Apr 1st     
Hellzapoppin'***       
(US 1941) 

Two Broadway comedians are reluctantly persuaded to make a Hollywood film.
30 years before Monty Python and Airplane! came along this anarchic spoof, a surprisingly subversive comedy made in the Golden age, which also plays the familiar Hollywood trick of trying to have its cake and eat it, by staging a grand musical romantic comedy in style, and only occasionally letting conventionality take over before the zany interludes, which, when they come, are hilarious. More cinematic and surreal than the Marx Brothers, and more tasteful as entertainment than Monty Python.

Written by: Nat Perrin, Warren Wilson, Alex Gottlieb, based on the stage revue by Ole Olsen, Chic Johnson.
Producers: Alex Gottlieb, Jules Levey, Glen Tryon.
Director: H.C. Potter (and others).
Starring: Ole Olsen, Chic Johnson, Hugh Herbert, Martha Raye, Mischa Auer, Jane Frazee, Robert Paige, Lewis Howard, Elisha Cook Jnr, Richard Lane, Shemp Howard.
Photography: Elwood Bredel, John P. Fulton.
Music: Frank Skinner.
Musical Direction: Ted Cain, Charles Previn.
Editing: Milton Crruth, Ted J. Kent.
Costume: Vera West.