Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Tyreece Hulme One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

tavm Just watched this early Bob Hope picture made before his established movie personality of a cowardly hero was ingrained in the minds of the public. Here, he's a rich man who believes he's dying due to...well, just watch the picture. Anyway, Martha Raye is also in this. Both of them are engaged to a someone neither wants to marry so they decide to wed each other. Oh, and Andy Devine is also here as someone who really likes Ms. Raye. Let me just stop here and just say that I found the whole thing quite funny and the fact Preston Sturges was one of the writers may have had to do something with it. There's also a game supporting cast involved. So on that note, I highly recommend Never Say Die.

classicsoncall Bob Hope and Martha Raye continually keep the viewer off balance with regard to their romantic intentions in "Never Say Die", even though they start out by getting married and then go about falling in something like love by the movie's finale. In between, the story ping pongs back and forth between scenes of frustrated would be spouses who don't get their way. Andy Devine takes a wrong turn off the last stagecoach and winds up here as Raye's good old boy from back home who try as he might, never quite seems to get things right between himself and his fiancée. Someone should have thought of slipping him a Mickey.I had to rewind and listen closely a couple of times for a line Hope slid past the censors. When gold digger Juno Marko (Gale Sondergaard) tries to trap John Kidley (Hope) with her matrimonial snare, she alludes to what might have been an indiscreet night of passion. Hope's response - "..., well that was the elevator you see, I just went and I got off, it'll happen." I probably got a kick the most from Kidley's butler Jeepers, played in great understated comic fashion by Ernest Cossart. His deadpan delivery was reminiscent of E.E. Clive's portrayal of Tenny in the Bulldog Drummond franchise.If all the hijinks wasn't enough, the story takes place at a health spa in the Swiss Alps named Bad Gaswasser. You just knew that Hope would get some mileage out of that. Martha Raye's at her frenetic best trying to say good by to her beau Henry Munch (Devine) as she scrambles to catch the honeymoon rendezvous with Kidley. If you pay close enough attention, you might even be able to keep it all straight without benefit of a cross on a muzzle.

Jake This early Bob Hope feature is very funny, and quite charming in its own particular way to boot. Of Hope's more frequent leading ladies in film, I have always found his teamings with Martha Raye to be the most satisfying, possibly because Bob and she seem to feed off each other in a way his other regulars (Paulette Goddard/Lucy/Dottie) didn't. Perhaps it has something to do with their vaudeville background. Anyway, both Bob, and particularly Martha, are far more subdued in their roles here than usual, and Never Say Die benefits enormously as a result. (Perhaps in the case of Hope this is due to the fact that this film comes so early in his screen career, before his on-screen persona of the egocentric and cowardly would-be ladies man was so firmly established). Their characters of John Kidley and Mickey Hawkins here somehow have a human dimension which is usually lacking in the usual Hope or Raye portrayal (no matter how enjoyable), and the warmth of the romantic scenes between the two in this picture is something which in my opinion is unique, never repeated by either of them in any of their other film work again.There are other aspects of Never Say Die which have always made it one of my favourite Hope pictures...Gale Sondergard as a man hungry widow, Monty Woolley in a small role as an ambitious medico, Andy Devine as Martha's intended, and especially Sig Rumann as Poppa Ingleborg in some hilarious scenes at the hotel. Also Preston Sturges involvement in the script does show. And has already been noted elsewhere, fans of Danny Kaye may be interested in viewing this picture if only to see an earlier (and one must admit less successful) incarnation of the "flagon with the dragon" routine from The Court Jester.

Petri Pelkonen Never Say Die is a funny old comedy, made in 1939.The movie takes place in Switzerland.In the movie the great Bob Hope plays this guy called John Kidley, who thinks he's dying, so he decides to get married before he's gone.And he marries a woman, whom he saves from a suicide.This woman is called Mickey Hawkins, played by Martha Raye.John and Mickey are supposed to marry some others, but they marry each other, without any love.They hardly know each other.But they've got nothing to lose.And then there is this Henry Munch(Andy Devine), who is very much in love with Mickey.But everything works out just fine.Mickey and John start to love each other, Henry finds his own sweetheart and John's not even dying.The movie has a great ending.Great movie from the 1930's.