The best Basil Rathbone’s comedy movies

A hapless carnival performer masquerades as the court jester as part of a plot against a usurper who has overthrown the rightful king of England.

After breaking up with her fiancé, a gym teacher returns to work at a women's college, but a legal loophole allows him to enroll as one of her students.

Three convicts escape from prison on Devil's Island just before Christmas and arrive at a nearby French colonial town. They go to the store of the Ducotels, the only store that gives supplies on credit. They initially intend to take advantage of them but have a change of heart after they find the family is in financial troubles.

Greedy heirs wait in a mansion for a rich cat lover to die, only to learn her cats come first.

Three stories adapted from the work of Edgar Allen Poe: 1) A man and his daughter are reunited, but the blame for the death of his wife hangs over them, unresolved. 2) A derelict challenges the local wine-tasting champion to a competition, but finds the man's attention to his wife worthy of more dramatic action. 3) A man dying and in great pain agrees to be hypnotized at the moment of death, with unexpected consequences.

An undertaker who hasn't had any 'customers' in a long time is forced to pay one year's back-rent. To get money he starts to kill people, which brings absurd results.

Italy 1757, Pippo Popolino, a lowly tailor, disguises himself as the great Casanova in order to romance the attractive widow Francesca. He little suspects what awaits him... Locked into the incongruous role by the desperation of the real Casanova's creditors, Pippo must journey to Venice on a delicate mission far beyond his capabilities.

A female escapee from a reform school joins a pickpocket academy in Paris.

Popular songwriter Oliver Courtney has been getting by for years using one ghost writer for his music and another for his lyrics. When both writers meet at an inn, they fall in love and then try to sell their songs under their own name. The problem is every song publisher thinks they're copying Courtney's style.

When upper-class Parisian Charles Dupont and his family hire Tina and Michel as their servants, they have no idea that the domestics are in fact Tatiana, the Grand Duchess Petrovna, and her husband, Mikail, Prince Ouratieff. Recent exiles from the Russian Revolution, Tatiana and Mikail befriend the Dupont family, keeping their true identities a secret -- until one night when Soviet official Gorotchenko arrives for dinner.

Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson are Broadway stars who return to Universal Studios to make another movie. The mere mention of Olsen and Johnson's names evacuates the studio and terrorizes the management and personnel. Undaunted, the comedians hire an assistant director and unknown talent, and set out to make their own movie.

A corpse has 24 hours to mastermind a good deed without leaving his crypt, to go "up there" and have his youth restored.

A famous British actress gets involved with two members of a reserved British noble family, whose plan to get rid of her backfires.

Country singers on their way to Nashville have car trouble, forcing them to stop at an old haunted mansion. Soon they realize that the house is not only haunted, but is also the headquarters of a ring of international spies after a top secret formula for rocket fuel.

Canary-voiced boy wonder Bobby Breen once more croons his way into our hearts in Make a Wish. While vacationing at a boys' camp, the rambunctious Breen befriends famed composer Basil Rathbone. Stuck for an inspiration for his latest operetta, Rathbone at last finds it when he meets Breen's gorgeous mother Marion Claire, a popular singer. Alas, her stiff-necked fiance Ralph Forbes refuses to allow her to return to the stage, whereupon Rathbone spirals into a depression -- and even worse, a profound case of writers' block. But Little-Mister-Fixit Breen manages to patch up everything just in time for Claire to debut in Rathbone's latest masterpiece. Offering much-needed comedy relief are Henry Armetta, Leon Errol and Donald Meek as a trio of parasitic would-be songwriters. Make a Wish was based on a story by Gertrude Berg, of "Molly Goldberg" fame.

Satan offers a weary ghost a chance for redemption through true love.

Dowdy Sylvia accepts her boss' marriage proposal, even though he only asked her to avoid marriage to another woman. As a wealthy wife, Sylvia changes from ugly duckling to uninhibited swan and even contemplates having an affair with a man she meets during a trip to Paris.

Cole Porter's version of the story of Aladdin--his only musical written especially for television.

There is a big charity function at the house of Mrs. Cheyney and a lot of society is present. With her rich husband, deceased, rich old Lord Elton and playboy Lord Arthur Dilling are both very interested in the mysterious Fay. Invited to the house of Mrs. Webley, Fay is again the center of attention for Arthur and Elton with her leaning towards stuffy old Elton. When Arthur sees Charles, Fay's Butler, lurking in the gardens, he remembers that Charles was a thief caught in Monte Carlo and he figures that Fay may be more interested in the pearls of Mrs. Webley, which she is. After Fay takes the pearls, but before she can toss them out the window, she is caught by Arthur who is very disappointed in how things are turning out.