movie review my favorite brunette

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My Favorite Brunette

Time out says, release details.

• Duration: 87 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Elliott Nugent
• Screenwriter: Edmund Beloin, Jack Rose
• Dorothy Lamour
• Peter Lorre
• Lon Chaney Jr
• Reginald Denny
• Charles Dingle
• Frank Puglia
• Bing Crosby

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My Favorite Brunette Reviews

One of Bob's best.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 3, 2021

It's full of gags and it doesn't try to sabotage anything -- except gloom. In fact it's just the sort of "escapist" entertainment that the Communists find "subversive." Let those who will enjoy it. I did.

Full Review | Oct 7, 2020

Mild, minor, typical Hope romp.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 5, 2008

Bob Hope comedy of errors with the one-liners a bit on the thin side, but Lon Chaney Jr. adds a little nutty fun and Peter Lorre some sinister noir atmosphere.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jun 27, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 18, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 19, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 22, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 27, 2003

Bob and Dottie in a great send-up of the film noir genre.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 15, 2003

My Favorite Brunette

Kino Lorber, 87 min., not rated, DVD: $14.99, Blu-ray: $24.99 Volume 32, Issue 5

by Sean Axmaker

September 11, 2017

Rating: 2.5 of 5

Bob Hope is a harried baby photographer who wants to be a private detective in this 1947 follow-up to the 1942 spy spoof My Favorite Blonde . Hope plays Ronnie Jackson, a prisoner on death row who is relating the story of how he ended up there, and Dorothy Lamour is heiress Carlotta Montay, who mistakes Ronnie for a real shamus and hires him to find her kidnapped uncle. Ronnie uncovers a conspiracy and follows the clues to a sanitarium where he is tossed into a padded room by the gangsters. Peter Lorre costars as a sinister henchman who is constantly lurking around Carlotta, and Lon Chaney Jr. is an innocent asylum patient who has been fooled into doing the conspirators' dirty work. It's a lightweight but funny spoof of murder mysteries and detective movies with Hope as the wisecracking coward who nervously rises to the occasion despite being utterly outmatched in the battle of wits with the bad guys. Alan Ladd has an uncredited cameo as the real private eye (a clever sight gag that may not register with modern audiences but will delight fans of classic movies), and Hope's frequent costar Bing Crosby has a hilarious cameo at the end of the film. My Favorite Brunette fell into the public domain decades ago and is widely available on inferior editions, but this newly remastered edition looks and sounds superb and is the best currently available. A strong optional purchase. ( S. Axmaker )

Star Ratings

As of March 2022, Video Librarian has changed from a four-star rating system to a five-star one. This change allows our reviewers to have a wider range of critical viewpoints, as well as to synchronize with Google’s rating structure. This change affects all reviews from March 2022 onwards. All reviews from before this period will still retain their original rating. Future film submissions will be considered our new 1-5 star criteria.

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My Favorite Brunette

• Photos & Videos

Film Details

• Articles & Reviews

Brief Synopsis

Cast & crew, elliott nugent, dorothy lamour, peter lorre, lon chaney [jr.], photos & videos, technical specs.

