The intrepid cinematagraphic explorer intent on bearding the Screwball Comedy in its natural habitat will make a beeline for the RKO, Columbia, Paramount triangle where he will gorge happily for days. Should he remain unsated he may well make a detour to MGM and Universal but only in extremis would he check out Warners or Fox and especially not the combination of Fox and Otto Preminger. There, of course, he would be guilty of error for in 1937 - arguably the heart of the genre -Fox and Preminger weighed in with Danger: Love At Work which is as wacky as they come albeit 'borrowing' liberally from It Happened One Night (a 'walls of Jericho' rip-off) and You Can't Take It With You (the eccentric clan). It has to be said immediately that Jack Haley is not even a poor man's Cary Grant, Bill Powell, or any other screwball specialist but this doesn't matter so much because co-star Ann Sothern is tremendous and makes it easy to forget both Lombard and Loy. If there is a flaw it is in wasting the opening reel on a verbal description of just how wacky the Pemberton clan is and then actually showing us. The plot is minimal but the supporting players more than make up for it ranging from Mary Boland, John Carradine to a cameo from Elisha Cooke. Whether it would sustain a second viewing is another matter but the first one was great.
Review of Danger - Love at Work
