Never Say Die

Never Say Die
Blu-ray
KL Classics
1939 / B&W / 1.33: 1
Starring Bob Hope, Martha Raye
Written by Preston Sturges
Directed by Elliot Nugent

Hold hands, you lovebirds, all four of you. Bob Hope and Martha Raye play John Kidley and Mickey Hawkins, both very rich and each engaged to the wrong person. Kidley is tied to June Marko, an Olympian sharp-shooter, possibly homicidal, and definitely money hungry. Mickey is stalked by Henry Munch, a clodhopper who’s more interested in whittling than pitching woo. Like a bedroom farce on a runaway roller coaster, Never Say Die grows more salacious as it picks up speed, and thanks to a supercharged script by Preston Sturges, it’s one of Hope’s finest—if atypical—comedies.

The setting is Switzerland and the action revolves around the chalets of Bad Gaswasser, a village reminiscent of the idiosyncratic burgs in comedies like Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, where Mutton Chop mustaches and lederhosen are de rigueur. Known for its rejuvenating spring water, Bad Gaswasser is a spa town that grifts off monied hypochondriacs like Kidley, a jittery millionaire who should be on easy street but Sturges has other ideas—Kidley’s x-rays have been mixed up with those of a dog’s. The doctor, played by Monty Woolley, alerts Kidley to his canine metabolism; “You will completely digest yourself.”

Resigned to dying sooner than later, the usually cowardly Kidley finds new meaning in life by playing hero to Mickey Hawkins, a sweet-tempered Texan with money to burn. Her father is pushing her into the arms of Prince Smirnoff, a penniless lothario masquerading as a high roller.

To rescue Mickey from Smirnoff’s clutches, Kidley and Mickey get married—but only long enough to kneecap the greedy Prince and allow Mickey to marry Henry while Kidley enjoys a brief respite from the avaricious June. Except Kidley and Mickey find themselves falling in love while June and Henry begin to see each other in a different light. They should have passed out scorecards in the lobby.

“Did your wife bring her boyfriend on your honeymoon?” That was the question asked in Paramount’s promotions for Never Say Die. It was the kind of risqué come-on that fueled many a pre-code comedy while luring randy ticket-buyers, but as ribald as his screenplay is, Sturges was just warming up (this was the man who slipped Trudy Kockenlocker and The Wienie King past the Hays Office).

The credits list two screenwriters alongside Sturges, Dan Hartman and Frank Butler (not coincidentally both regular writers for Hope) but the over-caffeinated characters and whiplash plot-turns percolate like prime Sturges, and they’re exemplified by the preposterous mating dance performed by Henry and June, a romance born in the society pages and funny papers. Andy Devine is the oafish Henry and the vampish sophisticate Gale Sondergaard plays his inamorata; “He whittled his way into my heart” (only in the Sturges Universe does Gale Sondergaard get bigger laughs than Bob Hope).

As the underhanded Prince, the veteran villain Alan Mowbray is a revelation, playing a variation on every continental flim-flam man. Mowbray shines in the finale, a duel between Kidley and the Prince. The audience will recognize the origin of The Court Jester‘s “vessel with a pestle” in Hope and Mowbray’s standoff—here the confusion lies in the dueling pistols that may save Kidley or kill him: “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.”

The director Elliot Nugent had a serviceable style which worked well in conventionally scripted comedies like The Cat and Canary and The Male Animal (which Nugent co-wrote and starred in the broadway version)—but Nugent’s feet were firmly on the ground; with a Sturges script, it pays to have a little madness in your method. One can only imagine what Sturges himself might have accomplished with this fractured fairy tale.

With its beautiful new Blu ray release (from a 2K Scan of the 35mm Fine Grain), KL Classics has given this Hope/Sturges collaboration new life—the film deserves a higher profile in Hope’s career. The extras included a feature length commentary from film historians Paul Anthony Nelson and Lee Zachariah. KL has also included a boatload of trailers for Hope films.