Best Comedy Movies of 1946

A sneaker-wearing, hairy monster chases Bugs through a castle belonging to an evil scientist.

Tom ties up Spike and sneaks into the courtyard of the glamorous Toodles Galore with his bass, hoping to woo her with his song, much to the annoyance of a sleeping Jerry.

Tom calls the exterminators, but they send a cat, who despite his various tools, doesn't fare much better than Tom usually does.

When Bugs attempts to perform Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody, he is troubled by a mouse.

While reading his favorite comic book, Daffy accidentally knocks himself unconscious and dreams he's Duck Twacy, famous detective, trying to solve the case of the missing piggy banks. Taking a streetcar (conducted by Porky Pig, in a non-speaking cameo role) to the gangsters' hideout, he meets up with such grotesque criminals as Pickle Puss, Eighty-Eight Teeth and Neon Noodle.

It's spring, and Tom is much more interested in the female cat next door than in Jerry.

A baseball game is going on in New York City, at the Polo Grounds (although the rooftop facade is more suggestive of Yankee Stadium), between the visiting "Gas-House Gorillas" and the home team, the "Tea Totallers". The game is not going well for the Tea Totallers, as the Gorillas, a bunch of oversized, roughneck players, are not only dominating the Tea Totallers, made up of old men, but intimidating the umpire by knocking him into the ground like a tent peg after an unpopular judgment. The Gorillas' home runs go screaming out of the ballpark (literally) and the batters form a conga line, with each hitter knocking a ball out.

Amateur plumber Cluny Brown gets sent off by her uncle to work as a servant at an English country estate.

Two ghosts who were mistakenly branded as traitors during the Revolutionary War return to 20th century New England to retieve a letter from George Washington which would prove their innocence.

The wolf escapes from Alka-Fizz prison, but the persistent Sergeant McPoodle (Droopy) of the Canadian Mounties follows his trail wherever he goes.

Elmer Fudd walks out of a typical Bugs cartoon, so Bugs gets back at him by disturbing Elmer's sleep using "nightmare paint."

In the midst of Nazi air raids, a postman dies on the operating table at a rural hospital. But was the death accidental?

The Marx Brothers are employed at a hotel in postwar Casablanca, where a ring of Nazis is trying to recover a cache of stolen treasure.

A secluded bookstore comes to life in madcap, pop culture reference-heavy fashion.

On a train trip West to become a mail-order bride, Susan Bradley meets a cheery crew of young women traveling out to open a "Harvey House" restaurant at a remote whistle-stop.

Phil and Ellen Gayley have been divorced for a year, and their 7-year old daughter, Flip, is very unhappy that her parents are not together. Flip starts a correspondence with a Marine, sending a picture of her beautiful mother as the author of Flip's flirtatious letters. When the Marine shows up to meet his pen pal, Ellen takes the opportunity to make her ex-husband jealous.

The Devil arranges for a deceased gangster to return to Earth as a well-respected judge to make up for his previous life.

A smooth-talking French thief (George Sanders) wangles his way into an important position as prefect of police.

Lou Costello plays a country bumpkin vacuum-cleaner salesman, working for the company run by the crooked Bud Abbott. To try to keep him under his thumb, Abbott convinces Costello that he's a crackerjack salesman. This comedy is somewhat like "The Time of Their Lives," in that Abbott and Costello don't have much screen time together and there are very few vaudeville bits woven into the plot.

Kit Madden is traveling to Hollywood, where her best-selling novel is to be filmed. Aboard the train, she encounters Marines Rusty and Dink, who don't know she is the author of the famous book, and who don't think much of the ideas it proposes. She and Rusty are greatly attracted, but she doesn't know how to deal with his disdain for the book's author.

Shy milkman Burleigh Sullivan accidentally knocks out drunken Speed McFarlane, a champion boxer who was flirting with Burleigh's sister. The newspapers get hold of the story and photographers even catch Burleigh knock out Speed again. Speed's crooked manager decides to turn Burleigh into a fighter. Burleigh doesn't realize that all of his opponents have been asked to take a dive. Thinking he really is a great fighter, Burleigh develops a swelled head which puts a crimp in his relationship with pretty nightclub singer Polly Pringle. He may finally get his comeuppance when he challenges Speed for the title.

Jed Potter looks back on a love triangle conducted over the course of years and between musical numbers. Dancer Jed loves showgirl Mary, who loves compulsive nightclub-opener Johnny, who can't stay committed to anything in life for very long.

Hugo and Rocky (caricatures of Edward G. Robinson and Peter Lorre) make it home to their hideout only to find Bugs already settled down there for the night.

Told in flash back, the stooges tell their son how he came to have three fathers. The stooges, owners of a pawn shop, owed money to the gashouse protection society, a bunch of loan sharks. To complicate matters, a lady leaves a baby in the shop as part of a plan to sell a phony diamond and the stooges wind up caring for the kid. The stooges manage to defeat the crooks and when they finish telling the story, the kid goes off to find his real mother.

The stooges are castaways from a garbage scow who land on Dead Man's Island where everyone is living in olden times. To escape from the governor, they disguise Curly as a Maharaja and win permission to journey to their own country to fetch presents. The governor is fooled, but the boys run into more trouble in the den of Black Louie the pirate where Curly is forced into a knife throwing contest with Larry as the target. Things look bad until a mis-thrown knife cuts the rope that holds the chandelier and it crashes down on Black Louie's men. With the pirates defeated, Moe decides to take over as ruler of the island.

Porky puts his cats out in the snow, but then they put him out and have a party. Expelling them again, Porky goes to bed, only to be terrorized by the felines' mock Martian invasion.

A Chicago team of radio scriptwriters must split up when he takes a job with his bride-to-be's father, and the other must write commercial jingles.

