What About Daddy? (1942)

Not one of my favourite Pete Smith “Specialties” but it is still a fun look at just how a man has to cope when his wife’s knitting announces that she is expecting a bairn. Once the abject panic has subsided, it’s mollycoddle time and as the book says, mum - sorry, mommy - has to be treated with kid gloves. Not too hot, not too cold, plenty of sleep, midnight cravings for kippers in a sandwich (??), rearrange the furniture - like your average family would have a baby grand in their home. Then it’s the big day, and the drive he’d have done a thousand times before becomes something more suitable for Monza or Hockenheim. Fortunately, a kindly motor cycle cop helps them on a last lap which eventually sees… These narrations don’t really stand the test of time so well nowadays. They come across as sexist and a little patronising, but taken in the context of a wartime America keen on some entertaining diversion from more serious matters elsewhere, this is quite an amiable ten minutes that exaggerates the haplessness of an expectant father, and of an opportunistic wife and it does raise the odd smile.