WHITE TIE AND TAILS. Universal Pictures, 1946. Dan Duryea, Ella Raines, William Bendix, Donald Curtis, Seymour S. Hinds. Screenplay by Bertram Millhauser. Story by Rufus King and Charles Beahan. Directed by Charles Barton. Currently streaming on YouTube (see below).

   Charles Dumont (Dan Duryea) is the perfect butler, a man who can mix the perfect martini, keep up with his mistress’s spectacles, advise his master on art purchases, and solve their children’s teenage problems all in the course of readying the family to leave on their vacation. The Latimers just can’t function without him.

   He even reminds them to give the staff paid holidays while they are gone.

   But Charles Dumont has an ulterior motive. You see Charles is planning a staycation, where he will enjoy the lifestyle of his employer and indulge in the life of a playboy with a little help from the chauffeur George (Frank Jenks).

   What could possibly go wrong?

   Well… for instance on his first night on the town, Charles could meet beautiful wealthy Louise Bradford (Ella Raines) and her father (Samuel S. Hinds), and while endeavoring to impress the beautiful Louise as something of a charming mystery man, he could discover her sister is involved with Nick Romano (Donald Curtis) who works for casino owner Ludie (William Bendix) and owes Ludie $100,000 dollars, and naturally Charles offers to write a check to cover the amount because Mr. Bradford will repay him the next morning and Ludie, a charming fellow impressed by Charles clothes and manner, will happily call Romano off and cut off the sister’s future credit.

   Again, what could possibly go wrong?

   Save Mr. Bradford is going to need time to sell some bonds and raise that $100 K in cash and Mr. Ludie is going to come calling at the Latimer mansion to check on Charles legitimacy and seeing the Latimer’s art collection, which Charles can’t help but show off as his own, Ludie is going to take a few paintings as collateral until he cashes Charles check.

   And from there on it gets complicated, as Charles, who gave up a promising art career because it was easier to be a butler and now is falling for Louise, and his house of cards is getting more and more precarious.

   This charming romantic comedy is a surprise for Duryea who is perfectly suited to the lead and romances the lovely well-cast Raines, ably abetted by Bendix as an urbane figure (almost as much of a stretch for Bendix as Duryea) who would like a little tutoring in clothes and art and style from Charles if not for the little matter of that $100 K.

   Jenks even gets a nice scene as he tries to win back the $100K at Ludie’s casino at the crap table.

   In the manner of romantic comedy, the complications pile on until it seems as if there is no way a happy ending can be eked out of the mess, and then, being romantic comedy it somehow is and charmingly so.

   It is also refreshing that Raines and Duryea hit it right off, and she is level-headed and smart and not the least the flighty screwball heiress.

   This is not a mystery or crime film, though several times it seems as if it might be. Maybe it’s just Duryea’s presence though, and the fact that half of the writing team for the original story is mystery writer Rufus King, creator of Philo Vance-like Reginald De Puyster, Lt. Valcour, Colin Starr, and Chief Bill Dugan.

   What it is, though, is an involving attractive and intelligent romantic comedy. As far as I know it is Duryea’s only lead in a romantic comedy (he is in several comedies including Howard Hawks’ Ball of Fire, but usually playing comic versions of Dan Duryea roles). It is quite possibly unique in this aspect, though I think you will agree after watching it that it should not have been.

   I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out of Duryea’s great villain and character parts, but it would have been nice if he got a few more chances like this to show other aspects of his talent.
   

   Speaking of The Old Days (wasn’t I?), back when I first got interested in Movies there were maybe a dozen books on the subject, mostly very shallow or abstrusely academic. A recent visit to the Library, though, reminded me how much times have changed. On fifty full shelves filled with books on movies I found detailed reference books, books devoted to single films, and a variety of carefully researched works on highly-specialized topics like science fiction serials, the “Road to” movies, Abbott Costello’s horror spoofs, and The Films of the Bowery Boys (Citadel, 1984) by David Hayes & Brent Walker.

   Now I don’t recommend the Bowery Boys to anyone; the humor is crude and forced at the best of times, and at their worst, the films are so shoddy as to defy their own existence. But I find them possessed of a raw energy and persistent vision that cannot be denied, and I confess I watch them every chance I get.

   The Boys started out in the New York production of Sidney Kingsley’s classic play Dead End, and when the property went to Hollywood in 1937 they went with it, where they were billed as the “Dead End Kids” in films like Angels with Dirty Faces until Warners lost interest, whereupon they took a step down to Universal as “the Little Tough Guys” for a series of “B”s and hung around for a couple of serials. In 1940 they osmosed into “the East Side Kids” at Monogram, and coalesced into the Bowery Boys in 1946, the form they remained in until the series demise ten years later.

