I Dood It is a 1943 MGM musical

Musical film

The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...

-comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 film starring Red Skelton

Red Skelton

Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton was an American comedian who is best known as a top radio and television star from 1937 to 1971. Skelton's show business career began in his teens as a circus clown and went on to vaudeville, Broadway, films, radio, TV, night clubs and casinos, all while pursuing...

 and Eleanor Powell

Eleanor Powell

Eleanor Torrey Powell was an American film actress and dancer of the 1930s and 1940s, known for her exuberant solo tap dancing.-Early life:...

, and directed by Vincente Minnelli

Vincente Minnelli

Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director, famous for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. In addition to having directed some of the most famous and well-remembered musicals of his time, Minnelli made...

. The screenplay is by Fred Saidy

Fred Saidy

Fred Saidy was an American playwright and screenwriter.Born in Los Angeles, California, Saidy began his writing career in 1943 with the screenplay for the Red Skelton comedy I Dood It. The following year, he scripted both the Lucille Ball-Dick Powell feature film Meet the People and the book for...

 and Sig Herzig and the film features Richard Ainley

Richard Ainley

Richard Ainley was a stage and film actor, son of Henry Ainley and half-brother of Anthony Ainley.Although according to Allmovie his date of birth was 22 October 1910, The Internet Movie Database places it on 22 December...

, Patricia Dane

Patricia Dane

Patricia Dane was an American film actress of the 1940s.Born "Thelma Pearl Pippins" and sometimes known as Thelma Byrnes after her step father in Jacksonville, Florida, she began her career designing clothes for a New York City dress firm. She was signed to an MGM contract in 1941 and is...

, Lena Horne

Lena Horne

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...

 and Hazel Scott

Hazel Scott

Hazel Dorothy Scott was an internationally known, American jazz and classical pianist and singer.-Early years and education:...

. Jimmy Dorsey

Jimmy Dorsey

James "Jimmy" Dorsey was a prominent American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, trumpeter, composer, and big band leader. He was known as "JD"...

 and his Orchestra provide musical interludes.

Skelton plays an "average Joe" who is madly in love with Constance Shaw (Eleanor Powell

Eleanor Powell

Eleanor Torrey Powell was an American film actress and dancer of the 1930s and 1940s, known for her exuberant solo tap dancing.-Early life:...

), a big Broadway musical star. Much to his surprise, Constance agrees to marry him, thinking he's a rich mining tycoon, and much of the film deals with the consequences of this misunderstanding.

Powell's most notable performance in the film comes near the beginning when she executes a complex dance routine involving lariat

Lariat

Lariat can refer to:*A rope in the form of a lasso*Lariat chain, a science demonstration*A professional wrestling move, a variation of a clothesline*A genetic structure in Splicing *Double Lariat, a popular song sung by Luka Megurine...

s and cowboy

Cowboy

A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of...

s. Powell, in her introduction to the book Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance, recalled that she knocked herself unconscious while rehearsing a stunt for this sequence involving a rope and ultimately had to don a football helmet to protect herself. The final dance scene with Powell was lifted from an earlier movie, "Born To Dance", some 9 years previous. Many of the physical gags were lifted from the 1929 film Spite Marriage

Spite Marriage

Spite Marriage is a silent comedy film starring Buster Keaton and Dorothy Sebastian. Keaton and Edward Sedgwick co-directed. It is the second film Keaton made for MGM and his last silent film...

 by Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton

Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...

 who had an uncredited role in writing gags for some of Skelton's early films.

Skelton and Powell had previously worked together in 1942's Ship Ahoy

Ship Ahoy

Ship Ahoy is the title of a 1942 musical-comedy film produced by MGM, starring Eleanor Powell and Red Skelton.-Background:This was the first of two films in which Powell and Skelton co-starred...

. In that film, they appeared with Tommy Dorsey

Tommy Dorsey

Thomas Francis "Tommy" Dorsey, Jr. was an American jazz trombonist, trumpeter, composer, and bandleader of the Big Band era. He was known as "The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing", due to his smooth-toned trombone playing. He was the younger brother of bandleader Jimmy Dorsey...

, Jimmy's brother.

This was Powell's final starring role in an MGM film. After this, she would make a cameo appearance in Thousands Cheer

Thousands Cheer

Thousands Cheer is a 1943 American comedy musical film released by MGM. Produced at the height of the Second World War, the film was intended as a morale booster for American troops and their families.-Plot:The film is essentially a two-part program...

, play a lead role in the non-MGM film Sensations of 1945

Sensations of 1945

Sensations of 1945 is a 1944 American musical-comedy film which was released by United Artists.This film was an attempt to recapture the ensemble style of films such as Broadway Melody of 1936 by showcasing a number of top musical and comedy acts of the day, in a film linked together by a loose...

, and make another cameo in the 1950 MGM film, Duchess of Idaho

Duchess of Idaho

Duchess of Idaho is a musical romantic comedy produced in 1950 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard, it was the fourth film pairing Esther Williams and Van Johnson...

before retiring from the screen for good.

The rather ungrammatical title was from one of Red Skelton's radio catchphrases of the day. In 1942 Jack Owens, The Cruising Crooner, wrote a song for Skelton based on it: "I Dood It! (If I Do, I Get A Whippin')", but that song does not appear in this film.