Madame Behave

That's one of Jack Duffy's lines to the character played by Julian Eltinge, probably the best drag performer of the 20th century, who was so good that's there was a Broadway theater named for him that survived until the reconstruction of Times Square in the 1990s -- the theater is still there, the name has changed.

People familiar with Christie short comedies of the 1920s, in which the plots were little more than set-ups for the gags, will be pleasantly surprised at how well their house actors, who always played 'types' in those short films, adapt to the feature film. Structurally the writers have taken Eltinge's stage success, "Madame Lucy" and translated it well for the screen, keeping the action largely the same and substituting comic chases for dialogue -- while retaining the shock value of Eltinge in drag kissing Ann Pennington and vamping Stanhope Wheatcroft.

The story is powered by two sets of conflicts: Eltinge, a penniless architect, and Wheatcroft both want to marry Pennington, and Duffy and Lionel Belmore are in a lawsuit, each anxious to marry the female witness to an accident, to determine her ability to testify. Naturally they think Eltinge in drag is that woman....

Anyway, once Eltinge is in drag, the various mistaken lecheries are the jokes and, like CHARLEY'S AUNT -- which the Christies made with Eltinge the same year -- everyone performs very well, and the usual Christie gag sequences take on their own lunatic logic -- the sight of Jack Duffy, who specialized in playing geezers at a young age, dancing with Eltinge in a dress and beard is sure to break up any audience with laughter.