**SPOILERS** Combination 1930's screwball comedy and WWII Hollywood propaganda movie that has the Nazi's looking so ridicules even when their taking over all of Western Europe that you don't know if you should either laugh or cry as your watching it. Brooklyn showgirl and gold-digger Katie O'Hara, Ginger Rogers, has traveled to Vienna Austria to strike it big by lassoing in a rich Austrian baron. Katie hit's the bullseye with chubby but rich and well bred Baron Von Luber, Walter Slezak.
While Katie is planning to get married to the Baron American reporter Pat O'Toole, Cary Grant,is trying to get the big story, Brooklyn girl marries rich European Aristocrat, impersonates Katies tailor only to have the real one show up, after Pat took Katie's measurements, thus making a quick withdrawal from Katie's bedroom. It's at that moment that the Nazi's enter Vienna incorporating Austria into the German Reich.
Pat smitten by Katie and ignoring her soon to be husband starts to follow her and the Baron to Prague Czechoslovakia. Just then just like in Vienna the Nazi's suddenly march into town with their Fuhrer Adolph Hitler leading the parade. We see the big man himself, Adolph Hitler, all five foot eight inches of him in newsreels and being played actor Carl Ekberg throughout the film.
It's not until the Baron travels together with Katie and Pat tagging along to Warsaw Poland that we get an inkling of just what he's all about. It turns out that the Baron is the advance man for Hitler's vaunted Whermacht and Luftwaffe. In that he softens up every country that he stays in making them easy for the German Military to invade and take over. In Poland just before the German invasion the Baron sells the Polish military commander General Boneiski, Albert Bassermann, a load of new and state of the art automatic weapons only to later find out that they don't work. Making it a piece of cake for the Whermacht to overrun the Poles and capture Warsaw.
It's during the bombardment of Warsaw that both Pat and Katie come up with the idea of having her declared a fatality of war which in return has her marriage to the Baron no longer valid. This, lucky guy, has handsome and debonair Pat O'Toole, well really Cary Grant, get a crack at Katie as her new and fellow American husband.
The film starts to get serious when after both Pat and Katie run into the Baron in Paris France, another country that the Baron helped his Fuhrer Hitler to take over, this after spending some time in a German concentration camp on the suspicion of them both being Jewish. Katie switched her US passport with her Jewish maid so she and her two young children can get out of Nazi occupied Europe.
Pat cooks up a scheme to get a job as a broadcaster for the German propaganda ministry, this is in 1940 before the US was at war with Nazi Germany, to give him and Katie, whom the Baron had since lost interest in,time to get new passports and get the first boat out of Nazi occupied France and back to the USA. Pat now really getting under the Baron's skin in his first and only broadcast to America.Pat's on the air hysterics almost has the over-sized and arrogant jerk shot and killed by the Gestapo by him announcing that the loyal and obedient Baron is planning to overthrow the Fuhrer, Hitler, himself and take over the government! All in jest of course. The real kicker in Pat's hilarious broadcast is revealing, again all in jest of course, that the pure blooded Aryan Baron Von Luber is actually married to a Brooklyn Jewish woman! The identity that Katie has on her passport that she switched with her Jewish maid. That had the big and sputtering Nazi buffoon almost burst one of his pure blooded Aryan blood vessels!
The Baron now back in the good graces of the Fuhrer, whom he was accused by Pat of trying to do in, is given a chance to redeem himself by traveling on an ocean-liner to America and do his thing undermined the country and set up the land of the free and home of the brave for the next Nazi conquest. It's then when he runs into his ex-wife,the Fuhrer had annulled his marriage, Katie on deck and the rest of the movie, as well as the Baron himself, is soon to become history.
You don't know how to take this movie since it's about a very serious subject, WW II, but at the same time it doesn't seem to take itself seriously at all. It's as if the film is a precursor to movies and TV shows of post-World War Two goofy and bumbling Nazi's like in the movie "The Producers" and the 1960's TV comedy "Hogan's Heroes".
While Katie is planning to get married to the Baron American reporter Pat O'Toole, Cary Grant,is trying to get the big story, Brooklyn girl marries rich European Aristocrat, impersonates Katies tailor only to have the real one show up, after Pat took Katie's measurements, thus making a quick withdrawal from Katie's bedroom. It's at that moment that the Nazi's enter Vienna incorporating Austria into the German Reich.
Pat smitten by Katie and ignoring her soon to be husband starts to follow her and the Baron to Prague Czechoslovakia. Just then just like in Vienna the Nazi's suddenly march into town with their Fuhrer Adolph Hitler leading the parade. We see the big man himself, Adolph Hitler, all five foot eight inches of him in newsreels and being played actor Carl Ekberg throughout the film.
It's not until the Baron travels together with Katie and Pat tagging along to Warsaw Poland that we get an inkling of just what he's all about. It turns out that the Baron is the advance man for Hitler's vaunted Whermacht and Luftwaffe. In that he softens up every country that he stays in making them easy for the German Military to invade and take over. In Poland just before the German invasion the Baron sells the Polish military commander General Boneiski, Albert Bassermann, a load of new and state of the art automatic weapons only to later find out that they don't work. Making it a piece of cake for the Whermacht to overrun the Poles and capture Warsaw.
It's during the bombardment of Warsaw that both Pat and Katie come up with the idea of having her declared a fatality of war which in return has her marriage to the Baron no longer valid. This, lucky guy, has handsome and debonair Pat O'Toole, well really Cary Grant, get a crack at Katie as her new and fellow American husband.
The film starts to get serious when after both Pat and Katie run into the Baron in Paris France, another country that the Baron helped his Fuhrer Hitler to take over, this after spending some time in a German concentration camp on the suspicion of them both being Jewish. Katie switched her US passport with her Jewish maid so she and her two young children can get out of Nazi occupied Europe.
Pat cooks up a scheme to get a job as a broadcaster for the German propaganda ministry, this is in 1940 before the US was at war with Nazi Germany, to give him and Katie, whom the Baron had since lost interest in,time to get new passports and get the first boat out of Nazi occupied France and back to the USA. Pat now really getting under the Baron's skin in his first and only broadcast to America.Pat's on the air hysterics almost has the over-sized and arrogant jerk shot and killed by the Gestapo by him announcing that the loyal and obedient Baron is planning to overthrow the Fuhrer, Hitler, himself and take over the government! All in jest of course. The real kicker in Pat's hilarious broadcast is revealing, again all in jest of course, that the pure blooded Aryan Baron Von Luber is actually married to a Brooklyn Jewish woman! The identity that Katie has on her passport that she switched with her Jewish maid. That had the big and sputtering Nazi buffoon almost burst one of his pure blooded Aryan blood vessels!
The Baron now back in the good graces of the Fuhrer, whom he was accused by Pat of trying to do in, is given a chance to redeem himself by traveling on an ocean-liner to America and do his thing undermined the country and set up the land of the free and home of the brave for the next Nazi conquest. It's then when he runs into his ex-wife,the Fuhrer had annulled his marriage, Katie on deck and the rest of the movie, as well as the Baron himself, is soon to become history.
You don't know how to take this movie since it's about a very serious subject, WW II, but at the same time it doesn't seem to take itself seriously at all. It's as if the film is a precursor to movies and TV shows of post-World War Two goofy and bumbling Nazi's like in the movie "The Producers" and the 1960's TV comedy "Hogan's Heroes".