Getting Gertie's Garter

Moviecut—Getting Gertie's Garter

Along with Tod Slaughter capturing the macabre Victorian melodramas on '30's film for your delectation in 2014, UA, while not exactly tiny, distributed both this film and 'Up In Mabel's Room', two fast-paced delights based on 20 year-old plays. Racy plots will have you doing double-takes and a favorite actor, Dennis O'Keefe, keeps the outrageous b*****s in his life in line as best he can, because he sincerely wants his marriage to succeed, despite his prior oats-sowing. You'll wriggle along with him as he gets himself in deeper and deeper. I sincerely enjoy a versatile actor such as O'Keefe, who sang and danced and could act the B-movie hero, as well as offer a solid noir performance in his films. This movie is lots of fun, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

More like a George Feydeau farce than a 1930's Hollywood screwball comedy, "Getting Gertie's Garter" is a small budget film with plenty of laughs. Constrained by the censors of the time (1945), it still manages to do enough "couple swapping" to qualify as a sex farce. But be warned, to really enjoy this film you have to throw all logic away. The "small star" cast of Dennis O'Keefe, Marie "The Body" McDonald, Barry Sullivan, etc. are not the most famous of Hollywood actors. Still they manage to set the right tone and pull it off. A silly piece of fluff that runs only 72 minutes, "Getting Gertie's Garter" like "The Horn Blows At Midnight" (1945) and "The Boys from Syracuse" (1940) is a mostly overlooked gem. If you are into comedy, it is a must see.