Fixing a Stew (1934) User Reviews

It all started with a bear in his bed....

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 12 October 2020]

Much of the first portion of the film consists of Leon Errol doing a lengthy drunk scene with two other actors. The act is pretty funny but also rather directionless. In the meantime, Leon's mother-in-law consults with her doctor...asking him what she can do to get Leon to stop getting drunk all the time. The doctor says sometimes a great shock can cure a drunk....so when Leon awakens after his bender, he awakens next to a bear...a real, live bear. But it all gets even crazier and weirder after this, as the mother-in-law has pulled out all the stops to shock the old souse!

The film is more plotless than usual--both in the beginning and when Leon awakens. But it IS funny...clever and worth seeing.

At The Bar

[boblipton · 7/10 · 11 April 2020]

Leon Erroll drinks too much, in the opinion of his mother-in-law, Dot Farley. So she arranges for everyone around him to talk in non-sequiturs until he decides to sober up permanently.

It's written and directed by Al Boasberg, and starts with what appears to be a barfly sketch between Leon, Eddie Kane, and Jack Norton; like the other Boasberg-Erroll collaborations of the period, it seems to have air of a burlesque skit.

Boasberg would eventually cease to direct and return to what he was great at: writing comedies, often as a gag constructor. He had just signed a contract to write for Jack Benny's radio show when he died of a heart attack in 1937, aged 44.