The Affairs of Annabel is a 1938 comedy starring Lucille Ball and Jack Oakie. Oakie plays Lannie Morgan, Wonder Pictures publicity man working with film star Annabel Allison (Ball).

Plot

Annabel and Lannie are released from prison to find that no publicity at all has been generated from their stunt. Allison has Lannie fired, but when he brings an actress who he claims is his mother to Annabel to explain her desperate need for surgery, Allison has Lannie rehired, and he continues with his work.

To generate publicity for Annabel's (fictional) new film The Maid and the Man, Lannie arranges to have her work as "Mary", a maid for the Fletchers, their son Robert, and inventor "Major". While Robert becomes infatuated with Annabel, she is expected to cook and clean for the family, so she calls Lannie to help. Meanwhile, the investors visiting about one of Major's inventions, a rubber ring placed around a plate so that it will bounce rather than break when dropped, appear in the morning newspaper as robbers. They are in fact waiting for their publicity to die down so that they may make a getaway.

Back at Wonder Pictures, The Maid and the Man has been scrapped, but when Lannie calls Annabel to inform her of this, she answers that she can't leave. Though confused, when he finds Annabel's police mug shot in the paper along with the robbers, he forms a plan to outfit one hundred extras as policemen. As they march towards the house firing blanks almost at random, the robbers return fire, with real bullets, and the extras make a desperate escape from the scene.

Lannie sneaks into the house alone, but is heard when he knocks a vase. One of the robbers sends Major through the door, where Lannie is waiting to hit Annabel's captor with a plate. When Major is knocked out, the robber runs in and captures Lannie, as well. Major is more impressed by the fact that his invention has worked.

When the real policemen arrive, the robbers try to make a break for it, using Lannie (who looks about to faint) and Allison as shields. The police are about to take a shot when they realize that it's Allison Annabel they've got, and that the risk is too high. Instead, Annabel uses her martial arts training to throw one of the robbers to the ground, while Lannie bites the other. While Lannie begins talking up Allison's efforts, she falls to the ground, having fainted.

Annabel returns to Wonder Pictures and is disappointed to find that The Maid and the Man has been replaced by The Diamond Smuggler, in which she is instead to play the lead. When Annabel opens a gift Lannie had arranged for her to receive, she is apprehended for the smuggling of the precious jewels. Lannie watches on from the front of the new billboard for The Diamond Smuggler.

External link

• The Affairs of Annabel at the Internet Movie Database