Three features (just over an hour each), showcase the well-honed comic patter of George Burns and Gracie Allen during the busiest time in their movie career, the mid-1930s. Gracie's dingbat malapropisms were so perfectly straightforward ("I really shouldn't drink coffee in the morning; it keeps me awake all day"), and Burns's straight-man timing so unerring, the pair was often funnier than their material. They road-trip west in Leo McCarey's amusing
Six of a Kind, which is actually at its best when W.C. Fields is polishing one of his pool-playing routines.
Love in Bloom casts George and Gracie as carnival folk, in support of a sappy plot of young lovers in New York. They top-line in
Here Comes Cookie, which has some nice screwball-among-the-rich energy. The Burns and Allen chemistry was really at its best in their short films, radio, and TV, but these Paramount features are pleasing entertainment nonetheless.
--Robert Horton
Reader Reviews
Paramount was a haven in the thirties for radio and vaudeville stars and many of their smaller films of the period preserve the work of these performers at their peaks. This DVD contains 3 programmers, films in support of the main feature, which provide a worthwhile record of the tick-tock timing of the beloved George Burns and Gracie Allen.