In San Quentin prison, baby photographer and amateur detective Ronnie Jackson, awaiting execution for murder, tells the press the story of his demise: Ever aspiring to be a detective, Ronnie invents a keyhole camera lens and buys a gun, hoping to work for private detective Sam McCloud, whose office is across from Ronnie's studio in San Francisco's Chinatown. When Sam goes to Chicago, he leaves Ronnie behind to man the telephones, and Ronnie takes the case of Carlotta Montay, a beautiful brunette whose uncle, Baron Montay, is in trouble. Carlotta is being tailed by Kismet, the henchman of Major Simon Montague, who is trying to steal the mineral rights to Montay's uranium mine in San Dimas, California. Carlotta gives the encoded map to the mines to Ronnie, and he hides it in the cup dispenser for his water cooler. He then drives to an address Carlotta gave him on the Monterey peninsula, an unoccupied mansion being used as Montague's headquarters. Montague, believing Ronnie is Sam, tells him that Carlotta is suffering from delusional tendencies, but after Ronnie takes a keyhole photograph of the wheelchair-bound baron walking, he realizes that one of Montague's men is posing as the baron, and that Carlotta is in danger. Kismet follows Ronnie to Sam's office to confiscate the photograph and knocks him out, then burns the negative. Ronnie then brings two policemen to the mansion, but they find it deserted except for Kismet, who poses as an immigrant gardener. Kismet plants a clue in Carlotta's room, which leads Ronnie to the Seacliffe Lodge, an expensive sanitarium, where he is taken hostage and held with Carlotta and the real baron. While Montague's men are away searching for the map, Ronnie and Carlotta escape. Following a tip from the baron, Ronnie and Carlotta meet James Collins, the engineer who encoded the map, and Ronnie and Collins go to the police. Outside the police station, Kismet shoots Collins dead with Ronnie's gun. Wanted for murder, Ronnie, in disguise, travels to Washington, D.C. with Carlotta in order to expose Montague, who is to meet with a representative from the State Department named Dawson. Ronnie and Carlotta pose as hotel service staff, enter Montague's suite after his meeting with Dawson and record Kismet confessing to the murder of Collins. Kismet switches the record albums, however, and Ronnie is arrested instead. In the present, Ronnie is pardoned because Sam has discovered that one of Ronnie's clients had the negative of his keyhole photograph. Now, as Carlotta and Ronnie embrace, his executioner frowns, disappointed.

Charles Dingle

Reginald Denny

Frank Puglia

Willard Robertson

Jack La Rue

Charles Arnt

Bing Crosby

Richard keene.

Tony Caruso

Matt mchugh, george lloyd, jack clifford.

Eddie Johnson

Clarence Muse

Helena phillips evans, roland soo hoo, john westley, charley cooley, betty farrington.

Brandon Hurst

Barbara freking, harland tucker, reginald simpson.

James Flavin

Mike p. donovan, pauline gaskins, john tyrell, william newell, edmund beloin, richard blaydon, harvey clermont, daniel dare, robert emmett dolan, hans dreier, farciot edouart, mel epstein, gene garvin, earl hedrick, ellsworth hoagland, gordon jennings, harold lewis, lionel lindon, jay livingston, john macneil, george templeton, wally westmore, photo collections.

Uh oh, her schizo's about to phrenia! - Ronnie Jackson

You see, I wanted to be a detective too. It only took brains, courage, and a gun...and I had the gun. - Ronnie Jackson

I'm at my wit's end! - Carlotta Montay

I passed there an hour ago. - Ronnie Jackson

Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour's screen credits appear on a florist's greeting card which reads: "From Bob Hope to Dorothy Lamour." This film was the first production of Hope Enterprises, Inc. It was a sequel, in name only, to Hope's 1942 film My Favorite Blonde , which was this film's working title, in addition to The Private Eye . The film satirizes The Maltese Falcon , among other detective films. Alan Ladd makes a cameo appearance as a Detective Sam McCloud. Bing Crosby, who appeared throughout the 40s in the "Road to..." pictures as a friendly antagonist to Bob Hope, made an uncredited cameo appearance at the end of the film as Hope's would-be executioner. For more information on the "Road to..." pictures, in which Lamour also starred, consult the Series Index. My Favorite Brunette was Lamour's thirty-fifth picture, and during production, she celebrated her tenth anniversary at Paramount. The film marked Lon Chaney's first after leaving Universal Pictures. According to the Par News , the film includes shots of the one-million-dollar Paul Fagan mansion at Carmel, CA, on the Monterey Peninsula. Location shooting was also done in San Francisco, CA. According to a Hollywood Reporter news item, the gas chamber and condemned row at San Quentin prison were recreated for the execution scene. According to Par News , in the film, Lamour wears a 14-karat gold dress which costumer Edith Head made out of the last of the gold-plated cloth in the Paramount studio's pre-war stock.

Miscellaneous Notes

Released in United States Spring April 4, 1947

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Alternate Title

Mpaa rating, produced by, released by, my favorite brunette (1947), directed by elliott nugent.

