Best Comedy Movies of 1943

Spoiled playboy Henry van Cleve dies and arrives at the entrance to Hell, a final destination he is sure he deserves after living a life of profligacy. The devil, however, isn't so sure Henry meets Hell's standards. Convinced he is where he belongs, Henry recounts his life's deeds, both good and bad, including an act of indiscretion during his 25-year marriage to his wife, Martha, with the hope that "His Excellency" will arrive at the proper judgment.

Tired of always playing the same roles, Little Red Riding Hood, her grandmother and the Wolf demand a new version of the tale. The story then plays out in a more contemperary urban environment, with Little Red Riding Hood working as a pin-up girl in a night club.

It's World War II and there is a severe housing shortage everywhere - especially in Washington, D.C. where Connie Milligan rents an apartment. Believing it to be her patriotic duty, Connie offers to sublet half of her apartment, fully expecting a suitable female tenent. What she gets instead is mischievous, middle-aged Benjamin Dingle. Dingle talks her into subletting to him and then promptly sublets half of his half to young, irreverent Joe Carter - creating a situation tailor-made for comedy and romance.

Jerry crashes a vase onto Tom's head, which gets Mammy to throw Tom out. Jerry at first revels in his freedom, but soon tires of this, and, under a flag of truce, hatches a plan with Tom.

Bugs challenges Cecil Turtle to race, only this time he's wearing an aerodynamic suit like Cecil's. Unfortunately, the gambling ring has bet everything on the rabbit, and Bugs now looks like a tortoise.

The wolf escapes from prison but can't get away from police dog Droopy no matter how hard he tries. This is the first cartoon starring Droopy.

Dancing great Bill Williamson sees his face on the cover of Theatre World magazine and reminisces: Just back from World War I, he meets lovely singer Selina Rogers at a soldiers' ball and promises to come back to her when he "gets to be somebody." Years go by, and Bill and Selina's rising careers intersect only briefly, since Selina is unwilling to settle down. Will she ever change her mind? Concludes with a big all-star show hosted by Cab Calloway.

On a tropical island a pair of castaways look to Bugs as a source of food.

Relaxing with a carrot at a U.S. Army air field, Bugs is reading "Victory Through Hare Power" and scoffs at the notion of mentioned gremlins, little creatures who wreak havoc on planes with their diabolical sabotage.

An Eddie Cantor look-alike organizes an all-star show to help the war effort.

Propaganda comedy promoting the benefits of saving for the war effort.

Teenager Homer Macauley stays at home in small-town Ithaca to support his family while his older brother Marcus prepares to go to war.

A down-to-earth pilot charms a European princess on vacation in the United States.

Daffy is an agent representing Sleepy LaGoof, trying to sell him to talent scout Porky. Daffy spends a great deal of time and energy explaining and demonstrating what the kid can do, while the kid sits on a couch licking a giant sucker.

Flash Fulton (Bud Abbott) and Weejie McCoy (Lou Costello) take pictures of a bank robbery. Lured to the mountain resort hideout of the robbers and accompanied by Dr. Bill Elliott (Patric Knowles) and Peggy Osborn (Elyse Knox), they also meet old friend Johnny Long (Johnny Long) and his band and singer Marcia Manning (Ginny Simms). Dr. Elliott and Peggy are being held in a remote cabin by the robbers, but Weejie rescues them by turning himself into a human snowball that becomes an avalanche that engulfs the crooks.

Rich kid Danny Churchill has a taste for wine, women and song, but not for higher education. So his father ships him to an all-male college out West where there's not supposed to be a female for miles. But before Danny arrives, he spies a pair of legs extending out from under a stalled roadster. They belong to the Dean's granddaughter, Ginger Gray, who is more interested in keeping the financially strapped college open than falling for Danny's romantic line. At least at first...

Two bumblers, failures as businessmen and air raid wardens, stumble across a nest of Nazi saboteurs bent on blowing up the local magnesium plant.

Hat check man Louis Blore is in love with nightclub star May Daly. May, however, is in love with a poor dancer but wants to marry for money. When Louis wins the Irish Sweepstakes, he asks May to marry him and she accepts even though she doesn't love him. Soon after, Louis has an accident and gets knocked on the head, where he dreams that he's King Louis XV pursuing the infamous Madame Du Barry.

