Sing Your Worries Away (1942)

• Director
  • A. Edward Sutherland
• Writers
  • Charles Belden(idea)
  • Erwin Gelsey(story)
  • Charles E. Roberts(story)
• Stars
  • Bert Lahr
  • June Havoc
  • Buddy Ebsen

  How could anyone resist a 1940s film starring Bert Lahr, June Havoc, Buddy Ebsen and Patsy Kelly-even a film as relentlessly silly as RKO Radio's Sing Your Worries Away? Lahr is cast as zany songwriter Chow Brewster, the sweetheart of cigarette girl Carol (Dorothy Lovett). Unbeknownst to eveyone but gangster Smiley Clark (Sam Levene), Carol has fallen heir to three million dollars. Clark intends to worry Brewster into committing suicide, then claim Carol as his bride. Things get hairy when feckless Tommy Jones (Buddy Ebsen) is accused of Brewster's death-this despite the fact that Brewster is alive and (sort of) well. The film moves bumpily but hilariously to a wild climax in which Brewster and Jones desperately try to escape being ground up in an ice-making machine! Patsy Kelly does her usual loud overacting, while June Havoc is amusingly cast as a stripteaser (the real-life profession of Havoc's celebrated sister Gypsy Rose Lee). Sing Your Worries Away is a partial remake of the 1935 RKO Radio comedy To Beat the Band, which made even less sense than the 1942 film.