   By this time, there were only two real members of the group: Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall, plus a changing roster of hangers-on, frequently abetted by Leo’s dad Bernard, as Louie Dumbrowski, owner of the minimalist soda shop where the boys hung out. In this universe the “Boys” – now quite middle-aged and looking every misspent minute of it – went through a series of situations frankly quite beyond their B-movie budgets, but impressive nonetheless, with romps through London, Paris, the Orient, Olde Englande, Africa ….

   They were also visited by every character actor with a few free days and some bills to pay. The roster will mean little to non-addicts, but those of us who once worshipped the grainy black-and-white images think fondly of Noah Beery, Erle Blore, Hillary Brooke, Iron Eyes Cody, Lloyd Corrigan, John Dehner, Douglas Dumbrille, Douglas Fowley, Steven Geray, Billy Gilbert, Mary Gordon (from the Sherlock Holmes movies) Raymond Hatton, Percy Helton, Warren Hymer, Ian Keith (once considered for Dracula) Bela Lugosi (who got the part and ended up here anyway), Fuzzy Knight, Martin Kosleck, Sheldon Leonard, Keye Luke from the Chan films, J. Farrell McDonald, Mike (Murder My Sweet) Mazurki, Alan Napier, Sig Rumann, Dan Seymour, Lionel Stander Craig Stevens, Glen Strange, Woody Strode, Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer, Minerva Urecal, Lee Van Cleef and Clint Walker True, we remember them from much better films, but here they are nonetheless, plugging along in cinematic obscurity.

   The authors somehow manage to document all this, watch the films and do research on a series to which respectable critics wouldn’t give the time of day. And, as with the Boys themselves, one must admire their perseverance.

   Incidentally, one of the Bowery Boys movies actually received an Academy Award nomination, which it turns out is not exactly the same as being nominated for an Oscar, which is the basis of an amusing story which unfortunately cannot be related here.

THE FATAL GLASS OF BEER. Paramount, 1933. With W.C. Fields, Rosemary Theby, George Chandler and Gordon Douglas. Produced by Mack Sennett. Written by W.C. Fields. Directed by Clyde Bruckman.

NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK.  Universal, 1941. With W.C. Fields, Gloria Jean, Leon Errol, Margaret Dumont, Franklin Pangborn, Anne Nagel (as “Madame Gorgeous”) Minerva Urecal, Carlotta Monti, and Emil Van Horn (as “Gargo the Gorilla”) Written by John T. Neville, Prescott Chaplin, and “Otis Criblecoblis.” Directed by Edward Cline.

   Genius strikes twice, near the beginning and shortly before the end, of W C Fields’ career in talking pictures.

   Fields was a confirmed star in silent movies, but studio heads must have been nervous about his fitness for sound, because early on, Paramount featured him mostly in their “All Star” features, co-billed with players like Burns & Allen, Charlie Ruggles, and even Bela Lugosi and Gary Cooper!

   But at the same time, Fields was working on ultra-low-budget shorts for Mack Sennett, mostly recreations of his old Vaudeville routines, and among these mini-films, Fatal Glass of Beer calls out to this discerning critic, with its stunning location photography, stirring music, heart-wrenching drama, breath-taking special effects, and thematic resonance, contrasting man’s struggle with the elements and his struggle against sin, for a deeply-felt statement about the savagery of both.

   We-ell, that may be stretching things just a bit.

   The location photography is actually grainy old stock footage with mis-matched sound effects. The music is written & performed by Fields himself (“Mind if I play with my mittens on?”) and the special effects are only astonishing in their audacious ersatzery, so obviously fake as to evoke gasps of disbelief in the audience.

   In fact, what we have here is Fields testing the notion of what it is to be a movie. He deliberately calls attention to the language of film-making, just to craft cinematic puns with it, and the drama creaks with age, played with stony seriousness by a cast of seasoned pros acting like amateurs. The result is a film as anarchistic — and as funny — as Duck Soup or Airplane, hacked out by a genius fluid in the language of Cinema.

   Eight years later we find W.C. Fields physically deteriorating in his last solo-starring feature film, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, and once again we find him toying with the question, What does it mean to be a Movie? Artists and critics have asked What is a Painting? What is a Novel? A Statue? A Bird? A Plane? A Superman? (Well, only Shaw, Siegel & Schuster asked that last one, and really no critic worth his by-line bothers with birds & planes anymore.)