Acrobat Eddie Marsh is in the army now. His first act is to become friendly with Kathryn Jones, the colonel's pretty daughter. Their romance hits a few snags, including disapproval from her father. Eddie's also plagued by fear of having an accident during his family's trapeze act in the army variety show, which also features a gallery of MGM stars.

A soldier falls for a chorus girl and then experiences trouble when he is posted to the Pacific.

Flying Tiger Fred Atwell sneaks away from his famous squadron's personal appearance tour and goes incognito for several days of leave. He quickly falls for photographer Joan Manion, pursuing her in the guise of a carefree drifter.

A young soldier on a pass in New York City visits the famed Stage Door Canteen, where famous stars of the theater and films appear and host a recreational center for servicemen during the war. The soldier meets a pretty young hostess and they enjoy the many entertainers and a growing romance

A city girl on a bus tour of the West encounters a handsome rodeo cowboy who helps her forget her city suitors.

The two-man Laurel and Hardy Zoot Suit Band find themselves fronting a scam for "gasolene pills" in wartime oil-short America. They are however soon on the side of the angels helping recover $10,000 for an attractive young lady whose family have themselves been swindled.

The Dancing Masters is a 1943 Laurel and Hardy feature film. The plot involves the team running a ballet school, and getting involved with an inventor. A young Robert Mitchum has an uncredited cameo role as a fraudulent insurance salesman.

Popular mailcoach driver Uncle Willie is in fact in league with the town's crooked banker. They plan to have the bank robbed after emptying it, and when Willie's choice for this doesn't show in time, he gets some local boys to do it. When his man does turn up he decides to stick around, as he is pals with the sheriff and also takes a shine to Willie's daughter Allison. This gives the bad men several new problems.

The stooges are repairmen who get a job fixing the doorbell in large house which is the secret headquarters of some Nazi spies. They manage to ruin most of the house while working on the wiring and then subdue the spies and sink an enemy submarine by remote control.

After one member of their group is murdered, the performers at a burlesque house must work together to find out who the killer is before they strike again.

The stooges are janitors working in the offices of Doctors Harts, Burns and Belcher. Some crooks arrive seeking medical attention after their boss has been wounded in a shoot out with the cops. Mistaken for doctors, the boys are forced to operate on the wounded crook, but instead they accidentally dump him out the window into a passing police car. The rest of the gang chases them into a store room filled with dummies where the cops finally catch the bad guys.

The Stooges join the war effort by enlisting at Merchant Marines. While aboard, they have a brief run-in with (a secret German Nazi officer) Lt. Dungen (Vernon Dent), and then mistake a torpedo for a beached whale. Moe says they have to kill it, and it promptly explodes. After being lost at sea for several days, they come across the SS Schicklgruber and climb aboard. Now with fully grown beards, they come across Lt. Dungen again, who does not recognize them. After realizing they are in with a nest of German sailors, they eventually overtake the crew and toss them overboard.

In WW I dancer Jerry Jones stages an all-soldier show on Broadway, called Yip Yip Yaphank. Wounded in the War, he becomes a producer. In WW II his son Johnny Jones, who was before his fathers assistant, gets the order to stage a knew all-soldier show, called THIS IS THE ARMY. But in his pesonal life he has problems, because he refuses to marry his fiancée until the war is over.

Mystery writer Barry Craig (Allyn Joslyn) and his wife Jane (Evelyn Keyes), prefer solving crimes rather than writing about them. They get a chance when killings plague the fashion photography studio of Ralph McCormick (Edmund Lowe). After his secretary, Julie Taylor(Anita Louise) reports an attempt to murder her there, Erika McCormick's (Ann Savage) Aunt Isabel Fleming (Mary Forbes) is stabbed and the evidence points to Madge Lawrence (Bess Flowers) an older model and an apparent suicide. Police Inspector Joseph Clinton (Frank Craven) declares the case closed...but then Erika is murdered.

