MAN ALIVE (1945)

Speed McBride comes home one night, excited to show his wife Connie his latest bowling trophy, but Connie is disappointed because she was expecting a birthday present. But Gordon, an old college friend of theirs, who had a crush on Connie in the past, shows up for a visit with a lovely bouquet of flowers for her. Gordon is recently divorced and Speed, jealous over his attentions to Connie, goes out to a bar to drown his sorrows. He meets a hobo who goes by Willie the Wino and the two get drunk together. When Speed tells him he'd give Willie the shirt off his back, he wants to prove it so the two switch jackets. Speed lets Willie drive him home, but the inebriated Willie winds up driving off a pier into a river. Speed is picked up by Kismet, a riverboat captain and they soon read in a paper that Willie's body was identified as Speed's and the world thinks Speed is dead. Instead of just going home and clearing the matter up, Speed is talked into remaining underground by Kismet so he and Speed go back to Speed's house where Gordon is being very solicitous to the widow. When the will is read, it's discovered that Speed encouraged Connie to get remarried in the event of his death, and worried that she and Gordon will do just that, Speed and Kismet, encouraged by his Aunt Sophie's belief in spiritualism, plan for Speed to pose as his own ghost. Of course, complications ensue.

This is mild B-movie fun, though a big chunk of suspension of disbelief is required to believe that Speed wouldn't just take the easy way out and come clean to Connie right away. Kismet's influence is what pushes him to engage in the scheme, but it's still odd that he lets it go on as long as he does. The actors all do their best. Pat O'Brien as Speed is likable; Ellen Drew (Connie) and Rudy Vallee (Gordon) are fine—though it feels a bit like a second-string cast, which of course as a 70 minute B-movie, it is. The whole thing feels overplotted, with new kinks in the proceedings popping up every ten minutes or so. The funniest moments occur fairly early: on the riverboat, a musical number is performed with cast members dressed as angels singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," so Speed thinks he's woken up in Heaven. Then he sees Kismet, dressed as a devil (pictured above) and assumes he's in Hell. Minna Gombell has a small, inconsequential role as the seance-holding Aunt Sophie. Directed competently by the prolific journeyman Ray Enright. It's hard to dislike this film if you take it as a trifle, but it could have been much more interesting (and funny) with a stronger script. [TCM]