGM. I happen to like the Benchley shorts and consider some of them to be incredibly funny and classics of the type. This one has more misfires than is typical of the shorts as a whole, but I still enjoyed it myself.
Benchley is talking about eating from the standpoint of gaining pleasure as well as nourishment from consumption of food and, more to the point, how various things can spoil the pleasure in having a meal. Given that I could probably eat under almost any circumstance which isn't immediately life-threatening, I can't relate to most of these, though there's one specific instance he refers to where I fully understand his point.
The short has Benchley shown sitting at a desk eating at the start, then shows visually the situations he discusses in the narration, with Benchley himself featured in those situations. The best of these show Benchley trying to eat pasta after hearing distressing news, trying to eat in bed with a tray balanced on his knees, spoiling his dinner by snacking beforehand and trying to eat in a dining car on a train (the man seated across from him looks as though he's a cat which has eaten a sour mouse). Eating in bed, for me, is no fun, but it doesn't kill my appetite.
The ending is a typical Benchley one-liner. The short is enjoyable and worth watching.
The first successful humorist turned actor
theowinthrop17 April 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Robert Charles Benchley was one of the cast of the Ginger Rogers' film "Rafter Romance" that I reviewed over a week ago. It's odd to begin this review with that, but his best scene in that film (most of his scenes in that were quite good) was suggestive of his past. Like his later comic adventure with Rogers - "The Major And The Minor" - Benchley is very openly making a sexual pest of himself towards Ginger. Here he happens to be her boss, and so a situation that could lead to a heavy lawsuit today is created by him as he tries to get her to go with him for a night out. Benchley, picks up Rogers at her boarding house, but her friend, Big Boy Williams is the cabby and can see she wants none of the pawing in the cab seat that Benchley is going for. It turns out that Benchley was taking Rogers to the theater and dinner, and Williams keeps on finding reasons to ask practical questions about whether Benchley has gotten everything he needs BEFORE the play commences. Rogers "naturally" shows an equal concern about whether Benchley has his hip flask (it's prohibition), his tickets, his cigarettes and matches (Williams offers to stop the cab at the next tobacco shop to allow Benchley to get his cigarettes, despite the fact that Benchley insists he has them). Soon his "romantic" moment is totally dead, and Rogers and Williams are smiling in unison about their breaking it!
The thing about that scene was that Benchley was (originally) one of New York City's leading theater critics - and an Algonquin Round Table member with Harpo Marx and fellow critic and actor Alexander Wolcott. Benchley wrote for the original "Life Magazine" which was a humor magazine. He had begun writing essay humor pieces at college, and soon published books of them, with titles like "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Seas, Or David Copperfield". His real success as an actor began with a classic piece, "The Treasurer's Report", where a small town club treasurer totally flubs his hard to comprehend stats. With the coming of early films he made a successful, unexpected transition as a comic actor in "The Sexual Life Of The Polyp".
Had talking films been available from 1895 onward, no doubt the first humorist turned actor would have been the great Mark Twain. Twain enjoyed having his picture taken with suitable comic comments. Twain also was filmed a few times - but in brief silent movies at his home in Connecticut. In England it would have been Sir William Gilbert, who also enjoyed spoofing pictures with captions ("Ah, so glad that you came to visit me...the grand old man of letters...that is my royalty check there isn't it?"). Twain died in 1910 and Gilbert the following year. It was not until 1929 then that a great comedy writer finally became a "talking movie star".
