I don’t believe Andrew L. Stone’s “Fun on a Weekend” (1947), premiering tonight on TCM at 8 p.m. EST, has shown up in the last half-century or so on TV, if at all. Though I am a big fan of Eddie Bracken and especially Priscilla Lane, my knowledge of this film is pretty much limited to an entry in Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide. He gives it two stars despite the general zippiness of Stone’s comedies from this era (Quentin Tarantino, no less, is a fan of “Hi Diddle Diddle”) and a cast that includes Tom Conway, Allen Jenkins, Arthur Treacher, Clarence Kolb and Fritz Feld. “Scatterbrained fluff as Bracken and Lane manuever their way from penniless fortune to love and riches, all in the course of a day,” Leonard writes. I’ll take it!
“Fun on a Weekend” was the penultimate big-screen appearance for Priscilla, who rose to stardom at Warner Bros. as the youngest and prettiest of the Lane sisters (Lola and Rosemary were the others) in “Four Daughters,” its two sequels and its near-remake “Daughters Courgeous” (all with the unrelated Gale Page as the fourth sibling after the Lanes’ actual sibling Leota, who appeared in some early talkies, was deemed unsuitable).
Priscilla is memorable as James Cagney’s unrequited singer love interest in the classic “The Roaring Twenties” (1939) and adorable as the lead in the little-known “Million Dollar Baby” from the same year, gifted with a fortune by May Robson much to the dismay of her Bolshevik composer boyfriend, played by … Ronald Reagan. Fortunately, Jeffrey Lynn is at hand.
Lane and Warner parted company after her delightful performance opposite Cary Grant in “Arsenic and Old Lace.” The latter was filmed by Frank Capra in late 1941, but was contractually held out of circulation until the play closed in 1944. By that time, Lane’s freelance career was flatlining despite a strong start in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Saboteur,” which she got because Hich’s first choice, Barbara Stanwyck, was unavailable.
The Jack Benny vehicle “The Meanest Man in the World” (1943) ran a mere 58 minues and she didn’t film again until “Fun on a Weekend,” a United Artists release that apparently never had a New York City playdate. (Bracken wasn’t much of a draw after he left Paramount).  Her last film, in 1948, was “Bodyguard” opposite Lawrence Tierney — co-written by Robert Altman! Priscilla, who had a Boston TV show in the ’50s, died in 1995. This rare still is from Simpson College in Iowa, which has a Lane Sisters collection.