LUCY'S MOVIE GUIDE
Brooklyn tugboat worker Eddie (Eddie Cantor), bullied and cowed by his tough-guy stepfather and stepbrothers (a la Harold Lloyd's The Kid Brother), inherits $77 million from his uncle, an Egyptologist.
Con artist Dot (Ethel Merman) wants to get her lunchhooks on the money, and to this end offers herself as Eddie's adopted mother (never mind that she's nearly 20 years younger), intending to have her thuggish brother Louie (Warren Hymer) bump off our hero at the first opportunity.
The nonsensical plotline ends up with Eddie, Dot, Louie, pompous Southern colonel Larrabee (Berton Churchill), and nominal romantic leads Jerry (George Murphy in his film debut) and Jane (Ann Sothern) trapped in the palace of Arab potentate Mulhulla (Paul Harvey).
Special Notes: Lucille Ball plays a blonde Goldwyn Girl in the harem sequence. According to Ethel Merman, the film's elaborate Technicolor ice-cream factory finale, in which Eddie allows dozens of tenement kids to gorge themselves on his tasty confections, posed censorship problems; while producer Sam Goldwyn was allowed to show the little boys with comically extended stomachs, he was not permitted to do so with the little girls, for fear that the audience might think the females were pregnant!