HAVING WONDERFUL TIME (1938)

A potentially interesting plotline is done in by a miscast star. Ginger Rogers plays a young working-class woman from the Bronx who saves up money to treat herself to a 2-week vacation at a mountain camp in the Catskills. She hopes to meet some smart and charming people, and she does fall in with some lively female friends, including Eve Arden (with a wildly broad accent) Lucille Ball, and Peggy Conklin, but she takes an instant dislike to the smartest and most charming male in the vicinity, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., a law school student working at the camp for the summer. Of course, since Rogers and Fairbanks are top-billed, we know they'll eventually get together, even though they never really seem like a good match. Red Skelton is Itchy, the slapstick social director, in his first movie role. Jack Carson has a couple of scenes as Rogers' neighborhood beau; Lee Bowman is Buzzy who becomes a romantic complication; Grady Sutton and Allan Lane are also in the cast, and apparently Ann Miller had a few scenes which were cut before release. For a short movie, it wears out its welcome rather quickly, after a breezy 20 minutes or so. Noteable for a character's use of the phrase "truckin'." The real problem with the movie may be that, in the original play, Rogers' character was Jewish (and I imagine, so was Fairbanks), but any ethnic humor or situations are missing from this version and it becomes simply an uninspired, run-of-the-mill romantic comedy.