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Review by Craig Butler

Woody Allen often stated that Bob Hope was a major influence on his work, and this is especially clear in My Favorite Brunette. Many of the gags and one-liners given to Hope would not seem out of place coming from Allen, with the crucial difference that the former delivers them "sincerely," whereas coming from the latter they would be tinged with irony. Brunette is a send-up of the "private dick" film, with Hope's take on a Phillip Marlowe type, giving him the chance to play his favorite "fish out of water" routine for all it's worth. For most of the film, the gags come fast and furious here, often making no sense but accumulating an irresistible force nonetheless. Unfortunately, about two-thirds of the way through, the tangled plot (an essential feature of the genre being spoofed) takes precedence and slows things down a little; it isn't a fatal change of pace, but it does keep the film from being the full-length laugh-fest it could have been. Hope is right at home with the material, and, of course, he gets good assistance from Dorothy Lamour. What's surprising is how delightfully funny Peter Lorre and (especially) Lon Chaney Jr. are. If My Favorite Brunette just misses being a classic comedy, it still has a great deal to recommend it.

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My Favorite Brunette Reviews

• 1 hr 27 mins
• Comedy, Suspense
• Watchlist Where to Watch

A baby photographer is mistaken for a private eye and is hired by a beautiful woman to find her missing uncle. Through his ineptitude, he gains powerful enemies, and ends up on death row.

In what ranks as one of his best comedies, Hope plays a harried baby photographer who is asked by his private-eye pal to watch his detective business for a few days while he goes on vacation. Hope agrees and finds himself getting involved with a lot more than watching dust settle. Believing Hope to be the real private eye, Lamour hires him to search for her uncle, a wealthy baron who has vanished, and gives the dubious detective a map, warning him to guard it with his life. Hope goes off to the palatial estate of a former associate of the missing man, Dingle, who introduces Hope to a wheelchair-bound man who is supposedly Lamour's uncle. Hoyt, a doctor who is present, insists that Lamour has a few screws loose. Hope is just about convinced of the veracity of Dingle and Hoyt's story until he is about to leave and spots the "disabled" baron walking about. When Hope snaps a quick picture, Dingle gets one of his crazed henchmen (Lorre in a wonderful self-parody) to knock out Hope and recover the film. In an effort to determine the importance of the map, Hope and Lamour pay a visit to the geologist who drew it, but Lorre has killed him, framing Hope for the murder. Minutes before Hope is to be executed, fresh evidence is discovered by Lamour, and the executioner, furious that his day has been ruined, takes off his hood and reveals himself to be none other than Hope's offscreen (and sometimes onscreen) pal Bing Crosby. "Boy," says Hope as he turns to the camera, "he'll take any kind of a part!" This is a classic Hope film, with one gag following another in rapid succession. Particularly good is Lorre, who was known at this stage in his career for doing films that approached this genre seriously. And Chaney's characterization of a dumb sanitarium guard so tough he cracks walnuts with his eyelids is great fun. Alan Ladd is equally amusing in his cameo role of the vacationing detective.

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My Favorite Brunette (1947)

Genre: comedy / mystery, duration: 87 minuten, alternative title: the private eye, country: united states, directed by: elliott nugent, stars: bob hope , dorothy lamour and peter lorre, imdb score: 6,7  (3.836), releasedate: 19 march 1947.

My Favorite Brunette plot

"He's a hilarious hawkshaw... with a case on Dottie!" Baby photographer Ronnie Jackson, who is on death row in San Quentin, tells a reporter how he got there: Watching his neighbor's detective agency, Ronnie is asked by the irresistible Baroness Montay to find her missing husband. In his search, he becomes entangled in all kinds of shady business.

Actors and actresses

Ronnie Jackson

Baroness Carlotta Montay

Major Simon Montague

James Collins

Baron Montay

Miss Rogers

Prison Warden

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My Favorite Brunette (1947)

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My Favorite Brunette

A baby photographer plays private eye to help a woman find her uncle, kidnapped by a master criminal.

Storyline: Our Reviewer's Take

"I suppose you wonder why I came in this way?"

"Oh no, every girl does that!"

