The Merry Monahans

Talented vaudeville family the Monahans have one very big problem in the form of patriarch Pete (Jack Oakie) : His heavy alcoholism has gotten the performing clan blacklisted from nearly every significant venue. With little choice but to break away from Pete, his children, Jimmy (Donald OConnor) and Patsy (Peggy Ryan), devise their own act and take it on the road. The troupe enjoys some success, which motivates Pete to sober up. Hearing of their fathers turnaround, they make plans to reunite.

The Merry Monahans is a 1944, American, black-and-white film starring Donald OConnor, Peggy Ryan, and Jack Oakie.

The story is of a vaudeville family trying to make money through hard times. The film features the great song and dance duet with OConnor and Ryan, "I Hate To Lose You". Film composer Hans J. Salter was nominated for an Academy Award for his score.

The Merry Monahans is one of the higher-budgeted Universal musicals of the 1940s, even though the storyline is strictly grade-B material. During the first two decades of the 20th century the film concerns a family vaudeville troupe headed by patriarch Pete Monahan (Jack Oakie). Because of his love affair with the bottle, Pete manages to get himself and his family blacklisted from every major vaude house in the country. Though Pete's kids Jimmy (Donald O'Connor) and Patsy (Peggy Ryan) love their dad, they're forced to break away from the act and go off on their own to survive. Eventually, the whole gang is reunited in a shamelessly lachrymose musical finale. Producer-scripters Michael Fessier and Ernest Pagano, whose other works include such offbeat comedies as San Diego I Love You, Frontier Gal and That's the Spirit, manage to keep the proceedings relatively cliché-free, though it's an uphill climb.