Hellzapoppin’

Louie, Shemp Howard, the projectionist of the Universal Theatre, starts showing a musical pageant of chorus girls promenading down a grand staircase. The moment the dancers reach the top, the stairs collapse and morph into a slide that yanks them into a bleak, hellish realm where demons torment them. In the middle of this surreal chaos, Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson (playing themselves) arrive by taxi, sparking a string of pranks that gradually reveal they’re not in a backstage mishap at all but on a movie soundstage.

They are soon hounded by the film’s director, Richard Lane, who tries to rein in the mayhem and explain that their anarchic humor won’t translate to the big screen. Into this meta-setup steps the mousy screenwriter Harry Selby, Elisha Cook Jr., who sketches out his adaptation of the play. What unfolds is a tongue-in-cheek depiction of Selby’s proposed romance-driven plot: theater producer-composer Jeff Hunter, Robert Paige, hopes to marry wealthy ingénue Kitty Rand, Jane Frazee, but keeps his distance because her fiancé is his best friend, Woody Taylor, Lewis Howard.

The story then shifts to the Rand estate, where Olsen and Johnson (the two established disruptors) arrive with an arsenal of props for a lavish musical revue Jeff is mounting for Kitty. They are immediately dissatisfied with the idea of turning their revue into a conventional Hollywood production and proceed to derail the adaptation’s narrative and the budding romance in every clever, chaotic way. Chic’s sister Betty, Martha Raye, is a whirlwind of flirtation who pursues Pepi, Mischa Auer, the revue’s leading man and a dashing former Russian nobleman. After a series of scrapes and escapades—including frequent run-ins with the magician-detective Quimby, Hugh Herbert—and a swarm of technical glitches during the projection, Jeff’s revue finally lights up for a society audience.

Yet Olsen and Johnson never stop sabotaging the musical ensembles, casting an ever-present shadow over the proceedings. Despite their interference, the revue proves to be a hit, and Jeff Hunter wins Kitty Rand, delivering a satisfying, if chaotic, happy ending for the central romance.

As the frame finally shifts back to the studio, Selby completes his narration of the script. Olsen and Johnson take their leave of the set, while the frustrated director shoots the screenwriter—who, remarkably, is not injured and instead drinks a glass of water that causes him to leak like a sieve, adding one final comic twist to a film that constantly blurs the line between fiction and cinema.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 10:45