Fight for Your Lady (1937) Online

Jack Oakie, who was great as Chaplin's dictator-friend in "The Great Dictator," takes center stage and shines as a wrestling manager and agent who tells his current fighter, Gordon Jones, to take a dive, so Jack's creditors won't hound him for some moolah.

Meanwhile John Boles (who was Shirley Temple's father in several movies) is engaged to be married, that is until, through a series of events, Jack Oakie finds out she is mercenary and gets her out of the picture.

With her gone, Boles wants to end it all and decides to go to Budapest!, where he meets Ida Lupino, a nightclub singer/puppeteer, who is already engaged to Erik Rhodes. Erik, in a parody of his "Bedini" roles in "The Gay Divorcée" and "Top Hat," is almost better here than in those Fred & Ginger movies. The plan - to get Erik to challenge him to a duel over Ida and be killed. Then, his misery over his ex will be over.

As you can tell, I enjoyed this movie a lot. It may not be a grade A picture. But it is very funny. Ida doesn't get a chance to show off her acting range, as she is given very little to do. But between Jack Oakie, Erik Rhodes, and Gordon Jones cutting up, you could do a lot worse. Also, Boles, Rhodes, and Jones are all three seen shirtless here, too.

If TCM ever shows this again, you should watch this; it's only 67 minutes. What's the problem you can't have a little fun with my wrestling-and-scheming-friend Jack Oakie?

The above summary may sound contradictory, but it's quite accurate. It's obvious that this little film was given only a modest budget and had rather low expectations. However, while it certainly wasn't earth-shatteringly good, it was a nice, simple and enjoyable little film and well worth a look.

Jack Oakie is a wrestling promoter who is only half a step away from the creditors. When his dim-witted wrestler wins (after Oakie bet all their money that he'd lose), Oakie steals a rich guy's topcoat and runs out of the stadium. Later, when he returns the coat, he finds that the rich guy's girlfriend ran off with the wrestler! Now here's the part that makes no sense. Instead of getting a job, the rich guy (John Boles) invites Oakie to tag along with him--even though they don't even know each other! Okay, so this aspect of the film makes no sense,...nor does the next when Boles runs around with a new lady (Ida Lupino) because the lady's boyfriend is renowned for killing dozens of men in duels! Apparently, Boles wants to die after losing his fiancée to the wrestler! Okay, as I admit, the plot is pretty silly in spots. However, when the duel is to take place, the film does become a very funny farce--featuring some silly and fun scenes with Oakie in drag (among other things). About the only negative about the last portion of the film is an over-reliance on lousy rear projection during a car chase scene--it just looked cheap and stupid.

Still, if you're looking for a fun time-passer, then give it a look. It won't change your life, but every now and again it's nice to see some cute fluff like this. Oakie himself described the sort of films he made pretty well when, according to IMDb, he said "The pictures I made were called the bread and butter pictures of the studio. They cost nothing and made millions, and supported the prestige productions that cost millions and made nothing.".

Consistent throughout. Long-tailed gags, mugging by Oakie, actual acting by the young Ida Lupino, a funny villainess in Margot Graham, the inimitable Billy Gilbert, solid support from Paul Guilfoyle all add up to a nice little meringue if you are so inclined. John Boles sings "Blame it on the Danube" with Frank Loesser lyrics, "feeling okay from too much Tokay." The setting is Budapest so there are several goulash jokes. Erik Rhodes is quite funny as a champion dueler with "a sort of mother complex." Lupino plays his little sister who has a ventriloquist act with the blandest dummy ever who sings. Nothing makes particular sense. Nor should it.

Jack Oakie has the main role. He's excellent in an atypical role in "Thieves' Highway." Here he is pure corn pone.

This movie has the logic of an early Eddie Cantor movie -- and none of the charm. Oakie begins as the manager of a boxer. The boxer is played by a very handsome actor, who shows off his body quite a bit. Then there's this opera singer, see ... He has a blonde girlfriend. She is played amusingly by Margot Graham.

Oakie seems to be managing the opera singer -- who sings no opera. He tosses off a schmaltzy song but opera? None.

I watched it because Ida Lupino is in it. She does what she can. She looks very pretty and she is appealing.

It's not the worst movie that great lady ever appeared in. That would be "The Lady and the Mob." But it is at best routine and really sub-par.

Wrestling manager Jack Oakie teams up with world-famous tenor John Boles, who apparently needs a personal trainer. Oakie takes Boles to Budapest to get away from it all, where Boles immediately falls for singer Ida Lupino, whose cabaret act features songs and a dummy.

The Boles-Lupino romance is fairly straightforward but Oakie's comedy tends toward Ritz Brothers-style goofiness, and the picture does seem to have trouble making up its mind whether to be cute or merely obnoxious....

Margot Grahame has a fun role as a gold digger who dumps Boles in a fit and marries dim-but-brawny wrestler Gordon Jones in a hurry.

Erik Rhodes is hilarious as Spadissimo, Lupino's continental would-be lover who may or may not want to kill Boles in a duel but really wants people to know what a dashing rogue he is: "I will show you that I come from a family of fighting fools! Of which I am the biggest!"

Lots of laughs and silly characters, even if it does come across as rather disjointed instead of supremely wild and crazy.

This is a film that looks like it was put together pretty much on the fly because the story doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I guess if you were a movie goer in the Thirties, fluff like this was acceptable if you had familiar and humorous players in it. Jack Oakie's a wrestling promoter in the picture, with Gordon Jones his only charge. With bill collectors hot on his heels, 'Honest' Ham Hamilton (Oakie) asks Mike Scanlon (Jones) to throw a match after he placed a bet on Mike's opponent. But with his eye on a pretty gal at ringside, Mike wins his bout and runs off with her, leaving a boyfriend behind. See what I mean, refer to first sentence.

It gets even stranger when the jilted Robert Densmore (John Boles) decides he doesn't want to live any more, so he heads off to Hungary with Hamilton in tow. How they wound up such good pals is anyone's guess. In Budapest, Densmore gets the bright idea that a sure fire way to meet his Maker is to take up a sword fight with an accomplished champion, ending it all in a flash of glory.

By this time in the picture I was getting pretty restless for Ida Lupino to show up. When she does, her character is introduced as a night club entertainer with a ventriloquist gimmick. For a while there she wasn't moving her lips during the act, if in fact she was pulling it off by herself. But then it became apparent that she was voicing the dummy, making me wonder why the camera didn't focus on something else to keep the illusion going. Oh well, it doesn't really matter that much.

At just a little over an hour, this is an amusing flick if you go for the principals, but the story is entirely forgettable. I watched it just a little over an hour ago, and it's already receding from memory.