Arthur Kober's play Having Wonderful Time was fresh from its Broadway run of 372 performances for 1937-38 when RKO bought it to the screen starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Ginger Rogers. The play was a homage to the Catskill resort area so frequented by New York's Jewish population because of restrictions on other vacation areas. The area with its own Jewish owned and operated resorts became popularly known as the Jewish Alps.On Broadway John Garfield and Katharine Locke starred, but for the screen RKO used two of its best contract players of the time Fairbanks and Rogers. According to Salad Days the memoir of Fairbanks, both he and Rogers did use proper Brooklyn and Bronx accents in their characters, but after the audiences in Red State America had trouble understanding them, both he and Ginger were called back and dubbed a whole lot of their lines in more generic tones. By the way Fairbanks could and did use a really good New York type accent in Angels On Broadway a few years later.A whole lot of outstanding character players are in Having Wonderful Time like Eve Arden, Donald Meek, Lee Bowman, Jack Carson, and Lucille Ball. Making his screen debut as the camp social director where we got to see some of his Catskill type shtick was Red Skelton.Having Wonderful Time is a good screen comedy, showing off Fairbanks and Rogers to their best advantage. But I would probably have liked to have seen the film done as it was presented on Broadway. The days of the great Jewish resorts of the Catskills are gone now so it's highly unlikely we'll see a remake of Having Wonderful Time. An opportunity to have preserved a piece of history is now gone unfortunately.

***Slight Spoilers*** Things got really wild at Camp Kare-Free in the Catskills when pretty and conceited Thelma "Teddy" Shaw, Ginger Rogers, arrived there to spend, from her boring job as a typist in the big city, her two week summer vacation. Outside her work environment, typing typing typing, Teddy always tried to put on an act in being extremely well read, by carrying a book on the works of 19th Century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, and talking in the lingo of a rich and well bread Park Avenue débutante. The fact is that Teddy is just a working girl from the Bronx helping her family, whom she lives with, make ends meet in the depths of the Great Depression.It's at Camp Kare-Free that Teddy will not only get a new outlook on life as well as personal relationships but also find the man of her dreams; out of work lawyer and now camp waiter Chick Kirkland, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. At first Teddy wasn't all that crazy about Chick after he accidentally dumped all her clothes, when Teddy's suitcase unlatched, all over the ground and then gave her a piece of his mind when she tried to show him how sophisticated she was. It didn't take to long for Chick, with his boyish charm and striking good looks, to get Teddy to see things his way and fall for him like a ton of red ripe New York Delicious Apples.It's when Chick got a little overconfident in his being a lady killer that Teddy, who's never been exposed to a dreamboat Romeo like him, made a B-line to the camp dance hall before he swept her off her feet. It's there that Teddy met rich and spoiled Buzzy-or Buzz to his friends-Armbuster, Lee Bowman, whom she later got involved in a harmless night long game of backgammon at his cabin. This had Buzz's girlfriend at Camp Kare-Free Miriam, Lucille Ball, not only get jealous in Buzz dropping her for another girl but doing it behind her back: without even bothering to write her a Dear Joan letter!The film ends, together with Teddy's two week vacation, at the Camp Kare-Free dinning room where Teddy's old boyfriend Emil Batty, Jack Carson, unexpectedly show up to give Teddy a ride home to the Bronx! It's then that all the pent up tension between Teddy Chick as well as Mariam reach critical mass. Chick, who's waiting on Teddy and Emil, is made to look like a jerk when Emil treats him as if he just got off the boat, as an illegal alien, from Timbuktu. It's when Buzz, who earlier almost got his skull cracked by a flying rock, shows up for breakfast that a mad as hell Mariam, who threw the rock, confronts him about being unfaithful to her. It's then that a shocked and humiliated Chick learns, from Mariam, that Buzz spent the entire night with his girl Teddy at his private cabin!The hilarious free for all, with fists cups and dishes flying in all directions, at the conclusion of the film gives it just the right amount of action that was lacking, with all the talk talk talk, in it up until that point. It also finally brought both Chick and Teddy back together in them knowing that despite not being financially ready, with Chick out of a job, to get married and start a family that's, by falling in love, the only and logically thing for them to do.P.S The movie "Having a Wonderful Time" was Red Skelton's first film appearance as the camp's goofy social director Itchy Faulkner. We get to see Red do his thing in demonstrating how to properly dunk a donut into a cup of coffee without spilling the contents all over ourselves.

Ginger Rogers, working girl and typist, decides to forget her worries and take two weeks at Camp Kare-Free, a lodge that promotes rest and relaxation. She gets there and Camp Kare-Free is anything but. While this movie seems to be going and getting nowhere, it's the constant presence of young Hollywood that keeps the viewer intrigued as to who's going to pop up next. As always Eve Arden manages to stand out in all the recognizable faces, and one can even spot an unbilled Ann Miller in the crowd. Red Skelton provides much of the humor in some very funny skits. One may leave this movie thinking there wasn't much to it, but the movie does succeed in making the viewer feel they're on vacation, with some nice shots of the Catskills and with realistic dialogue between the waiters and escorts of the lodge. Ginger's scenes with her love interest, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. come off very laid back, once they start to like each other, of course. You could do a lot worse (and maybe better,) but for 70 minutes of escapism with Ginger Rogers, who's complaining?

The original movie script was about a Jewish girl on holiday in the Catskills. They put Ginger Rodgers in it and changed it around a bit. This is a cute and funny movie. Nothing major, just a nice little movie about a working girl away for some R&R and ending up falling in love. Her love interest is Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who is a babe, and very funny in his own right. They both meet at camp and instantly dislike one another. He is working there as a waiter/camp counselor/gigolo (see Patrick Swayze's part in Dirty Dancing) to earn money to pay for school. From the first moment they meet, you can tell that even through all the fighting and cutdowns they really like one another. Neither of them has the courage to say how they really feel to the other. Of course finally they do and it all happens naturally. You believe this movie and the characters in it. To me that means a good movie. Thank goodness I taped it off AMC. This movie includes alot of talents, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, Jack Carson, to include a few. You can't get alot of Ginger's non-musical films on VHS or DVD. This ticks me off people.PS...If you like to see more of Ginger Rodgers non-musical greats, check out Tom, Dick and Harry, Kitty Foyle, and the classic Stage Door.