In addition to the strange delights of International House already mention, you get Burns and Allen at their peak, and there’s Baby Rose Marie (yes, she would grow up to be the Rose Marie of Dick Van Dyke Show fame), whose performance of an adult torch song was considered very inappropriate at the time. You want more? Well, there’s popular singer of the day Rudy Vallee, evidencing a better sense of humor about himself than his earlier film appearances suggested. There’s also a very young Sterling Holloway (many years before he became the voice of Winnie the Pooh for Disney) in the film’s single production number.
We also get “fussy” Franklin Pangborn as the manager of the International House hotel, who is constantly bedeviled by W.C. Fields — possibly because he thought Pangborn was coming on to him. And to be sure all bases are covered, there’s even a very mannish Chinese girl for absolutely no discernible. Let’s not forget the presence of Colonel Stoopnagle (“Stoopnocracy is peachy”) and Budd, who I suppose were funny on radio in 1933, but seem like a perplexing artifact now — perplexing enough to fit this movie. And there’s also a romance between Stu Erwin and Sari Maritza, which is of important to the plot, but of little interest otherwise.
Added to this is the comic villainy of Lugosi. Reportedly, Lugosi told Fields on the set that he was taking a break from horror by playing Peggy Hopkins Joyce’s husband, to which Fields supposedly remarked, “I guess it all depends on what you call horror.” And if you don’t know who Peggy Hopkins Joyce — who plays a version of herself — was, she was a showgirl who made her fortune by marrying and divorcing a series of millionaires, much like she does in the film. She was the tabloid fodder of her era—but with some talent and a sense of humor about her own notoriety.
The Asheville Film Society will screen International House Tuesday, Oct. 20, at 8 p.m. in Theater Six at The Carolina Asheville, hosted by Xpress movie critic Ken Hanke.
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