Topper

Hi Aki,

I also saw Topper. Very funny, classic screwball comedy. Cary Grant and Constance Bennet play George and Marion Kerby, two fabulously wealthy young people who just play, play and play. Meanwhile Roland Young is Cosmo Topper, the wall street banker, who is middle aged and not happy about it, and his wife Clara (Billie Burke, the good witch from Wizard of Oz) is his wife, who wants them to be respectable and dictates what Cosmo eats, drinks, when he gets up in the morning and so on.

In a wild car trip, George and Marion crash and die, but they can’t go to heaven, they think, until they perform one good deed. They decide their good deed will be to loosen up Cosmo and show him how to have fun for a change.

So they can move things, and they can appear or disappear, and only Cosmo knows they are still around, and people think they are going crazy when they see cigarettes floating, or pens writing things on their own. Lots of zany dialogue and physical comedy. 1937 and from MGM when MGM meant great movies with lots of production money and beautiful sets and lighting. [Correction: made by Hal Roach Studios, not MGM.]

(written around 15 February 2009)