Week Eighty-Nine
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| "Pack Up Your Troubles" 1939 |
MOVIE NAME: PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES
STUDIO: TWENTIETH CENTURY-FOX
PRODUCER: SOL M. WURTZEL
DIRECTOR: H. BRUCE HUMBERSTONE
DATE: 1939
TYPE: WAR, COMEDY
CAST:
JANE WITHERS as Collette , THE RITZ BROTHERS as Themselves ,LYNN BARI as Yvonne , JOSEPH SCHILDKRAUT as Capt. Paul Didot, alias Hugo Ludwig, STANLEY FIELDS as Sgt. "Angelface" Walker , FRITZ LIEBER as Capt. La Coste, alias Pierre Ferrand, LIONEL ROYCE as General Von Boech GEORGES RENAVENT as Colonel Giraud , ADRIENE D'AMBRICOURT as Madam Marchand, ANN BUPP, as Female Extra
SOURCE: A F I, Catalog of Feature Films 1931-1940
AKA: Tin Hats and We're In The Army Now
SONG: "Who'll Buy My Flowers,"
STORY: After the U.S. joins the war against Germany in 1917, vaudevillians Harry, Al and Jimmy Ritz have trouble getting bookings for their act impersonating Germans as the "Silly Schultzes. They join the Army and end up in Saint Marie, France, headed by crusty Sergeant "Angelface" Walker. There the brothers befriend a orphaned American girl, Collette, whose father, Captain Didot, was killed serving in the French Army. Collette lives with Madam Marchand, whose other border Yvonne is in league with collaborationists Jean and Renard. The night the soldiers arrive, Yvonne dances and Collette sings at Madam Marchand's Inn. Collette is happy to see Pierre Ferrand, who was her father's best friend. Yvonne tries to keep Pierre, who is actually Capt. LaCoste of the French Intelligence, at the Inn while his rooms are searched, but he returns and is injured in a struggle. Before he dies, he tells Collette that her father is alive and spying in Germany as Hugo Ludwig, and is in terrible danger. He tells her to inform General Giraud that her father must be gotten out of Germany, and Collette goes to the Ritz Brothers for help. She finds out that the general is at the front and hides on a transport headed that way. At the Inn, the brothers are wearing German uniforms and rehearsing their act, when French soldiers chase them and after escaping in a hot air balloon are shot down behind enemy lines. They are assumed to be part of a missing regiment and are sent to General Von Boech, to which Collette has been sent after she was found wandering around the front. She recognizes her father and after a tearful reunion she is spotted by Yvonne, who is their to report to the general. The general becomes suspicious of Didot and gives him misinformation, which he passes on to Collette. After she leaves the general orders Didot executed, but the Ritz Brothers rescue him and kidnap the general. Didot gets though to Giraud, but the brothers are captured and taken to a French P.O.W. camp. After a successful attack, Collette and Didot find the brothers and convince the guards that they are Americans heroes and not German soldiers.
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