Robert Young can't get a job, but he can win all sorts of radio contests. He's just won a couple of weeks at a Swiss skiing hotel sponsored by Frank Morgan's soap company. At the same time, Morgan decides to see how a poor person would be treated, so he shows up in shabby clothes as the second-prize winner, accompanied by butler Reginald Owen as an industrialist. Adventuress Mary Astor recognizes Morgan for a wealthy man and starts to vamp him. Florence Rice, Morgan's daughter, and her companion Edna May Oliver head off to rescue Morgan.
It's another movie that with a lesser cast, I would rate very poorly, yet I enjoy this one very much. True, the plot is poorly actuated in the movie, the big comedy gag of a clueless Morgan et al. Skiing disastrously is poorly realized, and the toupees worn by Morgan and dishwasher Henry Hull are disastrous. Still, Morgan and Miss Oliver are always fun, Sig Ruman as the hotel manager and Herman Bing as his factotum are a joy, and there are a couple of telling lines well delivered; I imagine the Erich Kastner book this is based on had something more to say than the credited writers that MGM had working on the screenplay let through.
It's another movie that with a lesser cast, I would rate very poorly, yet I enjoy this one very much. True, the plot is poorly actuated in the movie, the big comedy gag of a clueless Morgan et al. Skiing disastrously is poorly realized, and the toupees worn by Morgan and dishwasher Henry Hull are disastrous. Still, Morgan and Miss Oliver are always fun, Sig Ruman as the hotel manager and Herman Bing as his factotum are a joy, and there are a couple of telling lines well delivered; I imagine the Erich Kastner book this is based on had something more to say than the credited writers that MGM had working on the screenplay let through.