“Very fine” is a relative term. Henry Hathaway did nothing unexpected with his many films and occasionally turned out a passable genre film like ‘Kiss of Death’. The other HTWWW director, George Marshall, was a cheerful vulgarian best remembered for the rowdy and unchallenging Jimmy Stewart-Marlene Dietrich vehicle ‘Destry Rides Again’ and the amusingly tasteless “Murder, He Says”. That’s about it.
Oh, please, don’t be so snobbish. Anyone who has directed Laurel & Hardy, W.C. Fields, Bob Hope & Jerry Lewis is pretty damned good - as well as very successful.
And Murder, He Says is plenty funny despite being
oh-so-tasteless.