Never Say Die

Trailer—Never Say Die

Never Say Die(480P)

In only his fifth feature film (at not quite 90 minutes) Hope is beginning to develop his fast-talking, skirt-chasing but ultimately cowardly character in "Never Say Die." Through a medical mix-up, wealthy John Kidley (Hope) thinks he's dying, his stomach devouring him from the inside until nothing remains. Unfortunately, his diagnosis has been mixed up with a dog's. To do good all around, and to avoid a scheming if beautiful woman (Gale Sondergaard) out to marry him (and possibly polish him off, as she has past husbands), Kidley marries Mickey Hawkins (Martha Raye). Mickey is in love with the hapless Henry Munch (Andy Devine) but her father is trying to force her to marry impecunious (and devious) Prince Smirnov (Alan Mowbray). All clear? In any case, Kidley's (presumably) month-long marriage to Mickey will leave her a rich widow who can marry her beloved Henry Munch without her father's interference. Then Munch shows up unexpectedly and insists he go along on the honeymoon to make sure there's no hankey-pankey between his fiance and Kidley, At first, this is fine with all parties. But as Kidley and Mickey develop feelings for each other, legally united man-and-wife look for ways around the jealous fiance (by the way, the wedding ceremony is a hoot). Meanwhile, the scorned woman (who is also an Olympic pistol medalist) and the angry Prince Smirnov pursue the fleeing couple for vengeance. Despite a very funny start and set up once Hope, Divine and Raye are established in the hotel as three-way honeymooners, the movie slows up. It gains momentum later when Kidley and Prince Smirnov duel--in one of the earliest, perhaps the foundational, bits of confusion in duels or shoot-outs, where Kidley arranges for one of the pistols to be packed with a blank cartridge--but is it the pistol with the cross on the muzzle or the nick on the handle? Hope and Mowbray play this superbly--a bit which famous fast-talker Danny Kaye will milk for even more in "The Court Jester" more than a decade later. This film is vital in the development of Hope's famous film personality, and he is about to explode as a star in a sequence of movies beginning with "The Cat and the Canary" through "The Road to Singapore" and "The Ghost Breakers" and "The Road to Zanzibar" (teamed in the "Road" pictures, of course, with another rising Paramount star, Bing Crosby). "Never Say Die" is one of those little films where you don't expect much and come out mightily pleased. With the excellent start and ending it's too bad it sags a bit in the middle, but who doesn't these days?

A rich young man who travels from Alpine spa to Alpine spa gets pursued by an enterprising beauty of the "black widow" type. He's got other problems too. Although he's as healthy as a horse - a healthy horse, that is - he thinks he's seriously ill. As a result of a silly mistake an eminent specialist declares that he is, indeed, dying. The cause : an ultra-rare case of "canine acidity" that will cause the young man to devour his own body, bones included... "Never say die" is a pleasantly silly and funny comedy/farce. It boasts the kind of plot that gets stolen for merry musical comedies or merry operettas. This resemblance gets confirmed by the inclusion of an amusing musical number about "oom pah pahs". The touch and tone are consistently light. Many of the classic mechanisms of comedy are present, such as mistakes, misunderstandings, disguises and impersonations. The movie also pokes fun at stock characters of other genres, like the smart, sophisticated "black widow" whose successive husbands come to sticky ends. (Note the practiced ease with which the widow consults expensive lawyers.) Bob Hope plays the rich young hypochondriac, while Martha Raye is the damsel in distress who crosses his path. Both of them do very well and their chemistry is a thing to behold. Lovers of the comedy genre will notice a joke about a duel that gets recycled for a later Danny Kaye movie called "The court jester". You know what they say - jokes are like wine, they improve with age... In short, an enjoyable "divertissement".

Before the road pictures and Bing Crosby, there was Bob Hope and Martha Raye. This duo continued to entertain USO troops all over the world after the outbreak of WW2, and the thousands of GIs who saw them were always extremely grateful. This is one of their several film appearances together, and while not very believable from a romantic angle, they are, at least funny with their bantering. An hour of harmless fun.

