Wonderfully offbeat film!

Great Film overall

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Red Skelton (Wally Benton), Ann Rutherford (Carol Lambert), George Bancroft (Stagg), Guy Kibbee (Judge Lee), Diana Lewis (Ellamae Downs), Peter Whitney (District Attorney Bailie), Rags Ragland (Chester Conway/Sylvester Conway), Celia Travers (Hattie Lee), Lucien Littlefield (Corporal Lucken), Louis Mason (Deputy Lem), Mark Daniels (Martin Gordon), Emmett Vogan (radio producer), Pierre Watkin (doctor), Hal Le Sueur (sound effects man), Hobart Cavanaugh ("Hanky" Panky), Norman Abbott (attendant), Joseph Crehan (deputy police commissioner), Charles Lung (Brunner), John Wald (radio announcer), Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas (boy who gives directions).Director: S. SYLVAN SIMON. Screenplay: Nat Perrin. Additional dialogue: Wilkie C. Mahoney. Uncredited screenplay contributors: Jonathan Latimer, Lawrence Hazard. Film editor: Frank Sullivan. Photography: Clyde De Vinna. Art directors: Cedric Gibbons and Gabriel Scognamillo. Set decorators: Edwin B. Willis and Keogh Gleason. Costumes designed by Howard Shoup. Music: Lennie Hayton. Assistant director: Hayes Goetz. Stunts: Gil Perkins. Sound supervisor: Douglas Shearer. Western Electric Sound Recording. Producer: George Haight. Copyright 2 September 1942 by Loew's, Inc. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Picture. New York opening at Loew's Criterion: 30 December 1942. Australian release: 2 December 1943 (sic). 6,628 feet. 74 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Wally Benton, alias "The Fox" (a super-sleuth of the airwaves), doesn't want to get married in Georgia, but his bride-to- be insists on answering a call for help from a former sorority sister.NOTES: Second of the three Whistling movies. The others: Whistling in the Dark (1941) and Whistling in Brooklyn (1943). All were directed by S. Sylvan Simon, and all three starred Red Skelton and Ann Rutherford.COMMENT: Oh, what a funny film! True, it takes a while to start producing more than an occasional mild chuckle, but the screenplay cleverly builds up to an absolutely side-splitting series of suspensefully comic misadventures. The last half-hour is uproariously funny. In fact the sequence in which the doddering corporal attempts to open a locked door gets my vote as the Most Amusing Scene of All Time. Even Mr. Skelton (who tries hard — perhaps too hard — from go to whoa), finally manages to raise a really good laugh or two, although he is brilliantly upstaged by both Lucien Littlefield (whose Civil War veteran is handed the most glorious lines and bits of business in the movie) and feisty Rags Ragland (who is most inventively assisted by some of the neatest special effects work I've ever seen). Blustering George Bancroft deserves an honorable Guernsey too. The episode in which he is ingeniously and hilariously relieved of his jacket and vest is another stunner. I liked Hobart Cavanaugh's scene at the License Office too. In fact the whole support cast is top-notch. Simon's direction is smooth as silk. And by "B" standards, production values are incredibly proficient. Only a couple of obvious backdrops give the tight budget away.

Less than enthusiastic 1942 Red Skelton vehicle where he stars as a radio sleuth who goes with his girlfriend down south to get married, and instead both get caught up in a supposed murder mystery.Rags Ragland steals the film playing twin brothers- a chauffeur and convicted killer who escapes and is constantly confusing Skelton in the resulting mayhem that ensues.3 years after Gone With the Wind, Ann Rutherford is reduced to playing his girlfriend, literally up to her neck in adventure.Trouble is that in this less than 75 minute film, the real killers are identified and all concerned are trapped below with water sprouting as they are slowly drowning. Of course, they have to find a way out of their dilemma. The picture couldn't really find a way out of its dilemma, unfortunately.

A year before, Red Skelton made a remake to the dandy 1930s film "Whistling in the Dark". It was very popular and not surprisingly, he came back a year later in "Whistling in Dixie"--a sequel to a remake. While the continuity is great (as many of the same characters returned and the film logically follows the first one), there are a few stupid aspects of the sequel that make it less than endearing. For example, Rags Raglan returns...as the identical twin to the baddie sent to prison when the first film ended. That's great...but having the bad twin then return and everyone mixing them up was not only contrived but rather tiresome as well. Additionally, Red Skelton really mugged it up from time to time and was, at times, a tad annoying. Perhaps I'm being hard on the film, but I loved Skelton's later films--they were sweet and endearing. This one is a bit tired and only mildly interesting.

Red Skelton and Ann Rutherford are "Whistling in Dixie" in this 1942 programmer also starring Guy Kibbee and Rags Ragland (in a dual role). Skelton played the role of Wally Benton a couple of times. On radio, Benton is "The Fox," a detective, but in his private life he gets dragged into real mysteries as well. This one is at the behest of a friend of his fiancé's (Rutherford) who asks them to come to Georgia to investigate a murder.There are some funny moments in this film, but it's rather silly, with a lot of corny jokes, funny faces from Skelton and slapstick. Actually Skelton is much better when he's straightforward - he comes off as sweet, sincere and natural.Some of the supporting cast has the worst southern accents I've ever heard. It's hard to blame them, though, because these types of films were made very quickly. I'm sure they had no dialect coach. However, the horrible accents were very distracting.Okay, but "The Fox" isn't one of my favorite detectives.