For Reel

Director: Lloyd Bacon

As with Going Wild, his previous comedy for First National Pictures, Sit Tight is yet another Joe E. Brown musical in which almost all of the musical numbers were cut before release due to audience exhaustion. The one significant exception makes one wonder what direction the rest of the film might have taken—in a fantasy sequence, Brown imagines Winnie Lightner dressed in a feather turban and shaking her rear. And yet if the cuts robbed audiences of a musical about professional wrestling, Sit Tight does provide the inspired casting of Brown and Lightner as co-stars—if Lightner is woefully underutilized, she is just the sort of talent to compliment Brown. Whereas Brown exceeds with mugging and reaction shots, Lightner’s great talents are as a female Lee Tracy—she’s a smack-talking motormouth, putting everyone around her in their place. Their scenes together are predictably enjoyable but frankly there are too few of them (one wishes the film scrapped a bland romantic subplot in favor of more of their interactions together). Despite her casting, Sit Tight is not particularly better or worse than the average Brown vehicle, including the reliably amusing action scene (this time making great use of Brown’s athleticism) and a few moderately enjoyable scenes in which the loudmouth gets put in his place.