   But I digress. With Never/Break, Fields threw together every element of a 1940s comedy, then tore them all apart. Once again, we get stunning locations — glass-painted courtesy of Universal Studio’s Jack Otterson (of The Killers and Son of Frankenstein).   We get musical production numbers, some quite elaborate, and there’s even drama of sorts, but don’t try to summarize the plot, because there isn’t any, just a rickety framework about Fields trying to sell a story to his producer, a framework that quickly sinks into the story itself.

   Ah yes. Where Fatal/Beer marches through melodrama, Never/Break   tiptoes through the tulips of timeworn cliché, with predictable romantic rivalries, vapid young lovers, doting dotards and twinkle-eyed teenagers. And Margaret Dumont. And a Gorilla. And a wild chase for a finale that has nothing to do with the rest of the story. Like I said: every element of B-movie comedy broken down and packaged up like a celluloid Xanadu.

   It’s seldom that a career is bookended so neatly. In fact, the closest I can recall is John Wayne going out with The Shootist.  And let’s face it, Fatal Glass… wasn’t Fields’ first film, nor was Never Give his last. But they’re close enough — and memorable enough — to work for me.

DAMON RUNYON “The Lemon Drop Kid.” Short story. First appearance: Collier’s, 03 February 1934.

   Damon Runyon (1880-1946) used to be a household name. He was famous for two reasons: his reportage, often covering some of the most sensational stories of the first half of the 20th century, and his fiction, featuring thinly disguised real people in occasionally outlandish situations, written in a narrative style uniquely his own.

   Nowadays Runyon’s reputation rests almost entirely in his “Broadway stories,” such as Guys and Dolls. People who knew Runyon well claimed his hardboiled exterior concealed a cultured and sensitive interior. In any case, he was friends with the infamous (Al Capone was a neighbor) as well as the famous (in accordance with Runyon’s wishes, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker flew low over Broadway and scattered his ashes over the district).

   One of Runyon’s “ironic mini-comedies” involves a racetrack tout named The Lemon Drop Kid. A tout, for the uninitiated, is a hustler who pretends he has inside information on an upcoming race (when, in fact, he has none), and who by getting some sucker to get in on the betting is able to clear a few “bob” for himself, the sucker usually being happy enough to cut the tout in on the winnings  —  but being very unhappy when the tip doesn’t pay off as advertised.

   This is called “telling the tale,” and The Lemon Drop Kid is normally very good at it.

   But on this particular occasion, The Kid accidentally misdirects his mark, and through a major misunderstanding takes it on the lam to escape what he mistakenly assumes will be retributive justice in the form of The Kid’s tender flesh.

   And so he literally runs away from the racetrack, with his mark in hot pursuit.

   Eventually, The Kid will find love for the first time in his life, but the experience will prove bittersweet . . . .

   Runyon’s story has been filmed twice, once by Paramount in 1934 with Lee Tracy, Helen Mack, and William Frawley (remember the growly landlord in I Love Lucy?); and a second time by Paramount in 1951 with Bob Hope, Marilyn Maxwell, Lloyd Nolan, Fred Clark, and William Frawley again.

   The 1934 version, we are told, adheres more closely to the original story. Those who have seen it say it starts out a comedy and ends up on a more serious note, very much like Runyon’s tale. The claim has been made that Paramount suppressed this film in favor of the remake.

   The 1951 edition takes the idea of The Kid misinforming someone about a bet and runs with it; the whole thing is played for as many laughs as possible (e.g., The Kid initiating a scam on little old ladies, Bob Hope in drag; you get the idea).

   Hope’s film also introduced a song that became an instant Christmastime standard, “Silver Bells.”

   To give you an idea of how much the 1951 movie differed from Runyon’s story, get a load of this list of characters’ names that never appeared in the original tale: Sidney Melbourne, ‘Brainy’ Baxter, Oxford Charley, Nellie Thursday, Moose Moran, Straight Flush, Gloomy Willie, Sam the Surgeon, Little Louie, Singing Solly, The Bird Lady, and Goomba. “Sidney Melbourne” was the moniker they gave The Kid and “‘Brainy’ Baxter” was gorgeous Marilyn Maxwell.

THE FULLER BRUSH MAN. Columbia Pictures, 1948. 93 minutes. Red Skelton, Janet Blair, Don McGuire, Adele Jergens, Donald Curtis, Arthur Space, Hillary Brooke, Ross Ford, Trudy Marshall, Nicholas Joy, Selmer Jackson, Jimmy Hunt (the Mean Widdle Kid). Based on The Saturday Evening Post short story “Appointment with Fear” by Roy Huggins (28 September 1946) .

