Come Up Smiling (also known as Ants in His Pants) is a 1939 Australian comedy film starring popular American stage comedian Will Mahoney and his wife Evie Hayes.

He runs a sideshow act with his daughter, Pat, and ex-Shakespearean actor, Horace Worthington Howard, which is struggling to make money.

One day Pat is invited to sing at a party held by Colonel Cameron and his daughter Eve, but her voice fails her.

The film was developed as a star vehicle for popular comedian Will Mahoney, an American vaudevillian who toured Australia successfully in 1938.

Ken G. Hall also hired Mahoney's regular co-stars, his wife Evie Hayes and manager, Bob Geraghty.

It is only the improved conditions of the Australian film industry, due to recent legislation, that has made it possible for us to enlarge our production budget.

[14] Hall later wrote that Freshman "seemed to lack the vital comedy sense we needed, but he was a good constructor in a general way of screenplay writing.

Ken G. Hall insists he cast Rafferty in Dad Rudd MP and used him afterwards in reshoots he did on Come Up Smiling (see below).

[28][29] According to Hall, the film was not an immediate success at the box office so he had it re-cut and re-released as Ants in His Pants, adding a new song to explain the title.

[30] Hall said in December, "It is hot an unusual procedure, as many American pictures change titles on release When the film was run through for executives, Mahoney's comedy musical number.

[33] The Sydney Morning Herald said " There is nothing in "Ants in His Pants" that a boy oftwelve could fail to appreciate.... Will Mahoney on the stage used to be colossal fun....

In fact it's a credit to the technical department of Cinesound— cutters, effectmen, and sound-men — rather than to any special b'illiance of its stage people.

"[36] The Bulletin said "Cinesound’s latest gift to the nation is not its best work by any means, chief fault being one that has hindered several earlier productions—disjointedness and a tendency to cram too much into the film.

There’s no reason why comedy, villainy, songandance and the thread of a plot shouldn’t be the components of a good filmplay, but they should be blended to-gether to run in perfect accord and carry the whole set-up with them.

In “Ants in His Pants” each ingredient seems to remain a separate part, each seems to butt in on the other and be played out to its utmost length, and, consequently, each seems a too-obvious artifice to pad the film out to a respectable running-time.