Caught in the Draft

Caught in the Draft finds Bob Hope as an egotistical movie star who may be subject to the draft so he's going to do the unthinkable, get married and get a deferment. But you'd think the last person he'd try that with is a daughter from a military family. Yet Hope pursues Dorothy Lamour in his usual wolfish Hope way, but the net result is he winds up still single and actually enlisting in the army when a Sting like con game backfires on him.

But I will say Hope has loyal friends, his agent Lynne Overman and general factotum Eddie Bracken also enlist. To say they don't exactly have the makings of Audie Murphy is to put it mildly. Still what they won't do for a pal. I know I didn't have friends like that back in the day.

Caught in the Draft has the usual run of service comedy situations and Hope while not as hopeless a soldier as Lou Costello, still he gets his usual laughs. It's a dated film in the sense we haven't had a draft in this country for almost 40 years, but I still think audiences can appreciate it today.

Look for good supporting performances by Clarence Kolb as Lamour's father and Hope's commanding officer and Paul Hurst as the eternal tough training sergeant.

Caught in the Draft is directed by David Butler and written by Wilkie C. Mahoney and Harry Tugend. It stars Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Lynne Overman, Eddie Bracken and Clarence Kolb. Music is by Victor Young and cinematography by Karl Struss.

It's an old saying, but comedy "is" very subjective, something that makes recommending or writing reviews about comedy films troublesome. Bob Hope movies are a mixed bunch, suffice to say that for every fan prepared to stand up and say that "such and such" is a great and funny Hope movie, another will say it's a lame effort. Caught in the Draft, to my Hope fan mind, is one of his best films. The "forces comedy" has many entries in the cinema drawer, from Bud and Lou to Martin & Lewis, and into the modern era with Stripes et al, it's a well farmed premise. Caught in the Draft, however, is up with the best of them.

Film finds Hope as Don Bolton, a movie star who is so cowardly he can't even stand loud noises. To dodge the draft, he plots to marry Dorothy Lamour's Antoinette 'Tony' Fairbanks, who happens to be a Colonel's daughter. But sure enough, Don and his two crony side-kicks enlist by mistake. Cue mishaps and chaos during basic training. Don's incentive is that if he by some miracle achieves the rank of Corporal, then the Colonel will let him stay on base and continue his relationship with Antoinette.

It was tailored as an ensemble piece, with Bracken etc slotted in alongside Hope as the big sell, but Hope, as his subsequent career bares out, didn't need help because he dominates the comedy and steals every scene he is in. And this in spite of Bracken, Overman and Kolb also doing fine work as well. The gag quota is high, visually and orally, a one liner or a brisk set piece is never far away, and Lamour continues to be the perfect lady foil for Hope's ebullient japery. Whether it's the cowardly comedy antics or fluke bravado, it's a film showcasing the best of Bob Hope and a character persona that served him so well over the years. If only for a tank sequence this deserves a chance to lift your blues, as it is, it's all good, even now, never mind in 1941! 8/10

Bob Hope starred as cowardly movie star Don Bolton. When he reads that the government is going to increase the military draft age to include 21-to-35 year olds, he panics at the prospect of being conscripted. He comes up with the idea of getting married, which at the time removed him from draft eligibility, and so he woos army brat Antoinette (Dorothy Lamour). In his haste to get her to marry him, he inadvertently signs up for the Army anyway. He and his pals (Eddie Bracken and Lynne Overman), who join up as well, try to survive basic training.

This agreeable-though-not-groundbreaking comedy ended up being one of the biggest hits of 1941. Hope is fun as the weasly Bolton, and Eddie Bracken is fun as his young assistant. Dorothy Lamour is beautiful, and when her character is first spotted by Hope's, he remarks, "She looks like Dorothy Lamour with clothes on." She has a few lines that were directed at the audience as much as Hope's character about how the military needs soldiers even during peacetime, since no one knows how long that peace will last. The movie premiered about five months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

I saw this movie when it was re-released as a supporting feature at a cinema here in Melbourne about 1951. Don't remember much about it, except the scene where the hero (Hope) loses control of a tank and runs it into the side of the colonel's Cadillac limo (it might have been a Chrysler) but the audience was appalled, as I was, because luxury cars like this were rarely seen here in those years. It wasn't faked either, as I recall. Can someone advise what the car was? I'm compiling a list of cars used in the movies. Apart from that I thought it was a quite passable comedy and I'm hoping it might come up on late-nite TV sometime as they have occasionally shown other Paramount movies of the era. TT.

Bob Hope plays a cowardly movie star who is afraid of being drafted. So he concocts a scheme to marry pretty Dorothy Lamour, in hopes of avoiding the draft. But general's daughter Dorothy figures him out and is disgusted by his cowardice. Having actually fallen for her, he comes up with another scheme to pretend to join the army to impress her, but it backfires and he finds himself actually enlisted. You can pretty much guess what will happen next. Decent WW2 comedy with the usual likable performances of Hope and Lamour. Eddie Bracken plays Bob's sidekick. It's a pleasant time-passer but nothing exceptional. It's fun to see Hope and Lamour in a movie without Bing Crosby. I kept expecting Bing to pop up and steal Dorothy away, as Bob rarely got the girl in their movies together.