There's One Born Every Minute (1942) User Reviews

There's One Born Every Minute marked the debut of Elizabeth Taylor

[tavm · 6/10 · 21 February 2018]

There are two reasons I decided to watch this obscure movie: 1) Elizabeth Taylor-10 at the time-made her film debut here and 2) Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer made one of his post-"Our Gang" appearances here. They play the siblings of much older sister Peggy Moran whose only other film appearance I've seen was in One Night in the Tropics-Abbott & Costello's first movie. Like there, she also plays a humorously aggressive female not resistant to being a bit rude to men. Besides Alfalfa, another former cast member of his former series (though in entries way before his arrival) that appeared here was Edgar Kennedy who was a cop there. Here, he's a mayor who always corrects himself-or tries to-when using wrong contractions. Alfalfa would eventually be a player in my favorite movie-It's a Wonderful Life-and so would a fellow player here-Charles Halton. Neither appeared together there or here. The actual star is Hugh Herbert, a comedian who plays two roles here. I'll just say this was quite funny and screwy with all those players and some plot developments that must be seen to be believed. The version I saw on YouTube was washed out so if this is ever on DVD, I hope to see a clearer copy someday...

A crazy mix of child-like adults and bratty pre-teens makes this a fun-filled comedy trip!

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 5 August 2015]

In her very first film, a very young Elizabeth Taylor gets to speak the opening line, commenting on how funny an ancestor looks. In her memory, all she recalled doing in this second string feature was going around shooting rubber bands at old ladies' bottoms. She's not even billed in the opening credits; Most of the actors who are billed are basically forgotten today, even by classic movie buffs. It stars Hugh Herbert who was best known for his eccentric "woo hoo" exclamations in a series of supporting roles in Warner Brothers comedies and musicals and occasional leads in programmers. Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer plays Taylor's partner in pranks, and in one sequence, the two sing together while Herbert (as the Revolutionary war era creator of a pudding powder) in the portrait) reacts, giving Alfalfa his typical double-take. His descendant (also Herbert) is a wacky head of an advertising agency, about as competent as Alfalfa was at singing.

Catherine Doucet (a veteran of W.C. Fields comedies) plays Herbert's homebody wife, a Spring Byington/Billie Burke type who is standing in the way of her daughter Peggy Moran's chance at happiness with the man she loves (Tom Brown), wanting her to marry the son of political blow-hard Guy Kibbee who tells his off-spring, "You were born with two ears so what goes in one can go out the other". The modern day Hugh Herbert gives Brown a job in order to help him gain his wife's approval while running for public office ("What do you want for mayor, a pudding or a man?"), and this leads to a series of zany situations that turns this into an amusing farce involving various past generations of Herbert's family (all resembling him) giving him ghostly assistance. Such funny men as Gus Schilling and Edgar Kennedy (playing a pompous mayor who claims that you can put all your baskets in one egg!) round out the cast with bit parts by character actresses Renie Riano (as a spinster named Aphrodite) and Maude Eburne adding babbity provincial atmosphere. Eburne is especially funny as a spunky ghost who refers to her living descendant with "To me he's just ectoplasm in a gabardine suit!" A low-budget treat all the way around!