Joan Davis Movies

This concert and interview documentary features the racy wit of Canada and the U.S.'s most popular female comedians, including Jenny Jones, Whoopi Goldberg, Phyllis Diller, Ellen DeGeneres, and Paula Poundstone. In addition to screening their stand-up gigs and providing interviews with these funny ladies, the documentary provides some historical perspective about the origins of present-day feminine humor using clips of performances by Eve Arden, Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Jet Cosgrave (John Derek) is The Outcast in this big-budget Republic western. Thanks to the chicanery of his crooked uncle Major Cosgrave (Jim Davis), Jet has been cheated out of his father's property and branded a pariah. He spends the rest of the film trying to regain his birthright and clear his name. The two women in Jet's life are Judy Polsen (Joan Evans), who chases him for so long that he finally catches her, and Alice Austin (Catherine McLeod), Major Cosgrave's fianee. The supporting cast is dotted with such weatherbeaten western "regulars" as Slim Pickens, Bob Steele and Harry Carey Jr. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Joan Davis' cinematic swan song was the slapstick farce Harem Girl. Davis plays Susie Perkins, the secretary-travelling companion of Arabian Nights princess Shareen (Peggie Castle). Evil sheik Jamal (Donald Randolph) hopes to murder Shareem and claim her oil-rich country, but Susie does her best to foil this scheme. The plot requires Susie to pose as a jeweled and veiled harem dancer, leading to a series of athletic comedy routines, most of them better suited to a 2-reel comedy than a 7-reel feature. Director Edward Bernds, a recent graduate of Columbia's Three Stooges shorts, co-scripted Harem Girl with another Stooge veteran, Ellwood Ullman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the late 1940s - early 1950s, Columbia Pictures enjoyed a great deal of success with a series of slapsticky feature films built around the talents of such gifted funsters as Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, William Bendix and Jack Carson. In this tradition, Columbia's Traveling Saleswoman is a showcase for the delightful Joan Davis. The star plays Mabel King, who heads westward to sell her father's soap. Tagging along is Mabel's erstwhile beau Waldo (Andy Devine). In the course of the film's 74 minutes, Mabel wins over a hostile Indian tribe, makes short work of an outlaw named Cactus Jack (Joe Sawyer) and a saloon chirp named Lilly (Adele Jergens), and even gets to warble a song or two in her own inimitable fashion. Traveling Saleswoman was produced by Tony Owen, who later prospered as producer of a long-running TV sitcom starring his wife, Donna Reed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Make Mine Laughs was the second of three RKO Radio "pastiche" films, largely comprised of musical and comedy highlights from previous RKO productions. Comedian Gil Lamb hosts the proceedings, finding time to make satirical comments about the opening credits and to perform his "swallowing the harmonica" specialty. The filmclips include two short subjects, Leon Errol's Beware of Redheads and one of RKO's Flicker Flashbacks entries, both presented in their entirety. Also featured are Frances Langford singing "Moonlight Over the Islands" (from Bamboo Blonde), Anne Shirley and Dennis Day duetting on "If You Happen to Find a Heart" (from Music in Manhattan), and specialties performed by the likes of orchestra leaders Frankie Carle and Freddie "Schnickelfritz" Fisher, ventriloquist Robert Lamouret, and dance teams Manuel & Marita Viera and Rosario & Antonio. Make Mine Laughs was withdrawn from distribution after Ray Bolger and Jack Haley brought suit against RKO for unauthorized use of clips from Bolger's boxing pantomime in Four Jacks and Jill (1944) and Haley's "Who Killed Vaudeville?" number from George White's Scandals (1945). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, a puritanical math teacher at a midwestern university is forced by the dean's wife to go to New York to collect the royalties for a naughty romance the latter wrote under a penname. Unfortunately, while there, the professor suffers a blow to the noodle and wakes up believing that she wrote the torrid little tome. Now she finds herself being manipulated by a clever publisher who has the phony writer become passionately involved with a bogus Russian nobleman. Later the woman's memory returns and she goes back to her dull, well-ordered life on campus. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Joan Davis, the daughter of a famed woman detective, has inherited none of her mother's deductive prowess. Nonetheless, Joan teams with patrolman Leon Errol to solve a series of blowgun murders. The two erstwhile Sherlocks track down the alleged murder weapon to a theatre, where it is being used as a prop in a play. After disrupting the performance, Davis determines that the murders weren't committed by blowgun, and that the culprit is a mild-mannered gentleman to whom murder is a "hobby." The title She Gets Her Man clues us in on the finale, and also refers to the shaky but affectionate relationship between Joan Davis and Leon Errol. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Female musicians Sally Richards (Jane Frazee) and Sue Ford (Judy Clark) are Beautiful but Broke in this frantic Columbia musical comedy. Sally and Sue's violinist pal Dottie Duncan (Joan Davis) is equally broke, though not quite as beautiful. The three girls try pass themselves off as an all-girl orchestra, with the help of fast-buck theatrical agent Waldo Main (John Eldredge). Vamping for time until they can gather up a few more musicians, the girls don several disguises to fool a potential client, nightclub owner Putnam (John Dilson). Once this crisis is passed, the orchestra finds itself stranded in the middle of nowhere. The finale borrows a page from Buster Keaton when Sally, Sue and Dottie take refuge in a deserted house slated for Army target practice. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dick Foran is back for another seven-reel melange of music and comedy in Universal's He's My Guy. Foran is cast as defense-plant worker Van Moore, who is casting about for ways of boosting morale amongst his fellow workers. Coming to the rescue are a group of veteran vaudevillians, who stage a spectacular show for the plant. Among these beloved performers are Gertrude Niesen, the Mills Brothers, Louis Da Pron, Lorraine Krueger, The Diamond Brothers and the Dorene Sisters. The feminine angle of the storyline is handled by heroine Irene Hervey and comedienne Joan Davis. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this musical comedy, a country bumpkin spends most of his free time watching movies and becomes such an expert that he can accurately predict which ones will be hits and which will fail at the box-office. An employee at a failing Hollywood studio finds the fellow and takes him back to Tinsel Town. Trouble ensues when the rube convinces the studio to put a no-talent gangster in the leading role of an upcoming gangster movie because he is involved with the mobster's sister. Eventually, the hayseed extricates himself from it all and happiness ensues. Songs include: "Comes Love," "It's Me Again," "Let's Make Memories Tonight," "I Can't Afford to Dream" (Lew Brown, Charles Tobias, Sammy Stapt), and "Jim" (Caesar Petrillo, Nelson Shawn, Edward Ross). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Hold That Ghost was the second of Abbott and Costello's starring films, but was held back from release in favor of their third picture, the more "topical" In the Navy. In Ghost, Bud and Lou play a couple of service-station owners who happen to be hanging around when gangster Moose Mattson (William B. Davidson) is killed. According to the terms of Mattson's will, whosoever is present when "the coppers dim my lights for the last time" will inherit his estate, which consists of a deserted mansion in the middle of nowhere. Crooked attorney Russell Hicks, who knows that Mattson has hidden hundreds of thousands of dollars somewhere in the lodge, dispatches sinister Charlie Smith (Marc Lawrence) to escort Abbott and Costello to the house, with instructions to "take care" of the trusting boys once they've arrived. Charlie charters a bus to take A&C out to the mansion; also on board, going off to various other destinations, are handsome Dr. Jackson (Richard Carlson), lovely Norma Lind (Evelyn Ankers) and professional radio screamer Camille Brewster (Joan Davis). It is inevitable that this disparate group is stranded along with Abbott and Costello in the forbidding mansion on a dark and stormy night. Charlie Smith is promptly murdered by parties unknown; throughout the rest of the film, Charlie's body pops up at the most inopportune moments, reducing the already tremulous Costello to a quivering mass of jello. The plot is merely an excuse to showcase Abbott and Costello's superbly timed cross-talking routines, a riotous impromptu dance performed by Costello and Joan Davis, and, of course, the legendary "moving candle" bit, which may well be Costello's funniest-ever screen scene. Hold That Ghost was originally designed and previewed as a 65-minute programmer title Oh, Charlie, but Universal decided to expand the length and throw in a few guest stars to secure top-of-the-bill bookings. This is why Hold That Ghost begins and ends with barely relevant musical numbers featuring Ted Lewis and the Andrews Sisters. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A Clarence Buddington Kelland story was the source for the mildly farcical For Beauty's Sake. If he wants to inherit a fortune, bookish astronomy professor B. E. Dillsome (Ted North) must operate his aunt's beauty parlor for a two-year period. Business is very, very slow, prompting Dillsome's girlfriend Dime Pringle (Marjorie Weaver) to bring in a hot-shot press agent Jonathan B. Sweet (Ned Sparks) to publicize the establishment. Before long, our benighted hero finds himself mixed up in a murder plot and a blackmail scheme. The raucous comedy relief of Joan Davis and the patented deadpan asides of Ned Sparks more than make up for the film's plot deficiencies. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide