THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT (1945)

Third string trumpeter, Jack Benny, falls asleep one evening during a live broadcast for Paradise Coffee, "The Coffee that Makes You Sleep".  He dreams that he's an angel in Heaven.  And because the people of Earth are being naughty, Jack has been selected to blow the judgement call on a magic trumpet that will destroy the Earth. He's sent down to Earth on a magic elevator with the instructions to blow the horn at exactly midnight.

Naturally if he did that this wouldn't be much of a movie so all kinds of things stand in his way, including two fallen angels looking to steal his trumpet, two beautiful women, his discovery of food and swing music. Oh yeah, he also gets fired out of a cannon and then later falls off a skyscraper into a cup of coffee.

Overall, I thought it was pretty funny. I giggled a few times and enjoyed myself the entire way through. Benny had a few snappy lines and the story had a few clever moments like the lack of angel power in Heaven, the endless bureaucracy in Heaven and the elevator from Heaven to Earth lands in a hotel, much to the irritation of the guests. My favorite thing though was all the great faces: Jack Benny, Alexis Smith, John Alexander, Guy Kibbee, Allyn Joslyn, Dolores Moran, Mike Mazurki and Franklin Pangborn, plus others! And we can't forget the direction by Raoul Walsh. Check it out.

GEORGE WASHINGTON SLEPT HERE (1942)

"George Washington should have chopped this house down instead of the cherry tree."

After the initial shock of seeing the beautiful Ann Sheridan married to Jack Benny, I enjoyed this film and even laughed out loud a number of times, especially when Benny first sees the house: "I couldn't warm up to this place if I was burned alive in it!"

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Benny and Sheridan are apartment dwellers in NYC. Benny is happy, but Sheridan wants to own a home in the country. After their dog (Terry a.k.a. "Toto" from THE WIZARD OF OZ!) chews up a rug and cause their landlord (Franklin Pangborn) to fall down, they're forced to move. Without consulting her husband, Sheridan buys a 200-year-old run down money pit out in the middle of nowhere. He hates it from the moment he sees it (and falls through it's floors and even a few times into the well), but after all kinds of wacky misadventures he begins to like it.

It's not the most original script ever written, but I got quite a few laughs out of it and will definitely watch it again. Good supporting cast also: Hattie McDainel, Franklin Pangborn, Charles Coburn and Percy Kilbride.  Highly recommended, it's probably my favorite of the repairing-a-dilapidated-house subgenre.

I could be wrong, but to me the interior shots looks a lot like the interior shots from ARSENIC AND OLD LACE.