Drama queen single-handedly destroys the fun in a manor house jewelry heist.<br /><br />The single biggest problem with this film is Crawford. I don't think she had comedy in her. She plays the tragic heroine in every movie, and this one is no exception. She warps the movie from a very funny comedy into just another Joan Crawford tragedy, of sorts. And she assumes an air of breezy self-assurance that is so strong and so undiluted with any sense of self-deprecation or humor that it makes her annoying.<br /><br />Of course, there are other problems. It's hard to tell that the movie is supposed to be funny, really, until the "butler" takes a cigarette for himself and flops heavily onto the settee. Ah, of course! NOW I get it! It's all a scam! Until then, we've had small humorous asides from a few characters, but outside of that, we're not sure where the movie is going. Only with that heavy flop, a good half hour or more into the movie, do we understand that this is a comedy.<br /><br />By then, it's too late, even if the movie had begun behaving the way it's supposed to. But the maudlin melodrama continues, with Crawford empathizing with the scary-looking Duchess, and this once again drains all semblance of comedy out of the movie. The later scenes with the robbery gang, which should be the sparkling highlight of the movie, come off instead as irritating and quarrelsome. And the snooty upper-class guests do no better. The "parlor game" is abrupt, unfinished, talky, and doesn't deliver any comic payoff. All of the characters but one are dispatched OFFSCREEN to "pay their penalties"--as if the filmmakers WANTED to avoid any potential for genuine good fun! (And the one character who pays hers on screen is annoying, deliberately so.) Was this to avoid lightening Crawford's gloom-and-doom character? Nigel Bruce and Frank Morgan are of course both priceless in this movie, because you could ask either of them to read the list of ingredients on a cereal box and they would still exude their own striking personalities, and Powell has a few moments, but his character comes off as stock and flat, just like Crawford's.<br /><br />One imagines that this could have been a terrifically entertaining and funny movie...one imagines that some of the people involved, Powell, Morgan and Bruce, must have realized this...and one imagines that they must have been terribly disappointed to see the way the movie was handled.