Having Wonderful Time (1938)

Very well executed

the audience applauded

Memorable, crazy movie

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Ginger Rogers plays a member of a typing pool who heads upstate to a Catskills resort in order to get away from crowded subways and pushy bosses. What does she get in return? A crowded resort filled with pushy New Yorkers! There, she immediately begins to squabble with one of the resort's employees (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) whom she, for no reason revealed, ends up in a romance with. There's nothing to explain why their initial antagonism ended, and no reason to explain why they are together anyway. This isn't like the screwball comedies where the romantic leads argue but their chemistry is obvious. From the moment the film starts, it's very clear that this film is overcrowded with the most obnoxious types of people you can shove onto a subway, and then into a resort. Not one of them are likable. The Broadway play this was based upon apparently centered around a Jewish resort, but other than a few hints of an accent here and there, these characters are obviously not Jewish. Rogers is reunited with her "Stage Door" co-stars Lucille Ball and Eve Arden (reciting a harsh Brooklyn accent), but their characters are not at all fleshed out. Red Skelton makes his film debut and has several amusing, if not outlandishly funny, routines, showing campers how to dunk their doughnuts properly, and demonstrating how various types go up and down the camp's stairs. This is a major disappointment considering all the talent involved.

Bronx stenographer leaves the typing pool for two weeks in the country at a camp for single adults (presumably the Catskills, though any ethnic division has been tidily scrubbed from the scenario). Arthur Kober adapted his own successful play for the screen, keeping the patter between the guests and the staff coming fast and loose. Ginger Rogers at first appears to be playing a lovely blonde killjoy, and the lack of humor in her snippy characterization is a bit disconcerting (although it certainly explains why she's unattached); she's even rude to law student/waiter Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who should have women fawning all over him yet curiously does not. Douglas manages to thaw Ginger out in time, however a childish fight between the two sends her to another man's cabin on Party Night. Not much of a plot--this works much better as a comedic study of character circa 1938. Ginger's mother worries her daughter will become an old maid (!), while Fairbanks seems to embody the handsome but unmotivated loaf-off. Richard (Red) Skelton plays social director, while Lucille Ball and Eve Arden are two of Rogers' cabin-mates. Breezy, innocuous fun for star-watchers. **1/2 from ****

***Slight Spoilers*** Things got really wild at Camp Kare-Free in the Catskills when pretty and conceited Thelma "Teddy" Shaw, Ginger Rogers, arrived there to spend, from her boring job as a typist in the big city, her two week summer vacation. Outside her work environment, typing typing typing, Teddy always tried to put on an act in being extremely well read, by carrying a book on the works of 19th Century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, and talking in the lingo of a rich and well bread Park Avenue débutante. The fact is that Teddy is just a working girl from the Bronx helping her family, whom she lives with, make ends meet in the depths of the Great Depression.It's at Camp Kare-Free that Teddy will not only get a new outlook on life as well as personal relationships but also find the man of her dreams; out of work lawyer and now camp waiter Chick Kirkland, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. At first Teddy wasn't all that crazy about Chick after he accidentally dumped all her clothes, when Teddy's suitcase unlatched, all over the ground and then gave her a piece of his mind when she tried to show him how sophisticated she was. It didn't take to long for Chick, with his boyish charm and striking good looks, to get Teddy to see things his way and fall for him like a ton of red ripe New York Delicious Apples.It's when Chick got a little overconfident in his being a lady killer that Teddy, who's never been exposed to a dreamboat Romeo like him, made a B-line to the camp dance hall before he swept her off her feet. It's there that Teddy met rich and spoiled Buzzy-or Buzz to his friends-Armbuster, Lee Bowman, whom she later got involved in a harmless night long game of backgammon at his cabin. This had Buzz's girlfriend at Camp Kare-Free Miriam, Lucille Ball, not only get jealous in Buzz dropping her for another girl but doing it behind her back: without even bothering to write her a Dear Joan letter!The film ends, together with Teddy's two week vacation, at the Camp Kare-Free dinning room where Teddy's old boyfriend Emil Batty, Jack Carson, unexpectedly show up to give Teddy a ride home to the Bronx! It's then that all the pent up tension between Teddy Chick as well as Mariam reach critical mass. Chick, who's waiting on Teddy and Emil, is made to look like a jerk when Emil treats him as if he just got off the boat, as an illegal alien, from Timbuktu. It's when Buzz, who earlier almost got his skull cracked by a flying rock, shows up for breakfast that a mad as hell Mariam, who threw the rock, confronts him about being unfaithful to her. It's then that a shocked and humiliated Chick learns, from Mariam, that Buzz spent the entire night with his girl Teddy at his private cabin!The hilarious free for all, with fists cups and dishes flying in all directions, at the conclusion of the film gives it just the right amount of action that was lacking, with all the talk talk talk, in it up until that point. It also finally brought both Chick and Teddy back together in them knowing that despite not being financially ready, with Chick out of a job, to get married and start a family that's, by falling in love, the only and logically thing for them to do.P.S The movie "Having a Wonderful Time" was Red Skelton's first film appearance as the camp's goofy social director Itchy Faulkner. We get to see Red do his thing in demonstrating how to properly dunk a donut into a cup of coffee without spilling the contents all over ourselves.

Ginger Rogers is Thelma, a secretary seeking rest and relaxation at a Catskill resort in "Having Wonderful Time," also starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Lee Bowman, Eve Arden, Jack Carson, Lucille Ball and Michael (Red) Skelton. Uptight Rogers arrives at the resort and gets off on the wrong foot with Chick, a law student working as a waiter (Fairbanks). Eventually they discover they really like each other, but when Thelma expects a proposal from Chick, she gets a proposition instead and blows her stack. On the rebound, she picks up with fast Buzzy (Bowman), who's been staked out by Miriam (Ball). Complications arise."Having Wonderful Time" is light entertainment that has nothing special about it except its talented young cast. Rogers is fine as the more serious, less flirtatious woman in a group of love-mad girls. Fairbanks is fantastic, using a completely different persona from other films – he sports an American accent and comes across as a brusque handsome hunk rather than a British gentleman. Eve Arden's New York accent is over the top but she's funny as a resort guest, and comedy and slapstick are provided by pretty Lucille Ball and Red Skelton, who gets to do a couple of comedy routines.All in all good fun from RKO and recommended.