PARDON MY SARONG, freewheeling insanity from Abbott & Costello from 1942. Directed (or managed) by Erle C. Kenton, this very funny vehicle was one of a quartet the wildly popular patter & pratfall duo slammed out in ’42, joining Ride ’em Cowboy, Rio Rita and Who Done It? to convulse kids and lift adult spirits in that touch & go year. All four were hits, the $400,000 Pardon My Sarong at #20, rolling in $7,100,000. A&C fans will love it. *

Chicago city bus drivers ‘Algy Shaw’ (Bud Abbott) and ‘Wellington Pflug’ (Lou Costello) ‘steal’ their own rig when rented by a rich playboy bound for Los Angeles and a yacht race to Hawaii. The fractious clods evade the cops, survive wrecks and a typhoon,ending up on a remote volcanic island where the natives think Wellington is a hero (of course they do) and bound to marry ‘Princess Luana’ (Nan Wynn). But there’s suave swine ‘Dr. Varnoff’ (Lionel Atwill) to deal with: he’s after jewels, and—does any of it matter?

Not from the start: it’s merely a daffy framework with which to hang mile-a-minute verbal and physical gags on, and it’s one of those slaphappy instances where throwing everything at the kitchen sink works about 90% of the time.

The script was whipped up by True Boardman (Arabian Nights), Nat Perrin (Duck Soup, Hellzapoppin‘) and John Grant (twenty-nine A&C outings). Highlights include an astounding dance number from the trio Tip Tap & Toe that could give The Nicholas Brothers a run for the money; a great round-robin between Bud, Lou and detective William Demarest with the guys impersonating a French magician; a faux-‘Polynesian’ hula number; songs from The Ink Spots; and a wildly silly (and fairly risque) hubba hubba ‘natives beseech-the-volcano’ jaw-dropper called ‘Vingo Jingo’.

With Robert Paige, Virginia Bruce, Leif Erickson (you’ve never seen him like this) Sig Arno, Samuel S. Hinds, Eddie Acuff, George Chandler, Irving Bacon, Charles Lane, Herb Vigran. 84 minutes.

* Laughing in the face of death—Pardon My Sarong was released on August 7, 1942, the same day U.S. Marines landed on the island of Guadalcanal.

** Sad footnote: Comely big band vocalist Nan Wynn, nicknamed “The molten mama with the lava larynx” was 26 at the time she adorned this lark as island maiden ‘Luana’. Her singing career cut short some years later when she developed facial paralysis after surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. Though she regained her voice and movement, she eventually succumbed to cancer in 1971 at the age of 55.

Nan Wynn, 1915-1971