Every popular genre gets what's coming to it. One moment, a certain type of film is the talk of Tinseltown so much so that every studio has about a dozen pictures in the pipeline to fill that need. Some years, it's horror films, some years, it's superheroes, but in the late 1930s and into the 1940s, the movie of the hour was the Raymond Chandler-inspired hard-edged detective. Pulled from great pieces of literature or the dime store heaps, smart talking, heavy drinking, chain smoking detectives filled movie theaters. In 1947, all it took was Bob Hope and his frequent female foil co-star Dorothy Lamour to let a little air out of the genre's balloon with the farcical detective yarn My Favorite Brunette . 

Ronnie Jackson (Bob Hope) is in a tough spot. Awaiting execution for a crime he didn't commit, he's got mere moments to regale a pod of reporters with his story before the hangman comes calling. As a baby photographer, Ronnie was doing gangbuster legit business - but he needed adventure. Down the hall from him was a hard-edged P.I., a gumshoe who lived a life of dames, danger, and excitement. Wanting to get in on the act, Ronnie offers to help but gets more than he bargained for when the beautiful Carlotta Monta (Dorothy Lamour) walks into the office thinking Ronnie is an on the level private detective. When Ronnie took the case, he thought he'd just be helping a pretty gal out of a jam. He didn't expect to tossed into a world of intrigue and espionage as a knife-throwing killer named Kismet (Peter Lorre) and his lunk-headed strong arm Willie (Lon Chaney Jr.) are out to retrieve a vital piece of information that Ronnie doesn't know he even has. Now as he's awaiting execution, Ronnie's only hope is for someone to find that vital clue that proves his innocence.

If you've watched any of Bob Hope's movies, you know the man can sling off a one-liner faster than a jackrabbit. My Favorite Brunette is no exception as Hope finds himself working alongside his familiar co-star Dorothy Lamour. Without Bing Crosby in the picture, Hope has to rely on his everyman set of charms and his quick wit to roll with the punches and make light of a pretty standard detective plot. Thankfully, with a cast of costars like Lon Cheney Jr., Peter Lorre, Reginald Denny, and Charles Dingle working from a script by Edmund Beloin and Jack Rose and under the direction of Elliott Nugent, Hope is in fine form. Even without someone to play off like Bing Crobsy, Hope exploits his perfect comedic timing and makes light of a beloved genre without completely lampooning it. 

My Favorite Brunette 's sense of humor may not be as subtle as the comedy found in The Thin Man films, but it is still respectful of the material that spawned it. As a pitch-perfect detective spoof, My Favorite Brunette gets most of its laughs by playing the plot straight and allowing a numbskull like Bob Hope's Ronnie get in way over his head. Hope's manic nervousness sided with Lamour's smart damsel in distress creates plenty of opportunity for some great laughs. Things only get better when Peter Lorre comes into the picture playing his traditional creepy heavy and never breaks the scene. A film like this could have been played any number of ways, but by allowing the plot to be straight as an arrow and letting a fish-out-of-water like Bob Hope enter the show makes for some great comedy. Even Lon Chaney Jr. gets to show his own comedic branding as a slow-witted henchman with a measure of charm. 

As someone who never really spent a lot of time watching Bob Hope movies outside of the various Road films with Bing Crosby, it's nice to discover a comedy like My Favorite Brunette . It's a gag a minute sort of spoof of its root genre without being dismissive or insulting towards its inspiration. The best parodies are the ones that get all of the best elements of a genre correct before making light of the material. My Favorite Brunette works because it's not making fun of detectives, it's making fun of Bob Hope as a coward who wanted to be a detective. Its humor is Hope's alone to own. Everyone in the cast plays their parts in the genre perfectly - and somehow manages to keep a straight face through the show. If you've only ever seen Bob Hope alongside Bing Crosby, make some time for My Favorite Brunette .  

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray 

My Favorite Brunette arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber through their Studio Classics label. Pressed onto a Region A BD-25 disc, the disc is housed in a standard sturdy Blu-ray case and comes with a booklet containing cover artwork for other Studio Classics releases. The disc loads directly to a static image main menu with traditional navigation options. 

