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For me Grant is the film. The more frantic he becomes the funnier it gets.
And I always had a soft spot for Priscilla Lane (Her general demeanor made me accept that she could fall for that dullard Robert Cummings in SABOTEUR (42)).
But the entire film gets stellar support from it's supporting cast -- especially when Peter Lorre appears with Karloff....I mean Massey.

Richard M Roberts wrote: Allan Jenkins and Frank McHugh were always busy, not only in films and television, but also doing stage work (which is usually all-but-invisible to your average film historian, especially if it was non-Broadway work. No one has yet put together anything resembling a decent database of West-Coast Theater or National Touring Company productions).

Actually, Herbert Goldman (Jolson/Brice/Cantor book bios) *is* doing a detailed study of national tours. I don't know where he is in the process, or if the deliverable will be in the form of a book or a web-database, but it'll be something.

In addition to stage and TV, there's also the nightclub circuit, where a lot of vaudevillians spent the 30s, 40s and even 50s. Now THAT's a branch of the business that has hardly been looked at!

So yes, in the day, if you weren't dead, you worked. Maybe not in film, maybe not with the frequency many people did in the 20s and 30s, but folks found a way to earn a paycheck.