A week or so back, TCM had a radio stars in the movies theme day.

Eh. As a fan of old-time radio, I've seen many of these movies.
Typically the adaptations fail to capture on film, a visual medium, the
wit and dialogue that works best on radio. That was particularly true of
this lousy movie, the one time Fred Allen ever starred in a movie.

The plot, such as it is, borrows from the famous comic novel, making
farcical observations about the earliest years of the Soviet Union, The
Twelve Chairs by Ilf and Petrov. But a lame murder plot is added at the
beginning and there are murders and attempted murders throughout. There
are only 5 chairs, two of which were sold to the same place.

Most of the scenes are unrelated, although trying to marry the daughter
off to the son of a business rival of Fred's is a continuing thread.

There are a few good gags, like Fred Allen talking over the opening
credits to make fun of Jack Benny and to tell you that you've never
heard of any of the actors (even though if you regularly attended movies
you'd recognize them all). He also makes fun of the producer.

Allen contributed to the script. So did Lewis R. Foster, Jay Dratler,
and Alma Reville (you know who she is), and an uncredited Morrie Ryskind
(three Marx Brothers movies, My Man Godfrey).

It's got no pacing. They try to do a famous gag "Next aisle to the
right" in which the theater goer ends up in the alley but it goes on way
too long. The gag is used again as the final punch line.

As themselves: Jack Benny, Don Ameche, William Bendix, Victor Moore,
Rudy Vallee (HiHo), and a great but wasted supporting cast including
Robert Benchley and John Carradine. As always, Jerry Colonna's unfunny bit
is milked to death.

Gags from Allen's radio program: Mrs. Nussbaum (Minerva Pious) shows up.
And Allen does the same voice he used for One Long Pan on a telephone
call to... Sidney Toler! He plays a detective. That sort of works.

Fred was fabulous on the radio. Track down one of his old programs and
have a listen.

On Tue, 20 Sep 2022 03:07:02 -0000 (UTC), "Adam H. Kerman"
<ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

>It's got no pacing. They try to do a famous gag "Next aisle to the
>right" in which the theater goer ends up in the alley but it goes on way
>too long. The gag is used again as the final punch line.
>
That one isn't even original - it's a dumbed down version of P T
Barnum's sign on a door "this way to the egress" - then when the
victim goes out the door he finds out what the word means.....that's
at least 50 years before the example you give!

The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca> wrote:
>Tue, 20 Sep 2022 03:07:02 -0000 (UTC), "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com>:

>>It's got no pacing. They try to do a famous gag "Next aisle to the
>>right" in which the theater goer ends up in the alley but it goes on way
>>too long. The gag is used again as the final punch line.

>That one isn't even original - it's a dumbed down version of P T
>Barnum's sign on a door "this way to the egress" - then when the
>victim goes out the door he finds out what the word means.....that's
>at least 50 years before the example you give!

The gags are related and share a theme, yes, but it's not a complete
ripoff of Barnam. The theaters were using barkers to help them oversell
their capacity with the ushers sending everyone back outside. I've heard
the gag done properly on radio. It didn't work at all in this movie.