Video Review

As with Road to Rio , I'm not sure when this 1080p 1.33:1 transfer of My Favorite Brunette was minted, but it had to have been fairly recent as the results on screen look terrific. As a film that's resided most of its life in the public domain, the level of detail with an even and stable film grain presence is impressive. Facial features - which are important for all of the mugging Hope does - are apparent and appreciable as are clothing details and the set design work. Black levels are great as well as this film's photography under the skilled eye of Lionel Lindon plays up the classic heavy black and white Film Noir look. Blacks are inky while the grayscale offers up plenty of shadow separation to give the image a nice three-dimensional vibe. There are a couple of shots that can be a bit too dark, and there remains some mild speckling and a couple scratches here and there, but considering this film's age and it's previous home video life, My Favorite Brunette makes a pleasing leap onto Blu-ray. 

Audio Review

Dialogue is front and center with this English DTS-HD MA 2.0 mix. As most of the comedy comes from Bob Hope's one-liners, this is especially important. Most of the comedy comes from word exchange without getting much backup help from scoring or cheesy cartoonish sound effects. That said, the score and the sound effects offered do provide a nice little bit of atmosphere and dimension, even if the film sounds relatively flat most of the time. The only real trouble with this audio mix is the ever-present hiss and a couple of pops throughout the mix. They're not enough to be distracting, but they're impossible to miss, especially during quieter sequences. 

Special Features

Only a brief preview reel of trailers for other Bob Hope films from Kino Lorber Studio Classics is present on this disc. 

Also from KLSC  (HD 4:17)

Final Thoughts

If you love Bob Hope all on his own, then My Favorite Brunette is your sort of comedy. As a terrific spoof of the detective genre, Hope gives it his all and delivers plenty of laughs as he frequently breaks the fourth wall or makes side references that may go over your head without doing a little research to get the joke. It may be goofy, but it never disrespects the genre making it a terrific comedy. Kino Lorber Studio Classics has done a great job bringing this flick to Blu-ray with a terrific video transfer and a solid audio mix. Sadly, bonus features are virtually nonexistent. Even still, fans of Bob Hope should pick it up and those who have yet to see him in action in one of his classic comedies, My Favorite Brunette is an easy starting point to recommend. 

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Alex Garland Picks a Favorite Shot From Each of His Most Iconic Movies | My Best Shots

From ex machina and dredd to annihilation and civil war, alex garland picks some of his best shots..

We asked Alex Garland to pick one favorite shot from each of his most iconic movies, as well TV show, Devs. The director of Ex Machina, Annihilation, Civil War, and many others breaks down each shot for us and explains what makes each so special to him.

Dredd (2012)

“Lena Headey played this character called Ma-Ma, and there's someone I've worked with on every British film I've done called Meesh (Michelle Day). She's in charge of the set decoration. I often try and mention her in interviews because she does a lot; she reads the script, she thinks about characters, and objects within the film become very acute references to characters, but she also thinks more broadly than that.

In this scene, Ma-Ma is lying in a bath. She's in the bath because Meesh said, ‘Wouldn't it be cool if she'd just got high? She had a bath, she likes getting high on this drug, It'd be amazing to get high in the bath on this drug’. So, why don't we put a bath right in the middle of her room, and that's where she likes to get stoned.’ And I thought that's genius. It's a perfect example, in itself, of the kind of things that end up in films, where the director is then asked, "Why did you put the bath there?" And then usually the director says, "Well, I thought," and pretends it was them. But it was Meesh.

And then, Anthony Dod Mantle, who was shooting it, shot ultra-high speed footage of her just trailing her hand in the bath and seeing the water sparkle. I had never known in the writing if this drug idea going to work. Then when I saw that footage, which was really Meesh and Anthony, and Lena, sort of getting it, and I thought, "Oh yeah, yeah. This is cool. This is going to work."

Ex Machina (2014)

“Right at the end of the film, Ava has escaped from this compound, and she finds a helicopter pilot and flies away. There's a shot with the helicopter lifting up and flying down a valley. This was at the end of the shoot, and sometimes you do a shoot where you are blessed and things just go right, and sometimes you have exactly the opposite and you're cursed in some ways. Ex Machina, we were blessed.

