Grover Mockridge (Bud Abbott) and Wilbur Hoolihan (Lou Costello) are friends with Princess O'Hara. Wilbur accidentally feeds her horse candy which results in it's death. To make up for it, they promise the girl to return her a horse and resort to gambling. Wilbur loses the money won and leads to them mistakenly steal a champion horse instead of the old one up for sale. What happens once they realise their mistake forms rest of the story. Once again the film starts off on a solid note with the duo delivering the jokes with ease. The narrative also deals with sadness which does drop the pace but works overall. However, the jokes do feel dragged mid-way while building upto the horse race in the end. The Fourth wall breaking towards the end was fun. The musical numbers act like speedbreakers as the focus shifts from the duo. The mudder fodder bit still cracked me up. Even though I wouldn't rank this film higher among the Abbott and Costello films, it still is an okay watch.

12 year old Princess is driving her father King O'Hara's horse drawn carriage around Central Park. Wilbur Hoolihan (Lou Costello) is their bumbling cab driver friend and Grover Mockridge (Bud Abbott) is his new friend. He feeds the O'Hara horse Finnegan candy and it gets sick. When the horse dies, the guys have to get some money fast. That's a rough diner there. I've never seen one with three giant bouncers. A sick horse is hard to make funny and it's even harder with a dead one. There has to be a better way for the plot to force Wilbur to pay back the Princess. Maybe the horse runs away and the boys have to go looking for it. Otherwise, Lou is a great comedic talent and he makes the best of it. He does do a lot of the same thing where he misunderstands what people say. It's the Who's on First bit. This is still a fun musical comedy but the dead horse is a speed bump. Also look out for Shemp Howard in a supporting role.

I don't remember now who spoke the words in my summary line, but that might have been a good alternate name for this picture. As much as "Hold Your Horses" would have been, the original title before it got changed as a result of Abbott and Costello's war bond tour that was so successful that the film makers decided to honor the effort by stating that "It Ain't Hay"! That bit of trivia can be found on the Abbott and Costello Complete Universal Pictures Collection. Thought that was kind of cool. So in the spirit of their comedy forerunners, The Marx Brothers ("A Day at the Races"), Abbott and Costello find themselves in a story involving a horse race and a wildly disparate cast of characters. Personally, even though a lot of reviewers here feel that Wilbur Hoolihan (Lou) killed the carriage horse Finnegan by giving him the peppermint candy cane, I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he was only trying to offer his equine friend a tasty treat, and by the way, isn't it a mother's prerogative to give a child some peppermint to relieve an upset stomach? Treating Wilbur like a murderer was kind of heavy handed if you ask me, his neighbors should have known better. Among the bits presented in the story are the oft repeated mudder/fodder routine, along with Grover's (Bud) rhetorical insinuation that the ill horse Finnegan has forelegs in the front. The ever literal Costello takes the remarks and runs with them like no other comedy team ever tried to do before or since. And for the longest time, I thought the only horse that ever did a bedroom scene was Trigger in 1952's "Son of Paleface" with Bob Hope, but Finnegan manages one here before he cashes in his horseshoes. Besides the antics of Bud and Lou, actor Eugene Pallette maintains considerable screen time as a bumbling efficiency expert who turns every one of his lemons into an interesting lemonade proposition for prospective employers. If you can, think back to the last time you had lunch at a diner and try to recall how much you spent. Chances are pretty good it was more than the four dollars and fifty five cents that Wilbur racked up for seven of his cronies in the restaurant scene! I have to admit, the financial numbers got a little confusing when race time came around and you had all you could do to keep Tea Biscuit, Boimel and Rhubarb straight, but I guess that was all part of the fun. Also part of the fun were the musical Vagabonds and actress Grace McDonald singing a couple of tunes. But the guys making me cringe a couple of times were the energetic Four Step-Brothers. Every time the agile guy doing those splits landed I had to wince, especially when he hit the moving truck moving away from the dock. I hope they did that all in one take.

Abbott & Costello take on Damon Runyan although, apart from three dodgy racetrack bettors, there's little of the writer's trademark quirky characters to hand. There are no stand-out routines to speak of, but a couple of decent gags, and Eugene Pallette is always good for a laugh.

