It's in the Bag! is a 1945 comedy film

Comedy film

Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

 featuring Fred Allen

Fred Allen

Fred Allen was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it...

 in his only starring film role. The film was released by United Artists at a time when Allen was at the peak of his fame as one of the most popular radio comedians.

Characters and story

A flea circus

Flea circus

A flea circus refers to a circus sideshow attraction in which fleas are attached to miniature carts and other items, and encouraged to perform circus acts within a small housing...

 ringmaster

Ringmaster

The term ringmaster may refer to numerous things:*Ringmaster , the leader of a circus* Ringmaster , the manager of a horse show ring*Ringmaster , a film starring Jerry Springer and Jaime Pressly...

 (Allen), Fred Floogle, has strange encounters as he searches for his inheritance, hidden in the seat of one of five chairs.

The film is based on the uncredited comic novel The Twelve Chairs

The Twelve Chairs

The Twelve Chairs is a classic satirical novel by the Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov, released in 1928. Its main character Ostap Bender reappears in the book's sequel The Little Golden Calf.-Plot:...

(1928), later filmed by Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows...

 as The Twelve Chairs

The Twelve Chairs (1970 film)

The Twelve Chairs is a 1970 American slapstick comedy film directed by Mel Brooks, starring Frank Langella, Dom DeLuise and Ron Moody. The screenplay was written by Brooks. The film is loosely based on a Russian 1928 novel The Twelve Chairs by Ilf and Petrov...

(1970). The team of screenwriters included Jay Dratler

Jay Dratler

Jay Dratler was born in 1911 in New York City. After attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the late 1920s, he transferred to a college in France where he became fluent in French and German....

, Alma Reville

Alma Reville

Alma Reville, Lady Hitchcock was an English assistant director, screenwriter and editor. She was the second daughter of Edward and Lucy Reville....

 (wife of Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...

) and Morrie Ryskind

Morrie Ryskind

Morrie Ryskind was an American dramatist, lyricist and writer of theatrical productions and motion pictures, who became a conservative political activist later in life.-Biography:...

.

Binnie Barnes

Binnie Barnes

Gertrude Maud "Binnie" Barnes was an English-American actress. She was born in Islington to a Jewish father and an Italian mother and was brought up Jewish, although she converted to Catholicism later in life....

 plays Mrs. Floogle.

Cameo appearances include Jack Benny

Jack Benny

Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...

, William Bendix

William Bendix

William Bendix was an American film, radio, and television actor, best remembered in movies for the title role in the movie The Babe Ruth Story and for portraying clumsily earnest aircraft plant worker Chester A. Riley in radio and television's The Life of Riley...

, Don Ameche

Don Ameche

Don Ameche was an Academy Award winning American actor with a career spanning almost sixty years.-Personal life:...

, Rudy Vallee

Rudy Vallée

Rudy Vallée was an American singer, actor, bandleader, and entertainer.-Early life:Born Hubert Prior Vallée in Island Pond, Vermont, the son of Charles Alphonse and Catherine Lynch Vallée...

, Jerry Colonna, Robert Benchley

Robert Benchley

Robert Charles Benchley was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor...

, John Carradine

John Carradine

John Carradine was an American actor, best known for his roles in horror films and Westerns as well as Shakespearean theater. A member of Cecil B DeMille's stock company and later John Ford's company, he was one of the most prolific character actors in Hollywood history...

 and Sidney Toler

Sidney Toler

Sidney Hooper Toler was an American actor, playwright, and theatre director. Of primarily Scottish ancestry, he was the second non-Asian actor to play the role of Charlie Chan.-Early life and career:...

.