Maisie Gets Her Man

Ann Sothern again plays Maisie in "Maisie Gets Her Man," a 1942 film featuring Red Skelton, Leo Gorcey, Allen Jenkins, Donald Meek and Lloyd Corrigan. Maisie's hired by a comedian, Hap Hixby (Skelton) who gets horrible stage fright, so her job is gone before she even gets to do it. However, the building owner (Jenkins) is impressed with Hap and gives him a job managing the building, and Maisie becomes his assistant. Hap and Maisie fall in love, but when Hap's fiancée shows up, Hap can't tell her the truth. Maisie leaves and gets a job in a show. But when she finds out Hap is in trouble, she decides she has to do something. This is a lively movie, in part because of Jenkins and Gorcey, who are very funny. I can't say I've ever been a Red Skelton fan, but MGM stuck him in every B movie as they attempted to build him up. Here he's nice-looking and plays it straight except when he's on stage. Sothern of course is a delight as the fast-thinking Maisie. Like most serials, the quality varies from film to film. This was one of the better ones, with a little more plot and a strong supporting cast.

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Moviecut—Maisie Gets Her Man

Maisie Gets Her Man

In this movie, down-on-her-luck actress Maisie teams up with an annoying comic. In an unlikely twist, this leads them to work for a bottled water company. Skelton starts the movie being more annoying than funny, and Maisie's decision to team up with him seems unpersuasive. But then, pretty much everything in this movie seems unpersuasive, and the whole thing feels a little disjointed. For the most part the humor is pretty mild, although there is a terrific moment when Skelton discovers he has severe stage fright. A little over halfway through I stopped watching.

Red plays the clown on vaudeville trying to get an act together when he meets up with Maisie who just lost her booking. They team up and flop miserably. They then run across a man who offers to set them up in his business only to get them into the business far enough to get them indicted while he takes off. Maisie and Red fall for each other, but Red already has a fiancé back home. He can't get the nerve up to tell his old flame it's over with so Maisie hits the road also, right before the cops show up. She accidentally runs into the nice man who helped them out and gets suspicious.

Maisie gets involved with a comedian trying to break into show business while also helping out a landlord too kind for his own good and helping the police nab a con artist in this packed entry in the enjoyable Maisie series from MGM. It's a fun, fast-paced picture with a wonderful cast. Ann Sothern is lovable as usual. She gets some great support in this one from Allen Jenkins, Lloyd Corrigan, Leo Gorcey, and Donald Meek. Red Skelton plays the love interest. I like Red but sometimes, like many comedians then and now, he could get on my nerves. He's not my favorite part of this one but Sothern and the rest of the cast are so good it's easy to take his mugging. Jenkins is especially nice here, giving a sympathetic turn as "Pappy," the friendly landlord who essentially provides free room and board for a bunch of shiftless deadbeats. There's a low ceiling on these sorts of B programmers for me. All I expect is to be entertained and this one did that very well.

Spoilers Included - It's strange to see the well-known A.J.Liebling story The Jollity Building used in this film. A lot of the characters (I see Jack McGuire, Morty Ormont, Jerry Rex and Dave, Hi Sky, Marty the Clutch, and Barney the lunch counter owner), sets, and lingo are lifted whole from the story, and many of the situations as well. I didn't see Liebling's name in the credits, though. All the names and a few of the situations were changed in the building, and the locale (Chicago instead of NYC), but it's still quite obviously the Liebling story with a boy/girl romance thrown in. It's a likable film, and Allen Jenkins is very impressive as the building manager (he could be straight from the story's gloomy Morty Ormont).