Though I'm not sure if there are any documented cases, my guess is that someone could die from laughing. At least while watching this outlandish farce. Nobody does manic comedy better than Martha Raye in her prime. Put her with Bob Hope and his rapid fire one-liners, and the result is something so hilarious you can barely catch your breath between the laughs. The execs at Paramount had previously paired the duo in all-star comedies with W. C. Fields, George Burns and Grace Allen. So that gives you an idea of the talent under contract at the studio in the late 1930s. In supporting roles, Hope and Raye did very well with audiences. In 1938 they were given their first vehicle as stars-- a military comedy called GIVE ME A SAILOR which also featured Betty Grable. It was a hit. So of course, another project was planned. Maybe if Mr. Hope hadn't done even better with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour a year later, he would have formed a permanent screen partnership with Miss Raye. While NEVER SAY DIE would be their last movie together, there were plenty of USO tours over the years and various TV specials, as late as 1986. They enjoyed a very lengthy professional collaboration. In NEVER SAY DIE, Hope plays a hypochondriac cough cough, who thinks he's dying. Shades of what Rock Hudson experienced in SEND ME NO FLOWERS. In this version, based on a successful stage play, Hope is a bajillionaire engaged to gold digger Gale Sondergaard. He'd like to be well rid of her and do something meaningful with the time and money he has. Enter Martha Raye's character, a wacky Texas oil heiress. She's vacationing at a European spa when she bumps into Hope. She has a predicament-- whether to consent to an arranged marriage with a stuffy prince (Alan Mowbray) or run off with a hick (Andy Devine) from back home, at the risk of being disinherited by daddy. Hope decides to intervene. He proposes that she marry him, as it would kill two proverbial birds with one stone. He won't have to wed Sondergaard, and she won't have to wed Mowbray. Then after Hope kicks the bucket, Raye will have Hope's money as his widow, and be free to marry Devine without having to worry about being cut off. Of course things, only get more absurd after they tie the knot. The main fly in the ointment is that Hope's not really dying. The second issue is that he and Raye are actually falling in love with each other. Hey, stranger things have happened! And then there's the problem of what to do about Mowbray, challenging Hope to a duel. Somehow, it all gets resolved. Hope lives. He gets to keep Raye as his bride. And in a silly twist, Sondergaard and Devine are struck by Cupid's arrow and end up as a couple! This is a very funny movie that should be enjoyed by audiences. Never say you haven't had a thoroughly good time watching the antics of Martha Raye and Bob Hope.

I give this one a 10. I can't think of more than a minute or 2 going by without laughing. Martha Raye is the best female counterpart to Bob. She has the same comic sense and the two of them play off each other perfectly. Perhaps the first movie with full-on gay subtext jokes as well. Don't miss it if you like Bob Hope or classic comedy.

Never Say Die is a funny old comedy, made in 1939.The movie takes place in Switzerland.In the movie the great Bob Hope plays this guy called John Kidley, who thinks he's dying, so he decides to get married before he's gone.And he marries a woman, whom he saves from a suicide.This woman is called Mickey Hawkins, played by Martha Raye.John and Mickey are supposed to marry some others, but they marry each other, without any love.They hardly know each other.But they've got nothing to lose.And then there is this Henry Munch(Andy Devine), who is very much in love with Mickey.But everything works out just fine.Mickey and John start to love each other, Henry finds his own sweetheart and John's not even dying.The movie has a great ending.Great movie from the 1930's.

No masterpiece, but interesting in its own right. Martha Raye, for once, is playing it straight, and not doing the broad comedy/singing routine that was part of her 1930s Paramount films. (She really didn't show this side of her talent again until she had her regular TV variety show in the 1950s. Bob Hope had not yet become the familiar "Bob Hope", wise-cracking and egotistical; rather, here he plays a light comedy romantic lead rather in the British music hall manner. The love scenes between the two are often rather touching in their sincerity. The supporting cast is excellent, especially Gale Sondergaard, the predatory villianness whose shooting skill, which hangs ominously over Hope's head as she forces him into marriage during the entire film, provides the deus ex machina to resolve the romantic plot in a surprise turnabout. The fact that all other roles are played so broadly helps highlight the relatively subdued Raye and Hope performances. In fact, there are several surprises along the way, including the fact that boy and girl marry at about a third of the way through the movie; then fall in love. Very enjoyable.

This supposedly light-hearted romp through Switzerland seems more like spending the weekend at Berchtesgaden with Adolf and Eva. This is quite a surprise when you consider that the script was co-authored by Preston Sturges, and that the cast includes Bob Hope and Andy Devine. I only have to imagine Andy saying "Wild Bill" in that puberty-stricken voice of his, and I laugh. Unfortunately, this is not the old Wild Bill Hickok show. The next Preston Sturges project to misfire as badly as this one would probably be The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend in 1949, with all of those masterpieces still to come lying in between. The film has one interesting sequence, the duel scene, which contains this dialogue: "There's a cross on the muzzle of the pistol with the bullet and a nick on the handle of the pistol with the blank." When you hear this in the movie, said with the proper rhythm, you will recognize it immediately as the "chalice from the palace has the brew that is true" bit in "The Court Jester" with Danny Kaye from 1956. I suppose Melvin Frank and Norman Panama knew a good idea when they heard one and helped themselves. Or do both scenes derive from an even older vaudeville routine?