This boasts a cast of wonderful character actors: Nat Pendleton, Ned Sparks, Part Kelton, and its nominal star ZaSu Pitts. They are squandered, though Sparks is funny as a cynical Greek chorus.
Nat Pendleton was a very likable actor. A leading man he was not. Pert Kelton could be great, racy fun. She's a little racy here but the character is, like the others in this movie, sketched in broadly.
I have seen ZaSu Pitts in "The Wedding March" and "Greed" and am inclined to agree with Erich von Stroheim's high assessment of her skills as a tragedienne. As a comic she had potential, though she often seemed to get high billing for just a few lines.
Here is simply is not funny. And that song! OK, we understand that Pendleton loves it because it makes him think of his own mother. (And his mother turns out to be in jail. Oh, ha ha ha.) But Pitts's delivery is just bad. It isn't funny. Couldn't she have been given a couple other songs or couldn't Kelton have sung something? Enough of that mother song is way more than enough.
NOTE: The Pendleton/mother angle makes this a comic, (sort of) musical version of a later, justly better known movie: "White Heat."
Nat Pendleton was a very likable actor. A leading man he was not. Pert Kelton could be great, racy fun. She's a little racy here but the character is, like the others in this movie, sketched in broadly.
I have seen ZaSu Pitts in "The Wedding March" and "Greed" and am inclined to agree with Erich von Stroheim's high assessment of her skills as a tragedienne. As a comic she had potential, though she often seemed to get high billing for just a few lines.
Here is simply is not funny. And that song! OK, we understand that Pendleton loves it because it makes him think of his own mother. (And his mother turns out to be in jail. Oh, ha ha ha.) But Pitts's delivery is just bad. It isn't funny. Couldn't she have been given a couple other songs or couldn't Kelton have sung something? Enough of that mother song is way more than enough.
NOTE: The Pendleton/mother angle makes this a comic, (sort of) musical version of a later, justly better known movie: "White Heat."