Cinema Revisited: Everything's Rosie (1931)

Everything’s Rosie (1931)

Directed by Clyde Bruckman. Cast: Robert Woolsey, Anita Louise, John Darrow, Florence Roberts, Clifford Dempsey, Lita Chevret, Alfred P. James, Frank Beal, Nora Cecil, George Chandler, Leo Willis, Rochelle Hudson, Noah Young. Running time: 67 minutes. Released June 13, 1931

Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey were a popular comedy team on stage, and transferred their act into a series of successful feature films for RKO Radio Pictures. In 1931, the studio split the team and gave them each a starring film. Wheeler appeared alone in Too Many Cooks. Woolsey’s solo effort was Everything's Rosie. It was decided the two worked better together, so they were reteamed and resumed their film series.

Everything's Rosie is mild, but still a pretty amusing reworking of the stage success Poppy, which starred W.C. Fields and in which Woolsey had a supporting role. Fields had made a silent version for D.W. Griffith, SALLY OF THE SAWDUST, but would not remake POPPY under that title until 1936. Interestingly enough, Rochelle Hudson, who would have the title role in the later Fields film, has a bit part in this one.

Woolsey plays J. Dockweiler Droop, an crooked unlicensed carnival medicine show who travels with his teenage daughter, Rosie, whom he adopted when she was three years old. Rosie falls for a boy of some means with a snooty family and an even snootier fiancé, but he also loves Rosie. Droop realizes he will never fit in with that level of society and makes the great sacrifice by leaving and letting Rosie enjoy a happy life of love, wealth and privilege.

While it is filled with corny comic dialog in the Woolsey tradition, and the presence of Bert Wheeler is sorely missing, Everything's Rosie still resonates due to its pre-code status and the cornball jokes that are irresistably amusing in spire of themselves.

For instance:

Droop: “How old are you my good woman?”

Middle aged lady: “I am just past my 20th birthday”

Droop: “You must have passed it on the way back!”

And in another scene

Droop: “How old are you?”

Older woman: “Why I am 17, how old are you?”

Droop: “If you’re 17, then I am to be born next Thursday”

Anita Louise is young and pretty in the title role, and as with most films during the early sound era, the cast is filled with welcome familiar faces throughout the cast. John Darrow comes off better than most in the bland juvenile role as Rosie’s intended. Director Clyde Bruckman was no stranger to comedy direction, having worked with Buster Keaton during the silent era.

Everything's Rosie is pretty creaky, but delightfully so. And it did net a profit of $35,000 for RKO Radio Pictures at the time of its initial release, but the comedies in which Woolsey performed with partner Wheeler were far more lucrative. Still, as a historical document, Everything's Rosie is both interesting and enjoyable. A lot of the comic dialog are jokes that were pretty wheezy even at the time of the film's initial release. But somehow in context they work as history, as cultural artifact, and Woolsey's delivery is just one step behind Fields or Groucho Marx. This is a pre-code comedy I recommend