Best Comedy Movies of 1947

Kris Kringle, seemingly the embodiment of Santa Claus, is asked to portray the jolly old fellow at Macy's following his performance in the Thanksgiving Day parade. His portrayal is so complete that many begin to question if he truly is Santa Claus, while others question his sanity.

An Episcopal Bishop, Henry Brougham, has been working for months on the plans for an elaborate new cathedral which he hopes will be paid for primarily by a wealthy, stubborn widow. He is losing sight of his family and of why he became a churchman in the first place. Enter Dudley, an angel sent to help him. Dudley does help everyone he meets, but not necessarily in the way they would have preferred. With the exception of Henry, everyone loves him, but Henry begins to believe that Dudley is there to replace him, both at work and in his family's affections, as Christmas approaches.

Tom enters from stage left in white tie and tails, sits at the piano, gets his focus as the orchestra in the pit beneath him warms up, and begins to play Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody." Unbeknownst to Tom and the audience, Jerry is asleep across several of the high-note keys inside the instrument, so Tom's playing eventually wakes him. Jerry is pummeled by hammers, bounced by wires, and squeezed by Tom as the cat tries to play the concerto while dispensing with Jerry. Jerry's defensive antics add to the brio of the program and answer Tom with Jerry's own skillful musical attack. By the concerto's end, the duet leaves only one animal standing for the audience's applause.

Tom, sick of Jerry stealing the milk out of his bowl, poisons it. Instead of killing the mouse, the potion transforms him into a muscular beast.

A New Yorker hobo moves into a mansion and along the way he gathers friends to live in the house with him. Before he knows it, he is living with the actual home owners.

Spike is guarding a private fishing hole - in his sleep. Tom sneaks in to do some fishing - with Jerry as bait. But one particularly vicious fish turns out to be more than Tom or Jerry bargained for, particularly when he wakes up Spike.

Tom chases Jerry into a bottle of invisible ink, and Jerry then proceeds to have fun torturing Tom.

Mammy Two-Shoes tells Tom and Butch that the cat who gets rid of the icebox-raiding, breadbox-invading mouse (Jerry) is the one who can stay.

Tom is given the task of guarding the fridge during the night by Mammy-Two-Shoes, but as soon as he has started he is tricked by Jerry into falling into the basement, where he lands in a barrel of cider. Now drunk, Tom staggers around in the house getting up to no good with Jerry, clearing out the fridge, making a mess, waking Mammy-Two-Shoes. You can tell this will only end in severe punishment, but Tom simply casts caution to the wind and gets even more drunk by downing a bottle of rum he finds in the bathroom. Obviously, everyone has a bottle of rum in their bathroom.

Humphrey Bogart visits the Mocrumbo Restaurant. He orders fried rabbit and Elmer Fudd has twenty minutes to serve it.

A hungry cat has the idea of giving "Jumbo Gro" fertilizer to a scrawny canary to make him a bigger meal, which leads to a race between the cat, the canary, a dog, and a mouse to see who can grow the biggest.

This time Bugs' race with Cecil Turtle features a rocket-powered tortoise shell.

Society sleuths Nick and Nora Charles investigate a murder in a jazz club.

After leaving her family's farm to study nursing in the city, a young woman finds herself on an unexpected path towards politics.

Teenager Susan Turner, with a severe crush on playboy artist Richard Nugent, sneaks into his apartment to model for him and is found there by her sister Judge Margaret Turner. Threatened with jail, Nugent agrees to date Susan until the crush abates.

World War II veteran Bob MacDonald surprises his new wife, Betty, by quitting his city job and moving them to a dilapidated farm in the country. While Betty gamely struggles with managing the crumbling house and holding off nosy neighbors and a recalcitrant pig, Bob makes plans for crops and livestock. The couple's bliss is shaken by a visit from a beautiful farm owner, who seems to want more from Bob than just managing her property.

Two ex-soldiers return from overseas--one of them having smuggled into the country a French orphan girl he has become attached to. They wind up running into their old sergeant--who hates them--and getting involved with a race-car builder who's trying to find backers for a new midget racer he's building.

