When Uncle Joe hits his head on a rock at a family picnic, he dies. The others worry that the police will think that David Wayne killed him, so they bury him on the spot. Soon, lady friend Lea Penman files a missing persons report with police chief Chill Wills. When Ann Sheridan, the only member of the family worth a darn, finds out, she wants to tell the police, but is talked out of it. A body shows up. Wayne and brother-in-law Frank Fontanne identify it as Joe, and Miss Sheridan's boss and fiance, Leif Erickson tells her Joe had a $10,000 life insurance policy with a double indemnity clause. Matters grow complicated for Miss Sheridan when insurance investigator Victor Mature shows up to offer Erickson competition for Ann, and a series of corpses are identified as Joe and turn out not to be.
It's a rather lugubrious dark comedy from Doris Miles Disney's novel FAMILY SKELETON. One problem I had with the movie was the way everyone spoke their lines very fast. The other seems to be a couple of scenes that should have been cut; the entire trip to New York City seems superfluous. Screenwriter/director Claude Binyon was a good comedy writer -- his best-known piece of writing was when, as a VARIETY writer, he came up with the headline "Stix Nix Hix Pix" -- but his directorial efforts were undistinguished. Wayne and Wills are amusing, but everyone else come off a trifle flat.
It's a rather lugubrious dark comedy from Doris Miles Disney's novel FAMILY SKELETON. One problem I had with the movie was the way everyone spoke their lines very fast. The other seems to be a couple of scenes that should have been cut; the entire trip to New York City seems superfluous. Screenwriter/director Claude Binyon was a good comedy writer -- his best-known piece of writing was when, as a VARIETY writer, he came up with the headline "Stix Nix Hix Pix" -- but his directorial efforts were undistinguished. Wayne and Wills are amusing, but everyone else come off a trifle flat.