Peach O'Reno

I've mentioned RKO's comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey before. I had two or three of their movies on my DVR, so I recently sat down to watch one of their earlier efforts, Peach O'Reno.

We don't see the pair (Woolsey, as always, is the one with the glasses and cigar) until several minutes into the movie. It starts off at a 25th anniversary party for the Brunos (Joseph Cawthorn and Cora Witherspoon). However, a mishap occurs at the dinner, and that escalates to a shouting match, with the couple deciding on the spot that they both want a divorce. The two daughters, Prudence (Dorothy Lee) and Pansy (Zelma O'Neal), are both convinced that this is nuts, and want to stop the divorce.

Now, in those days, the quickest way to get a divorce was to go to Nevada, which had much more liberal divorce laws than the rest of the country. So both of the parents head off to Reno, with the two daughters not far behind. When the train gets to Reno, a who bunch of women are put on a bus headed to the law firm of Wattles (Wheeler) and Swift (Woolsey), who are making a killing in handling quickie divorces on the cheap. It ticks off the other lawyers who have been charing more, as well as at least one husband who wants to kill Wattles for getting the man's wife a divorce.

Wattles and Swift's method for ensuring a cause for divorce is to have the spouse who wants a divorce seen with another person, usually a man since they generally handle the wives' side of the divorce. However, both of the Brunos come to the firm looking for the divorce, with Wattles taking Mrs. Bruno's case and Swift taking Mr. Bruno's, and not realizing it for quite some time. To make certain the spouses will be seen with the co-respondent, the two lawyers turn their place into a speakeasy at night, complete with dance numbers that aren't up to Busby Berkeley standards, but then this was before 42nd Street.

To be honest, there's not that much of a plot to Peach O'Reno, mostly because it runs along at a very breezy 63 minutes, and has to put in a couple of songs and dances along the way. That short run time necessitates a sudden ending in the form of the divorce trial, which doesn't quite work by virtue of being too wacky. Of course, a lot of Hollywood comedies from those days get the courtroom badly wrong.

What does work is a scene when that scorned husband comes looking for Wattles. Wattles handles it by... dressing in drag in order to be a co-respondent in a case, and along the way hiding from the scorned man! It's the highlight of the movie, and Wheeler is surprisingly entertaining playing the woman.

Wheeler and Woolsey may not be to everyone's taste, but when they click, it's a sight to behold. And for the most part in Peach O'Reno they do click.