OVERLOOKED FILM: THANK YOU, JEEVES! (1936)

If you are a P. G. Wodehouse purist you might not fully appreciate this adaptation of the master's 1934 novel -- actually, the very first full-length novel following a successful series of short stories.

Bertie Wooster is here and Jeeves is here and the book title is here, but that's about it.  The plot and characters have been changed almost unrecognizably.  In the  novel, Sir Roderick Glossip, the famous nerve specialist, hopes to marry the aunt of Bertie's friend Lord "Chuffy" Chuffnell, while Chuffy has fallen in love with one of Bertie's ex-fiances, Pauline Stoker, whose father Chuffy hopes to sell his falling-down manor.  Bertie, eager to please his old pal, plans to make Chuffy so jealous that he will propose to Pauline.  Things get out of hand, everyone displays their stupidity, and Jeeves is left to sort out the mess.

For the film, say goodbye to Chuffy, his aunt, Roderick Glossip, Pauline and her father.

From IMDb:  "Erudite manservant Jeeves hopes to keep his frivolous employer Bertie out of new harrowing adventures, but a damsel in distress, carrying half of some mysterious plans, intrudes on their London flat one rainy night.  Bertie follows her to the country hotel Mooring Manor, prepared to do slapstick battle with crooks posing as Scotland Yard men."  

Featuring David Niven as Bertie, Arthur Treacher as Jeeves, and Virginia Field as the mysterious woman.  Buried down in the cast is Willie Best as Drowsy, a hitchhiking saxophonist who helps them catch the crooks.  

Niven makes a good Bertie and Treacher made his bones playing Hollywood's idea of the perfect butler in the 1930s.  Treacher went on to lend his name to the fast food franchise Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips, beginning in 1969; it had 826 stores in the 1970s, but has dwindled down to just four stand-alone stores in northeastern Ohio today.  Sic transit gloria mundi.  Wodehouse, BTW, did not care for Treacher's performance"  "Awful. The supercilious ,manner of his is all wrong for Jeeves."   Complaining about the film adaptation, Wodehouse said, "They didn't use a word of my story, substituting another written by some studio hack."

That studio hack was actually two people, Joseph Hoffman (The Officer and the Lady, Against All Flags, Has Anybody Seen My Gal) and Stephen Gross (his only screenplay).  Directed  by Arthur Greville Collins (Paradise Isle, Seven Little Australians, Strong Is the Seed).  

Despite the butchery to the source material, Thank You, Jeeves! can be a pleasant and amusing way to spend your 57 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7yk3lSER9I&t=6s