   Red, recently fired from the sanitation department, tries his hand at door-to-door salesmanship, without much success. But there is some pain — e. g., the Mean Widdle Kid (one of Skelton’s characters), who gives him a horrible time (ironic, since Red played the Kid on radio). And not only pain — Red manages to get himself designated as the prime suspect in a murder, an impossible crime in which the deadly weapon mysteriously disappears (actually it never appears in the first place — perplexing, huh?).

   Before he can finally clear himself, Red and Janet Blair almost get rubbed out in a war surplus warehouse filled with explosives. Congratulations are due the stunt people, who definitely earned their paychecks on this picture.

   At one point Red refers to himself as “Philo Jones,” a still-meaningful reference to society sleuth Philo Vance.

   Oddly enough, this Red Skelton vehicle got its start as a hard-boiled private eye story in The Saturday Evening Post, but by the time the screenwriters (principally Frank Tashlin) got through with it there was no resemblance to the source material.

   For you trivia hounds, the original story featured P. I. Stu(art) Bailey, played on TV a decade later by Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., in the 77 Sunset Strip series. At almost the same time as The Fuller Brush Man was being filmed, a more serious movie featuring the Stu Bailey character (I Love Trouble with Franchot Tone in the lead) was also being lensed; it even had a few actors from the Skelton film (Janet Blair, Adele Jergens, Donald Curtis). Coincidence? We don’t think so.

         ===============

Related 2013 Mystery*File article about Roy Huggins:

      https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=20980

GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES. 20th Century Fox, 1953. Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Coburn, Elliott Reid, Tommy Noonan, George Winslow. Based on the musical comedy by Joseph Fields and Anita Loos. Director: Howard Hawks. Currently streaming online here.

   Especially if the blonde is Marilyn Monroe. Jane Russell is the brunette of the pair, showgirls with two tally opposed ways of  looking for a husband. Lorelei Lee is a golddigger from the word go, while her friend is looking merely for a man.

   There is not much to the story. Subtract the singing and dancing, and you’d have an hour or less of plot, which nobody probably pays any attention to anyway. Marilyn steals the show as the really not-so-dumb blonde. She has all the moves in the book.

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN. Universal Pictures, 1940. Virginia Bruce,John Barrymore, John Howard, Charlie Ruggles, Oscar Homolka. Directed by A. Edward Sutherland.

   More a low-key screwball comedy than a horror feature, The Invisible Woman is a genial, albeit rather forgettable affair. Released in 1940, seven years after James Whale’s The Invisible Man, the film has a light tone that makes it breezy fun, but not much more than that. Based on a story co-written by Kurt Siodmak (The Wolf Man) and directed by A. Edward Sutherland, the movie does what it is supposed to; namely, provide an hour plus of escapist entertainment.

   When oddball Professor Gibbs (John Barrymore) puts an advertisement in the paper for someone wanting to become invisible, he gets more than he bargained for when working girl Kitty Carroll (Virginia Bruce) shows up. Sassy and strong-willed, she’s determined to use her newfound ability to torment her sexist and demanding boss. While the invisible Carroll gets caught up in a love-hate relationship with playboy millionaire Richard Russell (John Howard), the zany professor is targeted by a gangster (Oscar Homolka) who wants the invisibility machine so he can safely return from his Mexican exile and visit the home country.

   The special effects, by today’s standards, are really nothing special. Truth be told, even for a 1940 feature, there’s nothing particularly impressive doing on in this realm. Director James Whale certainly did it all better years before in the original entry into the Invisible Man series.

   Still, there are some laughs to be had in this comedy. Did I mention Charles Ruggles plays a bumbling butler, devoted – at least financially – to Russell? I guess I would see this one again with a crowd, should the opportunity arise. But to watch it again on VHS? Probably not.

TWO TICKETS TO BROADWAY. RKO Radio Pictures, 1951. Tony Martin, Janet Leigh, Gloria De Haven, Ann Miller, Bob Crosby. Barbara Lawrence. Screenwriters: Sid Silvers & Hal Kanter, based on a story by Sammy Cahn. Director: James V. Kern.

   A young girl from Pelican Falls is given a rousing send-off by her home town she she goes off to fame on Broadway. Of course it doesn’t work out that way, not at first, but I wasn’t worried. I just knew that she and her friends would end up on [Bob] Crosby’s TV show.

   Lots of singing and dancing and variety acts, much like the old Ed Sullivan program when I was a kid. I found [back then] I could do without the variety acts, and I’ve just learned I still can. Today, though, I can use the old-fashioned fast-forward button on the VCR.