The Three Stooges, as the Wrong Bothers, aided the war effort by inventing a new plane in this below-average two-reel comedy. Actually, they are attempting to avoid the draft but when their plane, the Buzzard, fails miserably, they march off to war. Richard Fiske, formerly a busy supporting player in Stooges comedies, appeared in this two-reeler courtesy of stock footage from the earlier Boobs in Arms (1940). Ironically, Fiske had himself been drafted and would be killed in action in France in August of 1944.

Spoof of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)' with an all-black cartoon cast. Many WWII references, including rationing (the evil Queen is a hoarder of sugar and rubber tires) and Jeep vehicles (the Sebben Dwarfs come to the rescue in three of them).

An exceedingly mild-mannered man is sent out to kill a duck for dinner by his wife. Unfortunately for him, he picks Daffy Duck as his victim. The two face off and do battle for the remainder of the cartoon.

Elmer threatens to give his dog a bath if he doesn't stop scratching, but the poor pooch is the victim of a hungry flea whose tools of the trade include pickaxes and dynamite.

Mr. Dithers is trying to encourage a businessman to build a war-time manufacturing plant on land he owns while Dagwood tries to prevent the businessman from learning his daughter is involved in a local theatre production.

The stooges are defense workers who have trouble getting to sleep when Curly gets a toothache. Moe and Larry try various ways to remove the offending tooth, but nothing works so they take Curly to the dentist. While Moe gets in the chair to show Curly how easy its going to be, the dentist enters and pulls Moe's tooth by mistake. Curly then wakes up and realizes its all been a dream and a punch to the mouth from Moe dislodges the tooth.

When the profits of their various film series began slumping in the mid-1940s, Columbia Pictures tried to broaden the appeal of these films by disguing the fact that they were indeed series entries. Thus it was that Columbia's 13th "Blondie" picture was shipped out as It's a Great Life. The comic confusion begins when Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake), intending to buy a house, buys a horse instead. Before the film's 75 minutes have run their course, Dagwood gets mixed up in a fox hunt. But Blondie (Penny Singleton) saves the day as usual, with the help of eccentric millionaire Timothy Brewster (Hugh Herbert). After It's a Great Life and #14 "Footlight Glamour", Columbia restored the name "Blondie" to the titles of all subesequent installments in this long-running comedy series.

When the bride's mother is supposedly swindled out of her money by a spurned suitor, the groom's father orchestrates a scheme of his own to set things right. He is aided by a cabaret singer, while placating a jealous wife.

A murder has occurred at Gruesome Gables, and the dog detective trying to find the killer has to deal with some suspicious suspects and a haunted house.

An old woman has a cat, a dog, and a canary. The cat and dog fight even worse than normally. Fed up, she tells them both off, then threatens to throw them both out if there's any more trouble.

An uncredited Anthony Asquith is one of the directors of this WWII film (a joint UK/US production) which aims to explain British culture and character to the newly arrived American soldier. Starting with the ubiquitous pub visit, the film breezes through geography lessons, food and entertainment on the Home Front.

The stooges are salesman selling a weight reducing machine. They have no luck until they show up at the house of an eccentric inventor where they are hired as caretakers. When the scientist goes to Washington to demonstrate his death-ray machine to the government, the boys are left to guard his house and must contend with enemy spies and a mysterious pie thrower.

Aspiring singer Ann Carter visits her stepbrother in New York, hoping to make it on Broadway.

The stooges are carpenters who become policemen. A mysterious burglar disguised as a gorilla has the cops baffled and Mr. Dill, the head of the citizens league, threatening the police chief's job. The boys go on the case and pose as night watchmen at an antiques store. They confront the crook, who turns out to be a real gorilla owned by Dill. After defeating Dill and some other bad guys in a wild fight, the gorilla drinks some nitroglycerin and blows up.

Upper-class female reporter is (despite herself) attracted to hulking laborer digging a tunnel under the Hudson river.

Bugs fights the legendary giant. In the historical context of World War II much fun is made of the giant's claimed superiority over the more clever and fun-loving rabbit.

Two buzzards suffer from acute food shortage and make up for it by cooking each other, or at least trying to.