Abbott & Costello meet Damon Runyon in this adaptation of his story, "Princess O'Hara." This is the second film version of that story, the first (and best) being the 1935 Chester Morris film. In what has to be one of the darkest beginnings to a comedy story ever, Lou accidentally kills a girl's horse. Feeling bad about it (you would hope so!), Lou and Bud try to find another horse to replace the dead one. This is definitely more Abbott & Costello than Runyon. Pretty much every scene involves the boys setting up (frankly obvious) routines, trying to score a "Who's on first?" but coming up with a "What was that?" Still, it's pleasant and sometimes pretty funny. Good cast backing up the boys includes Cecil Kellaway, Samuel Hinds, Patsy O'Connor, Shemp Howard, and Eddie Quillan. The obligatory banal lovebirds for the romantic subplot are Leighton Noble and Grace McDonald. The movie's scene stealer is Eugene Palette. The best parts of the movie are the jokes that break the fourth wall, like when Shemp Howard is asked why he's holding an umbrella and says "Who knows? I'm a Damon Runyon character." or Lou's joke about Universal.

It Ain't Hay (1943) ** 1/2 (out of 4) I can finally say I've seen every Abbott and Costello film. It took me a while but I finally track down a copy of this one, which hasn't ever been released on home video due to some sort of rights issue. In the film, Costello accidentally kills a little girl's horse so he sets out to get her a new one. After waiting so long to finally see this one it really didn't turn out to be anything overly special. There are still some good gags but nothing too classic, although an inside joke about Universal was pretty nice. The "horse eats its father" joke was a highlight as was another scene where the boys try to pull a fast one and sneak off without paying for their lunch. Shemp Howard co-stars but it's Eugene Palette who really steals the film.

This film has not been restored and the Bud and Lou routines are great with perfect timing. One of their best routines are when they are by the race horse which is pulling the open carriage and Lou is briefed on the horse being a mudder and that the horse eats his fodder. The Step Brothers dancing scene is top rate and I haven't seen anything like it anywhere else. The Damon Runyon dialogue is great but because of the studios and family licensing differences, this film will pass into oblivion. What a shame this will be lost when so many would really enjoy it. The copies that are available are of such poor quality you really can't enjoy them.

The comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were in their prime in the 1940's (particularly the early 1940's) and this offering from 1943 is very funny indeed. Based on a Damon Runyon story "Princess O'Hara" (and featuring some of the classic Runyon characters such as Harry the Horse), it's been tailored for the A & C brand of comedy, and features some of their funniest routines (the "mudder & fodder" exchange, which was repeated in their later film "The Noose Hangs High"; stealing the horse, the climactic horse race scene, etc.) Like most of their early features (with the notable exception of the great "Who Done It"), there's also the mandatory songs - they are a mild intrusion, but on their own merit are quite good. (These song numbers were a stock element in the Universal comedies at the time, so you just have to tolerate them, but, like in the Marx Brothers comedies, they did seem to be there just to "pad out" the running time.) There's also a gem of a supporting performance by the great character actor Eugene Palette. Unfortunately, "It Ain't Hay" is currently tied up in legal knots, which keeps it out of circulation at the present time. Due to this, it was not included in the great A & C collection released recently on DVD by MCA, nor has it been shown on television for many years. Hopefully these legal issues will be resolved, and this fine example of the great comedy duo's work will receive the distribution it deserves.

I spent years and years searching for IT AIN'T HAY, as it was the only A&C film missing from my collection. I finally got it this past Christmas. It isn't one of their better films, but it's still Abbott and Costello, and very enjoyable. There are several songs toward the beginning of the film, but by the second half they tone down quite a bit, which helps the film big time. This film also features among the best versions of the "Mudder; Fodder" routine. Costello is particularly funny in this one, and also has a couple of moments where he shows what a great dramatic actor he could be. Like I said, it isn't BUCK PRIVATES or MEET FRANKENSTEIN, but it's still good old Bud and Lou doing what they do best, and that's good enough for any true fan.

Abbott and Costello are at their very best in this agreeable comedy. They play a couple of Manhattan taxi drivers with a fondness for a sweet young girl and her horse. Costello means well in trying to be nice to the animal, but his feeding it candy ultimately causes the horse to get sick - and die. So he and Abbott set out to make things right by getting a new horse for the girl, whose dad (Cecil Kellaway) runs a horse and carriage ride in the city. I know that synopsis sounds rather dramatic, but there is a lot of well-staged comedy between the serious moments. And Bud and Lou are as sharp in ever performing them. Some routines include: their classic "the horse eats his fodder", the boys getting swindled at a phony horse race outfit, Lou getting into trouble at a restaurant for not being able to pay his check, and other assorted gags. Third Stooge Shemp Howard also has a part, but the real fun comes courtesy of fat man Eugene Palette, who is the perfect foil for Costello's antics. As with almost all of A&C's movie of this period, there is some singing and dance numbers here; however, I find them to be rather entertaining and endurable this time out. *** out of ****