My Favorite Brunette (1947)
Narrating from death row, a mild-mannered baby photographer explains how he got there. Left alone in a private eye's office, he is mistaken for the detective by a distressed woman and pulled into a case of a missing man, a hidden map, and crooks posing as sanitarium staff, ending with a murder pinned on him.
A spoof of the hard-boiled detective cycle then in fashion, My Favorite Brunette casts Bob Hope as a would-be sleuth alongside genre heavies Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney Jr., with Bing Crosby turning up unbilled as the prison executioner. Paramount let the copyright lapse, and the film entered the public domain in 1975.
Background
My Favorite Brunette is a spoof of the hard-boiled detective films popular in the 1940s. Bob Hope plays a mild-mannered baby photographer who is mistaken for a private eye, and Dorothy Lamour co-stars. Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney Jr. play the genre heavies. Elliott Nugent directed for Paramount. Bing Crosby appears unbilled in a brief role as the prison executioner, a cameo that is often singled out as one of the film’s best gags.
What to watch for
The movie opens with its narrator on death row, and the rest of the picture is his flashback explaining how he got there. A distressed woman mistakes him for the detective in an office he has been left alone in, and he is pulled into a missing-person case involving a hidden map and crooks posing as sanitarium staff. Watch how the film parodies the conventions of the genre, including the tough-talking dialogue, the femme fatale and the sinister henchmen, and how Hope’s cowardly bumbling undercuts each of them. The plot is deliberately convoluted, and the jokes depend on the audience recognizing the clichés being mocked.