Thomas the cat finds Tweety in the snow, warming himself by a cigar butt. Thomas's mistress rescues the little yellow bird before her cat can devour him, but Thomas doesn't give up.

Sheltered by her conservative parents, a small-town teenager finally goes out on a date.

A straitlaced turn-of-the-century father presides over a family of boys and the mother who really rules the roost.

Walter Mitty, a daydreaming writer with an overprotective mother, likes to imagine that he is a hero who experiences fantastic adventures. His dream becomes reality when he accidentally meets a mysterious woman who hands him a little black book. According to her, it contains the locations of the Dutch crown jewels hidden since World War II. Soon, Mitty finds himself in the middle of a confusing conspiracy, where he has difficulty differentiating between fact and fiction.

Scat Sweeney, and Hot Lips Barton, two out of work musicians, stow away on board a Rio bound ship, after accidentally setting fire to the big top of a circus. They then get mixed up with a potential suicide Lucia, who first thanks them, then unexpectedly turns them over to the ship's captain. When they find out that she has been hypnotized, to go through a marriage of convenience, when the ship reaches Rio, the boys turn up at the ceremony, in order to stop the wedding, and to help catch the crooks.

Baby photographer Ronnie Jackson, on death row in San Quentin, tells reporters how he got there: taking care of his private-eye neighbor's office, Ronnie is asked by the irresistible Baroness Montay to find the missing Baron. There follow confusing but sinister doings in a gloomy mansion and a private sanatorium, with every plot twist a parody of thriller cliches.

A World War II veteran wants to return to advertising on his own terms, but finds it difficult to be successful and maintain his integrity.

Shemp has to get married within seven hours in order to inherit $500,000. Now that's incentive! The bumbling threesome set to work right away with hilarious results.

At fictitious Tait University in the Roaring '20s, co-ed and school librarian Connie Lane falls for football hero Tommy Marlowe. Unfortunately, he has his eye on gold-digging vamp Pat McClellan. Tommy's grades start to slip, which keeps him from playing in the big game. Connie eventually finds out Tommy really loves her and devises a plan to win him back and to get him back on the field.

Rip Smith's opinion-poll business is a failure...until he discovers that the small town of Grandview is statistically identical to the entire country. He and his assistants go there to run polls cheaply and easily, in total secrecy (it would be fatal to let the townsfolk get self-conscious). And of course, civic crusader Mary Peterman must be kept from changing things too much. But romantic involvement with Mary complicates life for Rip; then suddenly everything changes.

Chester Wooley and Duke Egan are travelling salesmen who make a stopover in Wagon Gap, Montana while enroute to California. During the stopover, a notorious criminal is murdered, and the two are charged with the crime.

Funloving Pearl White, working in a garment sweatshop, gets her big chance when she "opens" for a delayed Shakespeare play...with a comic vaudeville performance. Her brief stage career leads her into those "horrible" moving pictures, where she comes to love the chaotic world of silent movies, becoming queen of the serials. But the consequences of movie stardom may be more than her leading man can take

A gang of street boys foil a master crook who sends commands for robberies by cunningly altering a comic strip's wording each week, unknown to writer and printer. The first of the Ealing comedies.

Twenty-three years after scoring the winning touchdown for his college football team mild-mannered Harold Diddlebock, who has been stuck in a dull, dead-end book-keeping job for years, is let go by his pompous boss, advertising tycoon J.E. Wagglebury, with nothing but a tiny pension. Harold, who never touches the stuff, takes a stiff drink with his new pal... and another, and another. What happened Wednesday?

Upset about a new Broadway musical's mockery of Greek mythology, the goddess Terpsichore comes down to earth and lands a part in the show. She works her charms on the show's producer and he incorporates her changes into the show. Unfortunately, her changes also produce a major flop.

The stooges are scammed out of their inheritance by Icabob Slipp, a crooked lawyer. The boys follow Slipp onto a passenger train and corner him, but not before they accidentally let a lion loose on the train. The only Stooges SHORT where Moe, Curly and Shemp appear together.

