NO TIME FOR COMEDY (1940) B/W 93m dir: William Keighley

w/Rosalind Russell, James Stewart, Genevieve Tobin, Charles Ruggles, Allyn Joslyn, Clarence Kolb, Louise Beavers, J.M. Kerrigan, Lawrence Grossmith, Robert Greig, Frank Faylen, Bonnie Gaye Cowen

From Variety's contemporary review of the film: "S.N. Behrman's Broadway success starred Katharine Cornell. Rosalind Russell, in the same part, endows it with skill equal to that of her predecessor. Combined with a deftness for handling comedy and a class type of beauty which is plenty well demonstrated right here, Russell emerges as a player of unusual dignity and authority.

"Stewart is pretty much the same Mr. Smith who went to Washington [referring to Stewart's hit of the previous year, MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON]. Cast in a role which was obviously tailored to his measure, he is top-notch in the characterization of the boyish playwright from the sticks who arrives in Manhattan with a map after detouring by way of the Grand Canyon because there was an excursion train running there."

From the New York Times archival website (www.nytimes.com), this contemporary review of the film by Bosley Crowther:

"Let us be thankful this morning that the Warners don't take titles seriously, else we certainly wouldn't be sitting back, still giggling like a dolt, over the Brothers' No Time for Comedy, which popped into the Strand yesterday. Maybe the skies are darkening and the times out of joint, but the moment is always propitious for a charming jocularity of this sort. For here, we are pleased to report --- with a grateful nod to practically every one listed in the credits above --- is a lively and wistful comedy for which every one would do well to find the time. Last year, when a play of the same name, by S. N. Behrman, was showing on Broadway, the main question was how a successful actress could keep her playwriting husband from going serious and social-minded under the mettlesome influence of a rival dame. Now the chief problem is the same, but the narrative has been happily expanded, and the brittle and worldly wit of Mr. Behrman has been abbreviated in favor of more extensive and effervescent humorous action. Mr. Behrman was writing intellectual comedy; the brothers Epstein [Julius J. and Philip G.], who prepared the present script, are much more interested in romantic implications. And with James Stewart and Rosalind Russell playing the playwriter and his wife, the switch in emphasis is altogether to the good. For this permits the introduction of Mr. Stewart as a diffident young author from the West, arrived on Broadway to attend the production of his first play, and Miss Russell as the leading lady with whom he falls in love. This early (and new) part of the story is admittedly the best, for it scampers and frolics along with captivating humor, and it gives more poignant meaning to the later complications of the story. As usual, Mr. Stewart is the best thing in the show --- a completely ingratiating character who ranges from the charming clumsiness of a country playwright to the temperamental distraction of an established writer with complete and natural assurance. Miss Russell is excellent, too, in a cool, collected way, while Allyn Joslyn is a delightful compound of irony and venom as a theatrical director. Other members of the cast are generally right as rain, though we might have wished Genevieve Tobin's characterization of the inspiring rival a little less fluffy and obvious. But let's not start picking minor flaws (of which there are a few) in a comedy as enjoyable and altogether winning as this."