FANCY PANTS

US, 1950, 92 minutes, Colour.
Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Bruce Cabot.
Directed by George Marshall.

An entertaining Bob Hope vehicle and he stars with Lucille Ball as he was to do later in Critics Choice and The Facts of Life. The film is a re-make of the Charles Laughton film directed by Leo Mc Carey, Ruggles of Red Gap. It was one of the comedy successes of the thirties with the English butler transposed to the American West with the obvious cultural clash between England and America. Hope's version is a light satirical musical version but nonetheless entertaining. The Laughton version is very clover with good repartee and closely observed American society.

1. A good Bob Hope comedy? the best characteristics of his comedy in this film?

2. Was it a good Lucille Ball comedy? The particular characteristics of Lucy?

3 Were the hero and heroine sympathetic characters even in their comedy?

4. Bob Hope as a sympathetic character - in situations, in wisecracks, in being a victim, in outwitting the enemy?

5. How good a satire was the film? On the English and on the Americans? How? Comment on the satire on the English: in the play, in the charade, in the manners, in the snobbery?

6. Comment on the U.S. snobbery: in the mother and her wanting a butler, society? Aggie as a contrast to this?

7. What was being satirised in the U.S. and Big Squaw? American society and manners? The father at home? The fiance and the shooter hunts? How was this contrasted with the English?

8. How were the Americans satirised in Big Squaw? The society association with the Earl? The President at the hunt? (And the fiasco of the hunt?)

9. Comment on the real humanity of Martha/Humphrey and Aggie in this situation? At the emergence of real humanity?

10. How did a sense of reality and values come through the farce and the slapstick of the film?