As the helicopter was flying away, the sun was sort of in its magic hour space – which only lasts a very short amount of time – and the light just pings off the side of the helicopter for a moment, and then it flies away down this very beautiful valley. And we knew, because of the turnaround time, that the sun would be gone by the time the helicopter got back. So, that was a one-shot opportunity to get that and it just happened, just felt like a moment where everything had gone more right than one could have possibly hoped for.

It was the end of a really nice shoot with some really good people. It was just a really nice moment, beautiful shot. Rob Hardy, DOP, he's going to be the DOP on almost all of these shots, that's him just nailing it.”

Annihilation (2018)

“In Annihilation, there's a kind of what looks like is going to be a punch-up but turns into a dance sequence. Sometimes the favorite shot is chosen because of what it was like on the day, and sometimes it's because of how the shot ended up to your surprise. Probably a lot of these for me are connected to what it was like to shoot them, so it's what I feel about the shot.

In that sequence, Sonoya Mizuno was doing this really interesting thing. She's a trained dancer, and she was echoing the movements of Natalie Portman, but very slightly being off. It produced something that was just very hypnotic, really hypnotic to watch, takes that you... It sounds a bit cliched, but you sort of forget to say, ‘Cut,’ because you were so locked into the thing.

When that shot was then through the process; Sonoya's performed it, Rob captured it, then it gets graded and visual effects are applied over Sonoya and the music is attached. That felt like a sort of filmmaking synthesis, of all of these different departments in their A-game. It kind of blew my mind watching that, to be honest.”

Devs (2020)

“I think one of my favorite shots was at the beginning of the episodes, there's often a kind of montage to a track. There's a bit of footage of a guy who turned up just for that day to play a homeless person, and I said, "Hey, do you want to just rant at the sky and the world, and just stand up with a can of beer and just eject it out to the sky?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, I can do that.’ And so, he stood up and did it, and we got a beautiful shot of him doing it, and it felt like we had shot it for real somehow, it had this quality of truth.

After he stops I said, ‘That was really, really good.’ And he said, ‘Well, I've got a lot of anger in me.’ And it was just sort of captured. I felt very grateful to that guy. But also, often, there are lots of these found bits of footage in a way. They're not found, they're made, but they feel found. But they're often grabbed quite intuitively, like ‘Let's get this, let's get that. That'll work.’ And I think Devs can feel very kind of coolly constructed, but it was actually way more intuitive than that. And that shot's a good example of it.”

“It's a simple shot, actually, in Men. Jessie Buckley has been walking in the woods and she gets caught in a rainstorm. There are some lovely shots of her just moving through green, but it ends with her coming across an abandoned Victorian railway tunnel. There's a shot behind her as she walks towards the tunnel, and the blackness of the tunnel entrance starts, sort of crowded with green, and as she gets closer, it expands and expands until she's just a figure. It's a beautiful bit of photography, but it's also narratively right on the money because of the transitional state that sort of quietly, and very, very elegantly, happens within it.”

Civil War (2024)

“There's a shot of Wagner. He's screaming in pain because he's lost one of his best friends and colleagues. That character enjoys conflict, but the reality of the conflict has folded in on him and he's consumed by it. What that shot was, it was grabbed. It was a quick idea.

We had a lot of hardware, we had a military base in the deep background, and we had a bunch of tanks. Big things kicking up a lot of dust, a lot of troops carrying weapons. And we just thought, ‘Hang on, there's a thing here. Let's get him to stand there and tanks are going to roll by behind him, and Wagner, you just scream.’ ‘What do you mean scream?’ ‘Just scream. Just like everything that's happened, just let it out. The camera's going to be hanging out over the water, just go for it.’ And he was like, ‘Right, right, got it. Got it."’And I saw him sort of psyching himself up, having a smoke, and then we shot it.

As soon as the camera was on him and these tanks were rolling by and the dust was kicking up, and the pain on his face, you just instantly thought, ‘Yeah. Oh, my God. That's… Not only is that in the movie, for sure, it's like a summation of everything up to this point.’ So again, like that Jessie Buckley shot, it has a broader function and a specific character function of the person in the moment. So, I'd say that one.”

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