Classic Cinema: "International House"

July 20, 6:16 PMClassic TV ExaminerDoug Krentzlin

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     George Burns, Gracie Allen, Franklin Pangborn & W.C. Fields in International House

It couldn’t be more appropriate that International House (1933) features Cab Calloway and His Orchestra performing the song “Reefer Man” because this is an insanely bizarre, surrealistic pre-censorship code gem that makes you feel as though you’re high even if you watch it cold sober. It’s equally fitting that it was made by Paramount Pictures who also produced the Road series (with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby), the Naked Gun films and the Marx Brothers’ early movies.

Directed by Edward Sutherland and scripted by Walter DeLeon and Francis Martin, International House was intended to be a musical comedy variation on Grand Hotel. Built around the flimsiest of pretexts, the “plot” has Chinese scientist Dr. Wong (Edmund Breese) inventing a primitive precursor of television called a “Radioscope” which picks up visual images of radio broadcasts. Companies from around the world send representatives to the International House Hotel in Wu Hu, China, to bid for the rights for the new invention.

The cast includes W.C. Fields as wealthy aviator Professor Henry R. Quail, top-billed Peggy Hopkins Joyce (an ex-chorine of limited talent best known for marrying millionaires) as herself, George Burns and Gracie Allen as the hotel’s doctor and nurse, Franklin Pangborn as the hotel manager, Stuart Erwin as American Electrical Co. representative Tommy Nash and Bela Lugosi as General Nicholas Petronovich, ex-husband of Joyce who represents the government of Russia. (Yes, International House not only has W.C. Fields and Bela Lugosi in the same film, but also features Lugosi constantly trying to bump off Fields as a running gag.)

Among the specialty acts that appear via the Radioscope are Rudy Vallee, Baby Rose Marie (an adolescent singer of adult torch songs who grew up to become best known as Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show), radio comedy team Colonel Stoopnagle and Budd and the aforementioned Cab Calloway.

Fields was a master of slipping obscenities past the censors (who would wield much more authority a year later) and International House has some prime examples, most notably when Joyce enters Fields’ car and sits down on top of a cat hiding in the front seat. When Joyce complains that she’s “sitting on something,” Fields spots the cat and says, “Ah, it’s a pussy.”