Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

bkoganbing Since Brandon Thomas's play Charley's Aunt debuted on the London stage its popularity is unabated to this day. Somewhere in this world there's a stock company doing this material and some actor regaling his audience with the image of that cigar smoking matronly aunt in drag.For an English play this 1941 version boasts a mixed cast of Americans and English players that 20th Century Fox assembled. Purists would surely object to this mixed cast. But Darryl Zanuck in casting Jack Benny in the lead had guaranteed box office with one of the most popular radio stars around. James Ellison and Richard Haydn are trying to make time with a pair of young girls visiting Oxford played by Anne Baxter and Arleen Whelan. They kind of blackmail their roommate Jack Benny into donning the drag he will be using for one of the Oxford theater society plays into being Haydn's long lost aunt from Brazil.Trouble is that the long lost aunt has at the same time turned up in the United Kingdom. Kay Francis for reasons of her own has decided to visit her nephew Richard Haydn at Oxford. After this the story becomes hilariously confusing as both Edmund Gwenn as Baxter's guardian and Laird Cregar as Ellison's father become quite taken with Benny in drag. Think of Joe E. Brown in Some Like It Hot.Gwenn is an old miser who enjoys a rich income being the guardian of Baxter and her fortune. As for Cregar in real life he was three years younger than Ellison his son. But Cregar was a classically trained character actor could play a variety of parts. Back in the day Charles Laughton whose career Cregar's was starting to resemble said that the censor's could never censor the gleam in his eyes. Cregar had an exponential gleam in this and other parts. Sadly he would die within a few years.Probably an English production would capture the entire essence of Charley's Aunt. But the British were never blessed to claim Jack Benny as one of their own.

mark.waltz Umpteen film versions of the classic farce have been filmed, and this one (along with the rarely seen musical version) ranks as the most famous. Jack Benny is about as British as I am, but he delightfully parodies the eccentricities of his fellow Oxford residents, mincing deliciously when he is forced to dress up as Whistler's Mother to be a chaperon for his roommates and their lady friends. Pretending to be one of their aunts, he is unprepared for the real aunt's arrival, she being totally amused by his identity theft and the fact that the faker couldn't be any more different than she is. She's the lovely Kay Francis, and he looks like something that would turn a cucumber into a pickle without the use of vinegar.It's surprising to see Richard Haydn in a straight romantic role considering his comic character parts in films like "Sitting Pretty" and "The Sound of Music". Joined by the handsome James Ellison, they are excellent comic agitators to Benny's blackmailed female impersonator. Anne Baxter and Arleen Whelan are appropriately giddy young girls mostly utilized as window dressing, but oh, what a view... Francis turns a small role (approximately 20 minutes on screen) into a nice return to "A" films after being neglected in her last years at Warner Brothers and reminds how charming she was in light hearted roles. Eccentric portrayals by Edmund Gwenn (hysterically chasing Benny), Reginald Owen and Laird Cregar (having to get blitzed to romance Benny's female character) are excellently bumbling and filled with droll humor.I should mention the British version made around the same time called "Charley's Big-Hearted Aunt" with Arthur Askey which is not as well known in the States but very funny in a different way with some twists not used in the other versions.

slothropgr Most cross-dressing films ("Crying Game" excepted) require a fundamental stretch of the imagination--that Dustin Hoffman, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon (and Tom Hanks for that matter) can all be accepted as women with only a wig, a dress and a falsetto voice. Hoffman took the disguise farther since "Tootsie" was a much milder farce, and almost succeeded, but still there was that voice. Jack Benny in drag requires far more of a stretch than the rest, as he is easily the uuuugliest cross-dresser ever. Wearing only a bad wig and a Mother Hubbard over rolled-up pants (from which much humor derives), he could well have been used as the model for J. Thaddeus Toad's female get-up in Disney's "Wind in the Willows." What makes it funnier is, he's the most reluctant female impersonator of all, and not above mixing it up in most manly fashion with the fellow students who have coerced him into this masquerade. You can get the plot from several other reviews. What's weird is that the two gorgeous ingénues in the flick (one of them Anne Baxter, long before Eve and Nefertiri) spend a lot of time necking with this supposed old lady, and not reluctantly. WE know "she's" a man but THEY don't, yet there they sit smooching it up with "her" and enjoying it. Kinky-winky, as Paul (center square) Lynde used to say. Fortunately for those who find all this a bit too odd even for farce there's the wavishing Kay Fwancis, wavishing indeed, as the title character and reason for all this foolishness, and along with Laird Cregar (playing it straight for once) the calm center of the storm. Quite funny even if some of it is unswallowable.

MARIO GAUCI Once one accepts the archaically broad comedy conventions at play, this is a very funny film adaptation of the celebrated cross-dressing farce (Joshua Logan's contemporaneous stage version had starred Jose' Ferrer!). Legendary comedian Jack Benny stars as a British lord and longtime Oxford student(!) who is forced by his best friends (James Ellison and a debuting Richard Haydn) to pose as the latter's wealthy Brazilian aunt in order to act as chaperon when meeting their girlfriends. Initially, the uncle (Edmund Gwenn) of one of the girls (a thankless role for Anne Baxter) is contrary to their union but soon changes his tune when he realizes whom Haydn is related to; however, he has to contend with the amorous rivalry of Ellison's own penniless father (Laird Cregar – who, at 25, was younger than his on screen son but, nevertheless, convincingly plays a 51-year old roué)! The fine cast is rounded up by Kay Francis (quite lovely as Charley's real aunt), Reginald Owen (amusing as the hapless Dean) and Claud Allister (hilariously appearing at the start as one of two unperturbed gentlemen spectators at an accident-prone cricket match). Not everything works, alas: Gwenn's character arch from stern guardian to undignified fortune hunter is as hard to take as the bland romance between Baxter and Haydn but, ultimately, Jack Benny's frenzied comic antics triumph over such hurdles.An interesting extra on the CHARLEY'S AUNT DVD is this fun promotional short which is very rare for films of its era. It finds star Jack Benny taking time off for lunch at the Fox studio mess hall, when he runs first into Tyrone Power and then Randolph Scott. Naturally, they all start talking about their current action-packed projects – with Power enthusiastic about his latest romantic flagwaver A YANK IN THE R.A.F. (1941) and Scott ditto about the Technicolored Western BELLE STARR (1941). However, Benny makes things up in an effort to avoid discussing his current gender-bending role…though he's not helped by the fact that, from time to time, a bellboy turns up with various parts of his feminine outfit seeking the star's approval! When he eventually confesses, it's Power and Scott's turn to sulk as they bemoan their typecasting as rugged action stars and admit to craving juicy parts such as Benny always gets; indeed, for the latter (and the audience's) benefit, they provide background detail about the "Charley's Aunt" play – including the fact that it's one of the most popular (and hilarious) pieces ever written.