Written by Charles Brackett (who produced) and Richard Breen. Based on the play 'Oh Brother!' by Jacques Deval.
A wily Irishman (Barry Fitzgerald) persuades a stunt man (John Lund) to pose as a long-vanished heir to a fortune to protect his own interests. The son has a screwy personality, to put it kindly - Lund's depiction of a clearly mentally challenged person is slightly queasy, and prevents it from being quite as screwball funny as it might have been. The slightly risqué brother-sister incest thing is hinted at and dealt with as expertly as the under-age plot of Wilder and Brackett's The Major and the Minor.
Good cast. Wanda Hendrix, Monte Woolley, Ilka Chase, Robert Stack, Dorothy Stickney, Leif Erickson (doctor), Dan Tobin, Richard Haydn himself (billed as 'Richard Rancyd').
Like Hold Back the Dawn it begins on the Paramount lot with Mitch Leisen acting as the director.
Our hazy from-VHS copy can't disguise the customary lighting skill of Charles Lang. Doane Harrison is the supervising editor (who therefore was around to make sure Haydn didn't balls it up).
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