Penny Wisdom is a 1937 short film (ten minutes) directed by David Miller.
It's a "Pete Smith Specialty", one of some 150 or so short films produced by Pete Smith for MGM during the studio era. A Mr. Matthew Smudge calls home and tells his wife Chloe that he's bringing a couple of acquaintances over for dinner. Unfortunately for Chloe, the Smudges' cook quit earlier that very day. Chloe tries to cook a dinner for her husband and his guests, but she utterly botches it, and makes an unholy mess in the kitchen at that. Enter the narrator, Pete Smith, who calls in master cook Prudence Penny. With a tight deadline before Matthew and the guests arrive, Prudence helps Chloe prepare a delicious meal.
A Recycled Script version of an earlier Pete Smith short called Menu.
Tropes:
- Added Alliterative Appeal: Making the sound of a K with different letters. "She's now discovered her culinary queen has quit."
- Animal Reaction Shot: Pete Smith the narrator tells Mr. Smudge that Chloe cooked the dinner and says "You don't know what a cook she is." Then the last shot cuts to the dog, whose ears pop up comically when Smith says "But he does."
- Chekhov's Gag: As Chloe bumbles and flails around the kitchen, she dumps a load of flour onto her dog. She sticks the dog in the sink to wash off...only to go back and find that the dog is trapped in the sink, the flour and water having made sticky dough.
- Cooking Show: Among the tips given in this short are: use steel wool to peel carrots, boil an orange to get more juice out, add peanut butter to soup if you burn it to get rid of the burn taste, boil carrots and potatoes before you bake them to save time, hold a tomato over heat to get the skin off, and use lemon juice to revive a wilted head of lettuce.
- Credits Gag: Prudence Penny is credited as "Herself". The thing is, though, there was no Prudence Penny. "Prudence Penny" was the pseudonym given to the cooking writers at various newspapers in the Hearst newspaper chain. It seems to be unknown who the woman playing Prudence Penny actually is.
- Extremely Short Timespan: A couple of hours as a housewife who is an incompetent cook gets some emergency help from a newspaper columnist and expert chef.
- Interactive Narrator: Pete Smith narrates the misadventures of the hapless Chloe in the kitchen until, out of patience, he says "Where's your phone?" After Chloe points to the phone, Pete Smith's hand is seen dialing. Then Prudence Penny shows up to help Chloe.
- Lethal Chef: Chloe's incompetence in the kitchen forces an emergency call to Prudence Penny.
- Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: Mr. Smudge starts sponging his brow with a handkerchief when Pete Smith the Interactive Narrator tells him that the cook quit.
- Shout-Out: When bumbling Chloe spills a can of flour all over the dog, Pete Smith says "Gosh, it ain't a fit night out for man or beast." This is a Shout-Out to W. C. Fields short film The Fatal Glass of Beer, and specifically a Running Gag in that film where Fields looks out of his cabin at a blizzard, says that exact phrase, and gets hit with a snowball in the face.
- Take This Job and Shove It: Although we only see the aftermath. Chloe goes into a kitchen and finds a note from the cook, saying she has been "picked on" too much and so is quitting. This is why Chloe goes on her culinary misadventure in the first place.
