International House

International House.
1933 Paramount Pictures; owned and distributed to DVD by Universal.
Starring: Peggy Hopkins Joyce, W.C. Fields, Stuart Erwin, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Sari Maritza, Lumsden Hare, Bela Lugosi, Franklin Pangborn, Edmund Breese, Colonel Stoopnagle and Budd
Also featuring: Rudy Vallee, Cab Calloway, Baby Rose Marie, Sterling Holloway
Director: A. Edward Sutherland
Available as part of the first W.C. Fields Comedy Collection, on sale at Amazon.

A star studded sketch film built around Dr. Wong (Breese) inventing a dandy contraption called a "radioscope", which features elements of television, and it also can pick up and zoom in on anything or anybody around the world. Not only that, the radioscope also provides snapshots of popular stage and radio performers. Wong plans to reveal his invention to the rest of the guests at the International House Hotel in Wuhu, China, and many of those guests make no secret that they hope to buy, or steal, the radioscope for themselves.

After the unexpected arrival of Professor Henry R, Quail (Fields), who had intended to travel to Kansas City, another guest named Tommy Nash (Erwin) becomes ill, leading to the hotel being quarantined. Nash is having a streak of bad luck, since he gets sick every time he attempts to marry his fiancee Carol (Maritza). Quail stays the night after disrupting the entire hotel and radioscope demonstration as only W.C. Fields can, and he leaves the next morning with Peggy Hopkins Joyce, escaping her ex-husband Nicholas Petronovich (Lugosi), who is at the hotel hoping to profit by stealing the radioscope for himself.

Great performances from everyone involved, particularly Fields, Lugosi, Burns and Allen. Highly recommended comedy from the era before the Motion Picture Production Code was implemented, hence the inclusion of a performance of Cab Calloway and his orchestra performing a wonderful ditty entitled "Reefer Man". Rock!