In only his fifth feature film (at not quite 90 minutes) Hope is beginning to develop his fast-talking, skirt-chasing but ultimately cowardly character in "Never Say Die."
Through a medical mix-up, wealthy John Kidley (Hope) thinks he's dying, his stomach devouring him from the inside until nothing remains. Unfortunately, his diagnosis has been mixed up with a dog's.
To do good all around, and to avoid a scheming if beautiful woman (Gale Sondergaard) out to marry him (and possibly polish him off, as she has past husbands), Kidley marries Mickey Hawkins (Martha Raye). Mickey is in love with the hapless Henry Munch (Andy Devine) but her father is trying to force her to marry impecunious (and devious) Prince Smirnov (Alan Mowbray).
All clear?
In any case, Kidley's (presumably) month-long marriage to Mickey will leave her a rich widow who can marry her beloved Henry Munch without her father's interference.
Then Munch shows up unexpectedly and insists he go along on the honeymoon to make sure there's no hankey-pankey between his fiance and Kidley, At first, this is fine with all parties. But as Kidley and Mickey develop feelings for each other, legally united man-and-wife look for ways around the jealous fiance (by the way, the wedding ceremony is a hoot).
Meanwhile, the scorned woman (who is also an Olympic pistol medalist) and the angry Prince Smirnov pursue the fleeing couple for vengeance.
Despite a very funny start and set up once Hope, Divine and Raye are established in the hotel as three-way honeymooners, the movie slows up.
It gains momentum later when Kidley and Prince Smirnov duel--in one of the earliest, perhaps the foundational, bits of confusion in duels or shoot-outs, where Kidley arranges for one of the pistols to be packed with a blank cartridge--but is it the pistol with the cross on the muzzle or the nick on the handle? Hope and Mowbray play this superbly--a bit which famous fast-talker Danny Kaye will milk for even more in "The Court Jester" more than a decade later.
This film is vital in the development of Hope's famous film personality, and he is about to explode as a star in a sequence of movies beginning with "The Cat and the Canary" through "The Road to Singapore" and "The Ghost Breakers" and "The Road to Zanzibar" (teamed in the "Road" pictures, of course, with another rising Paramount star, Bing Crosby).
"Never Say Die" is one of those little films where you don't expect much and come out mightily pleased. With the excellent start and ending it's too bad it sags a bit in the middle, but who doesn't these days?