The stooges are civil war soldiers who are constantly changing uniforms to avoid the opposing armies. Eventually they decide to be loyal to the south, but remain disguised as Union soldiers. Curly is detected as a spy, but Moe and Larry prevent his execution. The boys escape with a secret map and marry their three southern belles.

George Formby plays George Harper, a tavern owner, who works to turn a waitress from her current employer, a rival tavern owner, when Formby falls in love with her.

Sach is given a post-hypnotic suggestion that turns him into a championship prizefighter.

Scheming mice Hubie and Bertie convince a cat that he is, in fact, a lion.

Margie and her daughter reminisce about Margie's girlhood in the roaring twenties. In flashback, Margie, a smarter, less popular girl at Central High, meets handsome new French teacher Ralph Fontayne. Circumstances keep throwing them together and Margie, in company with every other girl in school, develops a crush on him. Margie's date for the prom gets sick, and what happens next surprises everyone.

Evie's co-workers at the uniform shirt factory, and her almost-fiancée's inability to kiss, inspire her to slip a letter into a size sixteen-and-a-half shirt for some anonymous soldier. It's received by "Wolf" Larson, who immediately throws it away, but his sensitive, dreaming--and short--buddy John McPherson snags it, and begins a correspondence with Evie, pretending to be Wolf. But things get complicated when Evie wants to meet her tall, handsome soldier. And even more complicated when Wolf sees Evie and likes what he sees.

Screwy Squirrel becomes the playmate of a lonesome, dopey, but strong, dog, Lenny, in a broad parody of John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men".

Country girl Jane Budden goes to the big city, determined to find and marry a wealthy man. Instead, she meets and marries Herman Maxim, a struggling inventor.

Abigail Chandler has written her stuffy Boston relatives that she's a successful opera singer in New York. In reality, she works at a burlesque house and is billed as High-C Susie. When her sister Martha comes for a visit, Abigail tries to hide the truth from her.

When the circus arrives they put the lion's cage right over Bugs' rabbit hole.

A young woman who wants to break into the theater schemes to become the protege of a famous Broadway star.

Slip (Leo Gorcey), Sach (Huntz Hall), Bobby (Bobby Jordan), Whitey (William Benedict) and Chuck (David Gorcey) unsuccessfully try to sell a dilapidated car to a street cleaner for a fabulous amount, so they can get enough money to save Louie's (Bernard Gorcey) Malt Shop. Sidewalk photographer Cathy Smith (Teala Loring) snaps a pictures of three bank robbers as they are fleeing a robbery but when the Bowery Boys and Cathy realize that Sach is also in the photograph, they break into the photo lab to destroy the negative, which might make the police think Sach was involved in the robbery.

To the tune of The Nutcracker, a number of elves do all the work in a shoe shop.

Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake) poses as his boss Mr. Dithers (Jonathan Hale) so that a big business deal can be consummated while Dithers avoids nearsighted process server Jim Gray (Shemp Howard). The upshot of all this is that Dagwood ends up in a lunatic asylum, forcing Blondie (Penny Singleton) to come to the rescue. Number 18 in the long running Blondie series. Blondie Knows Best was writer/director Edward Bernds' first entry in the long-running "Blondie" series, and arguably his funniest. Bernds was a big fan of comedian Shemp Howard (whom he'd directed in several Columbia 2-reelers) and accordingly he gives Shemp free reign in his scenes, resulting in some hystericially funny moments. Blondie Knows Best represented Jonathan Hale's farewell to the series; in the next entry, Blondie's Big Moment, he would be replaced by Jerome Cowan as Mr. Radcliffe

The stooges make a whole batch of homemade beer, but get tossed in jail when Curly sells some to a cop. Their minor indiscretion turns into a forty year sentence when a keg of beer Curly has hidden under his coat explodes while the boys are being photographed. In prison the stooges get into more trouble with the warden and wind on the rockpile when they try to escape. Released as old men with long gray beards, the first thing Curly wants is a bottle of beer.

The stooges are discharged from the army and go to see their fiancée, but find they have been dispossessed and the wedding is off until they find a home. The boys have trouble finding a vacant apartment so they set up housekeeping in a vacant lot. Their housing problems seem to be solved until a farmer destroys their new home with a tractor. The stooges then build a house of their own, but the girls aren't impressed with the one room mansion and walk out on them.

A showgirl working for an inventor battles crooks, who want to steal his ideas.

When a newspaper accuses a wealthy socialite of being a home-wrecker, she files a multi-million-dollar libel lawsuit. The publication's frazzled head editor now must find a way to discredit her.

The Bowery Boys come to the rescue when a corrupt taxi company puts the squeeze on several independent drivers.

Elmer Fudd is an amateur scientist who wants to turn Bugs Bunny into a fiend. Bugs tricks this ersatz Dr. Jekyll into drinking his own mixture; later, each thinks the other has changed into a bear.

A department store floor walker is persuaded by four husband-seeking salesgirls to pose as their father in a Long Island mansion which they have rented by pooling resources and pretending to be wealthy themselves.

Blondie's Lucky Day is the 17th entry in the long-running Blondie film series based on the comic strip by Chic Young. Blondie's Lucky Day, indeed! Not only must Blondie Bumstead (Penny Singleton) put on a brave face when her husband Dagwood (Arthur Lake) is fired for the umpteenth time by Mr. Dithers (Jonathan Hale), but she must also tolerate the attentions paid to Dagwood by pretty WAC Mary Jane McDermott (Angelyn Orr). A whiz in business matters, Mary Jane sets up Dag in his own business, which replenishes the Bumstead coffers but which drives Blondie into a jealous frenzy. The film's highlight occurs early on, when Dagwood assumes Dithers' responsibilities for a single day--and makes a proper mess of things within five minutes.[