My Favorite Blonde is not just one of Hope's very best films, but an excellent introduction for new fans. Hope's usual roles were as a vaudevillian or radio comedian who finds himself having to reluctantly participate in some dangerous intrigue which is way over his head, and this movie shows the formula at its cleanest and most smoothly executed. Madeleine Carroll plays a British agent delivering a coded message who has run afoul of Nazis operating in the U.S., and Hope, a ne'er do well road company performer who does an act with a penguin, meets her on a train and bravely (well, sort of bravely) pitches in to keep her safe. The cloak and dagger nonsense on the train is a deft nod to Carroll's star-making turn in The 39 Steps, and this movie has much of that earlier film's energy. Carroll and Hope banter amusingly as they are chased across half of the U.S. The bright dialogue is the film's best feature and Hope's reluctant hero persona, introduced in The Cat and The Canary and Ghost Breakers, is a fully polished comic gem at the the film's center. The look of the film is very 'film noir' with looming shadows and danger on staircases and other now-familiar devices, but it still comes off as fresh entertainment even now. This one movie alone was enough to convince me that Hope is one of the great comic actors in all of movie history and this is an excellent showcase of what he could do. Also a must see for fans of the deliciously sinister Gale Sondergaard, here at something near her best.

My Favorite Blonde has in the title role Madeleine Carroll a most beautiful blond player, who is a British secret agent trying to get some microfilm about air routes for American planes to go to Great Britain as part of lend lease. But just as her boat is docking in New York, some nasty Nazi spies shoot her male companion.

The microfilm is hidden in a pin that she's wearing and with the Nazis hot on her trail. she ducks into a vaudeville house which has Bob Hope and a roller skating penguin on the bill. I'm sure back in the day Hope played in vaudeville with many type acts like these. Vaudeville was moribund in those days and Hope wasn't helping to revive it.

In fact he's got to get to Hollywood because some movie company wants to star the penguin in a film. That fits in real nice with Carroll's plans and as it usually goes, the bumbling Mr. Hope is in the clutches of a beautiful who actually falls for old ski nose as he tries to help her when she levels with him.

My Favorite Blonde is a fast paced 78 minute film, one of the shortest of Hope's feature films. Carroll looks like she's enjoying spoofing a part she did in Alfred Hitchcock's 39 Steps across the pond. Of course she's the one dragooned into help.

But it's Hope's show all the way. My favorite two sequences is both trying to sleep and feed the penguin in an upper on a train and when Hope and Carroll are at an Irish picnic in Chicago. James Burke and Edward Gargan are very funny as a pair of thick headed Irish teamsters.

Though My Favorite Blonde is terribly dated with the World War II background the laughs still hold up very well.

The film begins with Bob Hope performing on stage with his sidekick, Percy the Penguin. While the film stars Hope, at times Percy is the best thing about the movie--mostly because it infuses a bit of fun into the film! Soon, Hope meets a blonde who apparently is in some sort of trouble (Madeleine Carroll). While it's uncertain whether she's telling the truth or is a criminal, Hope decides to help her for the noblest of reasons--she's good looking! However, for his trouble HE is soon accused of murder and the two set out on a cross-country chase to California. Why California? Well, Carroll is apparently a spy for the British and has information that could save a squadron of Boston bombers (a really crappy plane--called the Lockheed Hudson in the states but sold to the Brits). Why this takes her to California, I have no idea! During this trek, they are pursued by cops as well as a gang of Nazi spies who are intent on finding a scorpion pin on which the secrets are hidden.

Overall, this is NOT a laugh out loud sort of comedy but is more a pleasant little film--the sort of thing Hope made very well in the 1930s-50s--before his career went into hibernation about 1960 (he DID make more films after this, but they were pretty listless). Despite one reviewer calling it "one of the funniest American comedies ever made", I just can't see that. Instead, it's more of a pleasant little diversion--a nice time-passer and not even among Hope's best films. I was tempted to give the film a 6, but decided on a 7 simply because of the presence of Percy! He's the best.