On Our Merry Way (1948)

You never know what gems the vaults will deliver. The 1948 musical comedy On Our Merry Way has a self-reflexivity 60 years ahead of its time.

Coproducer Burgess Meredith stars as Oliver Pease, who writes the lost pet want ads in the city daily. But he has told lovely wife Martha (Paulette Godard) that he’s the paper’s star Roving Reporter, who canvases the citizenry for responses to inane questions. Impatient, she urges him to seek a raise by posing a more adventurous question: “Has a little child ever changed your life?” To rise to her expectations Oliver has to evade a thug bent on bashing him over gambling debts and fool the editor into letting him write the column on Martha’s question.

That plot string ties the three subplots together, on various forms of a “baby.” In one two roving conmen (Fred Macmurray, William Demarest) are trapped by the evil 10-year-old they hope to return home for a cash reward.  Shades of O. Henry’s “Ransom of Red Chief.” The brat’s older sister is the only sane, competent member of the family, including the crazed bank manager uncle. 

In another a spoiled rotten child star is shown her selfish ways and atones by boosting the careers of a washed-up old actor (Victor Moore) and a pretty starlet who blossoms when she dons a sarong. The starlet is Dorothy Lamour, who performs a spirited parody of her usual musical (and saronged) numbers.

In the best episode (directed by uncredited John Huston and George Stevens) Henry Fonda and James Stewart star as broke swing bandleaders who set up a rigged talent contest to get the money to fix their bus. Their plan is torpedoed when their mechanic’s daughter, Baby, turns out to be a hot beauty who blows every mean horn, impressing judge Harry James. The two leads have a charming ease together that supports the very broad comedy. In their happy ending the Babe takes over their band, the bus mobile again, but she invites them to stay.

The main plot works round to a happy ending too. The editor brings Pease a job offer just as their furniture is being repossessed. Martha reveals the reason behind her suggested question: She’s expecting a baby. As it turns out, the looming baby — through its mother’s initiative — has transformed the daddy from a duplicitous loser into a sensitive, effective reporter. More than a child affecting the plots, that other secondary type, the woman, is the motive force that in each story is responsible for the success. Martha has been on to Oliver all along.
     In addition to that irony and the recurring parody, the film also provides that rarity, the actor’s direct address to the viewer. Meredith’s Oliver confides to the audience that he has lied to his wife, that he’s going to come clean even if her loses her, and defines us as companions on his adventure. This is not a great movie but it is a knowing one, enjoying the liberties it takes with the studio film conventions. John Ohara and Arch Oboler had a hand in the stories.
     Of course the film is not unique in its self-referentiality, just fresh. Groucho's indiscreet asides, the Crosby/Hope Road flicks (saronged Lamour obligatory), the larks of Olsen and Johnson, all enjoyed this frisk with conventions. In fact that goes back to Thomas Nashe writing Summer's Last Will and Testament (1592) for the frisson of Will Somer's performance, The invention long preceded the theory.