"How To Eat" is like all of the bulk of Benchley's series of comedy shorts. He is looking at life as an average man, and (interestingly enough) leaving the future viewers of his work with a view of his particular age and it's problems. Because "How To Eat" actually is tackling the reason people (or men like Benchley) lose their appetites. He is eating a spaghetti dinner, when he is told of a potentially disastrous shake-up at his job by a well-meaning friend. He is on a date (played quite well and seriously as a man who is really in love - not in lust as with Rogers in "Rafter Romance"), who can't concentrate on the fine meal while looking at the woman he loves. My three favorite segments is his snacking frenzy (despite warnings from his wife) before a dinner he can't bring himself to eat; his discovering that he has carved and served up a huge turkey dinner to everyone else at his table and left himself with some celery; and his dining in a railroad dining car where the man who sits opposite him looks like Woodrow Wilson, says nothing, and is glaring at Benchley's choice of food. Benchley normally is very amusing, and if this is not perhaps the best short he ever did it is a good place to begin appreciating his methods
The thing about that scene was that Benchley was (originally) one of New York City's leading theater critics - and an Algonquin Round Table member with Harpo Marx and fellow critic and actor Alexander Wolcott. Benchley wrote for the original "Life Magazine" which was a humor magazine. He had begun writing essay humor pieces at college, and soon published books of them, with titles like "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Seas, Or David Copperfield". His real success as an actor began with a classic piece, "The Treasurer's Report", where a small town club treasurer totally flubs his hard to comprehend stats. With the coming of early films he made a successful, unexpected transition as a comic actor in "The Sexual Life Of The Polyp".
Had talking films been available from 1895 onward, no doubt the first humorist turned actor would have been the great Mark Twain. Twain enjoyed having his picture taken with suitable comic comments. Twain also was filmed a few times - but in brief silent movies at his home in Connecticut. In England it would have been Sir William Gilbert, who also enjoyed spoofing pictures with captions ("Ah, so glad that you came to visit me...the grand old man of letters...that is my royalty check there isn't it?"). Twain died in 1910 and Gilbert the following year. It was not until 1929 then that a great comedy writer finally became a "talking movie star".
"How To Eat" is like all of the bulk of Benchley's series of comedy shorts. He is looking at life as an average man, and (interestingly enough) leaving the future viewers of his work with a view of his particular age and it's problems. Because "How To Eat" actually is tackling the reason people (or men like Benchley) lose their appetites. He is eating a spaghetti dinner, when he is told of a potentially disastrous shake-up at his job by a well-meaning friend. He is on a date (played quite well and seriously as a man who is really in love - not in lust as with Rogers in "Rafter Romance"), who can't concentrate on the fine meal while looking at the woman he loves. My three favorite segments is his snacking frenzy (despite warnings from his wife) before a dinner he can't bring himself to eat; his discovering that he has carved and served up a huge turkey dinner to everyone else at his table and left himself with some celery; and his dining in a railroad dining car where the man who sits opposite him looks like Woodrow Wilson, says nothing, and is glaring at Benchley's choice of food. Benchley normally is very amusing, and if this is not perhaps the best short he ever did it is a good place to begin appreciating his methods
"Love and eating do not go together."
utgard1415 September 2017
Another in MGM's "How To" series of comedy shorts starring humorist Robert Benchley. This one deals with eating and appetites. It's fun stuff but, as with the rest of the series, it is more amusing than laugh-out-loud funny. Benchley is great as always. I enjoy this series for it's "window into the past" moments as much as Benchley's humor, honestly.
Nice Short
Michael_Elliott12 January 2009
How to Eat (1939)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Robert Benchley short, in his long running "How to..." series, which tackled a wide range of subjects with this one here taking a look at eating. The short deals with various issues that might cause a person to lose their appetite. There really isn't any scientific evidence to back up anything Benchley is talking about and my guess is that the majority of what he speaks about, in this short or others, are just things that bother or effect himself. There's certainly nothing wrong with that and this short comes off mildly entertaining and features a couple nice laughs. The best sequence is the section on picking at dinner before it's actually on the table and how this might cause one not to be hungry when it's actually time to eat.
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Robert Benchley short, in his long running "How to..." series, which tackled a wide range of subjects with this one here taking a look at eating. The short deals with various issues that might cause a person to lose their appetite. There really isn't any scientific evidence to back up anything Benchley is talking about and my guess is that the majority of what he speaks about, in this short or others, are just things that bother or effect himself. There's certainly nothing wrong with that and this short comes off mildly entertaining and features a couple nice laughs. The best sequence is the section on picking at dinner before it's actually on the table and how this might cause one not to be hungry when it's actually time to eat.
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