User Reviews

Richard Carlson (of "Creature from the Black Lagoon" and "It Came From Outer Space") is excellent as the naive, bespectacled, non-smoking, non-drinking millionaire Tommy Van Steele who takes his uncle's advice to experience life in this action-filled comedy. As the chief engineer and owner of a major automotive manufacturing company, he winds up going incognito into the blue-collar world of trucking (Howard Hughes himself went undercover early in his life to work for a major airline in order to learn from them, but Carlson's character is more like Howard Bannister in "What's Up, Doc?"). He eventually discovers, embraces, and falls in love with the real world. Jane Darwell (famous for "The Grapes of Wrath," among others) plays the feisty heart-of-gold grandma of babe Jane Randolph (she was Alice in both "Cat People" movies). Not quite a "screwball comedy," but darn near. Plus some great (and corny) fight scenes!

Richard Carlson is so smart he can run an entire automobile plant from home, inventing stuff without seeing the problem. His uncle Ray Collins says he lacks the common touch, which is going to be a problem when he goes into the Navy in a month. Collins complains that he's never had to get Carlson out of trouble with.a chorus girl, and insists he couldn't last a week without the family millions. So that evening, while out with his beautiful but dull fiancee, Carlson, like Abercrombie, has a zombie. By the time dawn rises, he's seen a murder, been knocked out, switched into the dead man's clothes, and been taken for a ride. Fortunately for him, he falls out the back. When he wakes up he finds a gas station and makes a call to Collins for succor, then gets angry and insists he'll get in touch when it's time for him to go into the Navy. He hooks up with Jane Randolph, her brother Gordon Jones, and their grandmother Jane Darwell, who are trying to run a trucking company in competition with the same crooks who tried to kill him.

It's a case of perfect casting all around, but the script from a Clarence Buddington Kelland story is erratic. People change their minds to fit the plot, and make decisions that make little sense; that's fine when you're under the influence of a potent cocktail, but the only one drunk was in the beginning. Even so, it's an engaging movie because everyone is cast square in the middle of their screen personas, so you're willing to forgive the lack of sense. With Iris Adrian, Barton Maclane, Paul Fix, and Emory Parnell.