Thanks for the Memory, starring Bob Hope, Shirley Ross, Charless Butterworth, Roscoe Karns, Patricia Wilder
Synopsis of Thanks for the Memory
Newlywed novelist Steve Merrick (Bob Hope) has his hands full trying to finish his first masterpiece in the romantic classic, Thanks for the Memory. While Steve’s beautiful bride Ann (Shirley Ross) dreams of a better life for them, their eclectic group of friends drop in and ou, keeping Steve away from his typewriter. Meanwhile, Louella (Patricia “Honey Chile” Wilder), a beautiful Southern Belle from next door, keeps meddling into their blissful lives. When Ann resumes her modeling career to allow Steve some freedom, housekeeping gets the best of him causing a muddled mess.
Editorial review of Thanks for the Memory courtesy of Amazon.com
Before he first hit the road with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope was a quipping comedian who turned his radio success into a film career after a single appearance in The Big Broadcast of 1938. In that film he sang a duet with Shirley Ross, “Thanks for the Memory,” that became his theme song and the title of this quickly produced comedy. In what is less a plot than a premise, Hope stars as an aspiring novelist who lives a comfortable urban existence with his loving wife Ross in a New York apartment that nightly fills with their well-dressed but perpetually short on cash friends (notably Charles Butterworth whose underplayed wit is drier than a martini and rubber-faced Roscoe Karns as a wisecracking bachelor who hitches his fortunes to a wealthy, overbearing widow). When a publisher suggests Hope quit his day job to devote himself full-time to writing, Ross goes back to the runway as a fashion model while househusband Hope becomes so jealous that he huffs out in a puff of misunderstandings. There’s hardly enough story to satisfy a sitcom, but Hope and Ross make an engaging screen couple with their smart repartee and easy chemistry, and their cocktail companions deadpan the sparkling dialogue with the flip grace the 1930s seemed to embody. Hope and Ross sing “Two Sleepy People” and reprise the title song in the heartwarming climax. –Sean Axmaker