Fred Allen is the manager of a frightfully large but unsuccessful troupe of singers and dancers touring the sticks and attempting to get back to New York, where they're just as unsuccessful but the breadlines are better. At one such backwater berg, they duck into a political rally to get out of the rain and discover a hapless political candidate driving voters away in droves with his boring speech, and Allen gets the brainstorm to go to work for the politician to drum up support for his campaign stops for governor. (Are you getting all this?) Hey, the work's steady, at least, and show leads, young lovers Dick Powell and Ann Dvorak don't seem to mind (Ann's dance partner, Patsy Kelly, does, a little, but you know how SHE is). Well, when the candidate gets drunk one night, Powell gives the speech, and he's so darn nice and sincere that the party dumps the sot off the ticket and hands the nomination to Powell, who only accepts it on the condition that he be allowed to sing as well as give speeches over the radio, thinking that'll make him a big enough star to marry Miss Dvorak, and yes, that is a silly plot. Amiable film, I thought It's in the Bag was Allen's only major role and I thought wrong. He's very good here and sources tell me he wrote much of his own dialog. The songs are forgettable in the film except for the ones done by The Yacht Club Boys, who are hilarious. Million-dollar Dialog: Small-town resident: 'This is the county seat!' Patsy Kelly: 'It certainly is!' Well, okay, that made ME laugh. Million-dollar Song Lyrics that Somehow Slipped By the Censors: Ann & Patsy: '♪♫♪♫We have a language that's all our own / I'm his Eskimo Pie and he's my ice cream cone♪♫♪♫' As Powell soars in the polling, his opponent hires Paul Whiteman and his band, so they're in the movie, too, music lovers. The plot, come to think of it, sort of foreshadows when the Penguin hired Paul Revere and the Raiders to perform at his rallies when he ran for Mayor of Gotham City, doesn't it? A Twentieth Century film written by Nunnally Johnson and directed by Roy Del Ruth. Available (in a fine DVD, actually) from Fox Cinema Archives. And believe it or not, the film was remade in the late 1940s with Phil Silvers as Fred Allen and Perry Como(!) as Dick Powell. I don't know who was Ann Dvorak or Patsy Kelly, though.