In the 1930s, the stage comedy team of Tim Ryan and Irene Noblette ended up making about a dozen short comedies for Educational Pictures. In real life, he pair were married...and Irene Ryan remained a relatively obscure actress before her breakout role as Granny on "The Beverly Hillbillies". "One Big Happy Family" is the team's first film appearance.
When the story begins, you learn that "One Big Happy Family" is the name of a Broadway show. However, behind the scenes the cast is anything BUT a big, happy family. The stars decide to walk just before the show begins....leaving the director in a pinch. So, he tells his assistant to go out on the street and try to find some pretty girls to star in the show.... TONIGHT!!
The assistant ends up locating a motley group of girls...none of which are the beauties the director wanted. One of them is Irene Noblette, who plays her usual dopey self (sort of like a Gracie Allen-type). She is supposed to star opposite Tim Ryan, who works to prepare her for the show. It also turns out that her entire extended hillbilly family have bought all the tickets to the show on opening night! As for the show, it's a VERY old fashioned melodrama--the type with a slimy mustachioed villain and a poor damsel. It's awful...but her family thinks it's amazing!
In this short, Irene sings....awfully. This is funny, as I've heard her sing in another short and she actually had a decent voice. Apparently her schtick was singing awfully.
So is the film any good? Well, I did enjoy it much more than two other Ryan shorts I watched this morning. The other films tended to be even broader and sillier...too much so for my taste. However, "One Big Happy Family" works a bit better since the play IS supposed to be broad and silly...whereas the other films I saw were supposed to be happening in real life to real people...and that just didn't work as well. Overall, an interesting film debut for Irene...and because she became so beloved later, it is interesting and worth seeing...though the spitting gag did wear a bit thin as the film progressed.