Every Day's a Holiday (1937)

Film: Every Day's a Holiday (1937)

Stars: Mae West, Edmund Lowe, Charles Butterworth, Charles Winninger, Lloyd Nolan

Director: A. Edward Sutherland

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Art Direction)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

There are certain actors that I struggle to write proper reviews with on this blog.  This is a curse with trying to analyze & stick to some sort of internal metric of what is "quality" or "intriguing" rather than just enjoying a movie.  One of the actors that causes me the most consternation is Mae West.  West was a big star in movies for a brief period of the 1930's, and then would use that stardom to keep herself employed at nightclubs & theaters for the following fifty years.  She's generally fun to watch-she has star quality oozing out of her ears-but she can't act...hell there are times it feels like she can barely move.  Thankfully this isn't exactly a problem with the broad (in the best sense) Every Day's a Holiday.

(Spoilers Ahead) Similar to Rogers & Astaire or Abbott & Costello, Mae West films don't really need a plot so much as they need sets for our star to do her thing on, but we do get an attempt at a story.  Peaches O'Day (West) is a con artist & thief who is wanted in turn-of-the-century New York for a series of crimes, but gets by as the police captain Jim McCarey (Lowe) is sweet on her.  Still, he insists she leave town.  Peaches decides not to, though, and instead dresses as an acclaimed French singer named Fifi, who comes back and is instantly hit on by Police Chief Quade (Nolan), whom she takes a disliking to.  The film ends with Peaches backing McCarey's successful bid for mayor (he's running against Quade, because why not?), and suddenly the con artist is the girlfriend of the most powerful man in town.

Like I said, the plot is a dud, but you won't care as Every Day's a Holiday is pretty fun.  There are some great sight gags (my favorite being Peaches casually dumping her purse out & there being brass knuckles in there...a fact no one commentates on), and the extended sequence where Peaches shop-steals at a department store is a riot.  West's performance as Fifi is so bad (imagine Mae West attempting a song-and-dance in a French accent...in which she succeeds neither in singing, dancing, nor the French accent) that you have to assume it's meant to be mocked (I laughed), and while this is no one's definition of a top-shelf film...I liked it.

The film somehow won one Oscar nomination, for Art Direction.  The Art Direction is expansive, but not all that interesting.  We see West cascade through mansions, night clubs, theaters, & that department store, but none of them seem that interesting, and one wonders if this was the 1937 version of "MOST Art Direction" as opposed to best.