Daffy Duck, hoping to avoid flying south by finding a sucker who will let him stay, ends up at the house of a mad scientist and his dog, Leopold.

A talent agent sells his girlfriend to a nightclub -- as two separate acts. The deception and constant costume changes are too much for his girl.

A normal day in the Wilkins family: reticent beauty Ruth, crusty judge father, petition-happy political activist teen Miriam. Who should show up but Ruth's soldier pen pal Bill Seacroft...whom she doesn't know about. It seems Miriam used her sister's name and picture to build up wartime morale. Ruth reluctantly agrees to "humor" Bill for his 2-day leave, though she's just become engaged to her stuffy suitor Albert. Can Miriam's cloud castle last the weekend without crashing to earth?

The stooges run a drug store and are about to have their lease taken away by the Flint, the mean old man who owns the place. When Flint kicks his wife out for being old, the stooges try to help her by inventing a formula that makes old people young. Their concoction turns the wife into a beautiful young woman, and Flint offers the boys the store for free if they'll transform him as well. They agree, but after he swallows the stuff he turns into an infant, and the boys leave on the run.

A grandson of a recently deceased millionaire mistakes a beautiful female disc jockey for her aunt, who once dated the grandfather.

The stooges go out west for Shemp's health and get mixed up with some bad guys. The villains have locked up the Arizona Kid and their leader plans to marry his girl, Nell. The boys help the Arizona Kid escape and he rides to fetch the Cavalry. Somehow, the stooges manage to defeat the bad guys before the Cavalry arrives.

Sach just lost his job as an assistant to a private detective, but he wasn't paid. Slip goes with him down to the detective's office to demand payment, but finds the office empty. A woman enters the office and mistakes Slip for the detective and convinces him to take on a case to find her sister after offering a $50 retainer.

After a prologue about the labor shortage being so acute that some employers would hire anybody or anything, a very tired businessman needs some sleep and checks into a hotel run by Elmer Fudd.

In 1915, Kansas theatre usher Merton Gill is a rabid silent-movie fan. When he brings Mammoth Studios free publicity by imitating star Lawrence Rupert's heroics, they bring him to Hollywood to generate another headline; he thinks he'll get a movie contract. Disillusioned, he haunts the casting offices, where he meets and is consoled by Phyllis Montague, bit player and stunt-woman. When Merton finally gets his "break," though, it's not quite what he envisioned.

The Bowery Boys head west to clear Louie of an old murder charge that he had killed his gold-mine partner. Sach has the map to the gold mine painted on his back, and Blackjack McCoy has him kidnapped by Indian Joe. Gabe poses as a dangerous gunman, the Klondike Kid, while Slip is in charge of all the remaining loose ends.

Mice Hubie and Bertie wander into an automated house of tomorrow.

In the late 1800s, Miss Pilgrim, a young stenographer, or typewriter, becomes the first female employee at a Boston shipping office. Although the men object to her at first, she soon charms them all, especially the handsome young head of the company. Their romance gets sidetracked when she becomes involved in the Women's Suffrage movement.

A professor bets one of his colleagues that he can turn the stooges into gentlemen within 60 days. With the aid of his pretty daughter, the professor tries to teach the boys proper etiquette. After many frustrating attempts, he introduces the stooges into society at a fancy party. At first things go all right, but the party soon degenerates into a wild pie fight.

An ex-GI falls for a bathing beauty.

George and Catherine Apley of Boston lead a proper life in the proper social circle, as did the Apleys before them. When grown daughter Eleanor falls in love with Howard (from New York!), and son John with Myrtle (from Worcester!), the ordered life of the Apley home on Beacon Street is threatened, as is the hoped-for union of John and Apley-cousin Agnes.

Shy, destitute Peter Porter meets equally impoverished Nancy Crane at a Florida beach. Inspired by Peter's belief that a person can acquire wealth simply by creating an aura of success, the outgoing Nancy convinces Peter to join her in impersonating a confident and eccentric wealthy couple. The experiment works, and the couple secure a stunning wardrobe and a lavish room at a resort. Peter panics, however, when he gets a fantastic job offer.