Mr. and Mrs. North (1942)

One of my all time favorites.

i must have seen a different film!!

Awesome Movie

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Mr. and Mrs. North (1942) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Pamela North (Gracie Allen) and her husband Gerald (William Post, Jr.) return home and when they go to fix a drink a dead body falls out of their liquor cabinet. Lt. Weigand (Paul Kelly) shows up and suspects the couple of doing the murder but they claim their innocence and set out to find the real murderer.This MGM film was obviously done to give Allen a role that didn't have her husband George Burns attached to it. For the most part this is a fairly funny, if unoriginal, mix of mystery and comedy. If you're a fan of Allen then you'll probably enjoy this more than anyone else since obviously her style isn't going to sit well with everyone. I thought the actress was in fine form here and certainly helped raise the material and make it much better than it actually is.Allen just has a certain way of delivering her lines. That high-pitched voice and the mannerism are perfectly suited for each other and it leads to plenty of nice laughs and especially early one when Allen keeps throwing everyone with how she's constantly going from one subject to the next. Post is good in his role of the husband and has a nice chemistry with Alle. Kelly, Virginia Grey and Tom Conway are also good and you can see Keye Luke in a small bit.MR. AND MRS. NORTH certainly isn't anything ground-breaking. The story itself is your typical murder-mystery but Allen certainly bumps it up a notch due to her comic timing.

After having just finished watching this picture, I came and read all the reviews here on IMDb. And it delights me to no end to discover that my own opinion is universally shared: George Burns should have been cast as Mr. North. I'm usually the contrarian and it is rare indeed when my opinion puts me in the majority. But I'm delighted to be in the majority here. Usually Gracie gets all the praise when it comes to Burns & Allen, it is really nice to see George get his due. Because, yes, this movie sorely needed George Burns. I'm truly glad it's so obvious to everyone.Now I've never encountered the "real" 'Mr. and Mrs. North', whether that be on the printed page or the television screen. But I get the gist of what was going on here. The idea was clearly to take a known comic star and bring her own brand of comedy to an already existing property, and to hell with the fact that she's nothing like the original character. It reminds me very much of the Marx Brothers doing 'Room Service'. And in this case, it wasn't a horrible idea; Gracie carries it off pretty well. But if you're going to do it, *do* it! Go all the way, and bring in George as well. He probably didn't fit their idea of Mr. North, but so what? If Gracie didn't match the original concept of Mrs. North, then it should be no problem if George didn't match the original Mr. North. OK, so the movie would have been more 'Mr. and Mrs. Burns' than 'Mr. and Mrs. North'. But so what? It would have been a better, funnier film. And as it was, it was really 'Mrs. Burns and Mr. North'.But other than that casting blunder, my only other real complaint with the film is that the story is almost impossible to follow. A big part of the problem is that there are a *lot* of characters, and yet very little exposition. It is really, really hard to keep track of just who all the characters *are*, let alone how they might fit into the murder. The director needed to do something about this.But beyond these complaints, I thought it was a fun little movie. If you don't go in with expectations too high, it is a quite pleasant diversion. No masterpiece, to be sure, but quite enjoyable. With George, it could have been great. Pity.

I can but conclude that complaints that Pam North is more Gracie Allen than the Lockridge character, were not originated by fans of the long-running radio show in which zany Pam, played so strongly by the delightful Alice Frost, over rode any interference by husband Jerry, admirably portrayed as good-natured and long suffering by Joseph Curtin, and the NYPD to solve the weekly murder(s) Mr. and Mrs. North encountered regularly. Today such a series would be laughed off the air, but back in the '40's and early '50's everyone turned on their radio to see if they could beat Pam to the solution of the crime.Compared to the colorful and humorous radio show, the subsequent TV adaption with Barbara Britton and Richard Denning was OK, but not nearly as much fun.If you don't take the Lockridge characters too seriously, you'll love Gracie Allen and William Post Jr. in this 1942 adaptation of a Broadway play.

Surprise #1: I thought this was going to be primarily a Gracie Allen vehicle with a little mystery thrown in for good measure, but it's actually primarily a (solid) mystery with Gracie Allen thrown in for good measure. Gracie doesn't own the film like she does "The Gracie Allen Murder Case", nor is she as utterly crazy as usual, but she does have some very funny lines ("You didn't know the murdered man? But he was in your closet!" - "So what? We put all sorts of things in our closet!")Surprise #2: The mystery is an intricate one, and after 2 viewings I'm still not sure about certain details (how DID that gold compact end up in Norths' apartment?).Surprise #3: The outcome. I guessed incorrectly. Surprise #4: The serious, dark themes underneath the surface. Unhappy couples, extramarital affairs, suggested spousal abuse (on both sides!) - oh, and a character subtly but fairly clearly implied to be homosexual because of his love for cooking and cleanliness!If you like a) murder mysteries and b) Gracie Allen, you will like this film. If you don't....why would you be watching it in the first place? *** out of 4.