TWO WAY STRETCH British Lion Films, UK, 1960. Peter Sellers, David Lodge, Bernard Cribbins, Wilfrid Hyde White, Maurice Denham, Lionel Jeffries, Irene Handl, Liz Fraser. Director: Robert Day.

   I don’t often review comedies on this blog – though I do love ’em – but I’m making an exception for this as it is both old and involves a crime. It’s basically Porridge fifteen years earlier, with Peter Sellers as crafty, cockney career criminal (and guest of Her Majesty’s) ‘Dodger’ Lane. He and his cell-mates ‘Jelly’ Knight (David Lodge) and Lenny the Dip (Bernard Cribbins) treat the prison like a hotel, with a newspaper and fry-up every morning.

   The staff, meanwhile, are gullible and good-natured, with the governor (Maurice Denham) more interested in growing prize-winning vegetable marrows than keeping his convicts under control. Unsurprisingly, with such an easy life, Dodger and co have no wish to escape.

   This, however, is just what their old conspirator ‘Soapy’ Stevens (Wilfred Hyde-White) asks them to do. Disguised as a gentlemanly prison chaplain, he recognises that the trio’s imprisonment affords them the perfect alibi and enlists their help in a diamond heist. All they have to do is break out of prison, carry out the theft and break back in again.

   With the prison’s security almost non-existent, the plan is bound to succeed. However, a problem arrives in the shape of Dodger’s old nemesis, the irascible and sadistic prison warder ‘Sour’ Crout (Lionel Jeffries). With this guy around, there’s no way our trio can figure out a way to escape … surely?

   Caper comedies were popular at this time with The Big Job (1965), Too Many Crooks (1959) and Make Mine Mink (1960) showing that we Brits may be rubbish criminals but do make pretty good comedies. This was one of the most popular British films on the year of release, and it’s easy to see why. Schoolboys, in particular, must have loved the silly fun found here, and Jeffries makes for a terrific pantomime villain as the gestapo-like Crout, screaming his lines (“Silence when you’re talking to me!”) and sadistically determined to make every inmate suffer. There’s excellent support too from Liz Fraser and Irene Handl, the latter urging her son Lenny to escape jail like everyone else in their family.

   The break-out attempts in the middle of the film tip the hat to both The Wooden Horse (1950) and Danger Within (1959), spoofing another popular genre of the time, though both are episodic and unsurprisingly focus more on comedy than logistical analysis. The eventual theft of the diamonds from an army vehicle is a little underwhelming, however, though Thorley Walters shows how he could have played Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army (a role in which he was considered).

   This was probably the most casual performance Sellers ever gave, lacking as it does the multi-character revue of The Mouse That Roared (1959), Dr Strangelove (1964) and Soft Beds, Hard Battles (1974) or the intensity of I’m Alright, Jack (1959) and Being There (1979). It is also one of his most charming and accessible films, proving that not only Ealing could do Ealing.

   Fans should also check out The Wrong Arm of the Law (1962) (another Sellers caper and something of a spiritual successor to this), POW spoof Very Important Person (1961) and, more recently, the starry but sadly neglected prison comedy Lucky Break (2001).

Rating: ****

MY LEARNED FRIEND. Ealing, 1943. Will Hay, Claude Hulbert, Mervyn Johns, and Ernest Thesiger. Written by Angus MacPhail & John Dighton. Directed by Basil Dearden & Will Hay. Currently streaming on Plex.

   Will Hay — for reasons that escape me — was an enduring star of British stage, screen and airwaves. His observations seem obvious to me, his delivery deliberate, and his timing tortuous. Still, you can’t argue with Success (Or rather, you can, but It won’t listen,) he made a score of well-received films, and I actually enjoyed this one.

   Hay stars as Will Fitch, a former barrister brought up on charges of fraud, who easily gets himself acquitted with a flurry of wheezy old jokes, then invites the flummoxed Crown Prosecutor, fittingly named Claude Babbington, back to his digs for a drink.

   But there they are confronted by a recently released felon gone mad (a delightfully miscast Mervyn Johns, whom you may remember as Bob Cratchit to Alastair Sim’s Scrooge.) who has sworn to kill everyone who had a hand in sending him up, and just wants to give Hay a heads-up you know, because he’s last on the list.

   Duly alarmed, Fitch and Babbington set about trying to thwart the madman by getting to his prospective victims first, following clues he has thoughtfully provided them. All they manage, though, is to arrive late or at the wrong places and get themselves suspected and ultimately hunted by Scotland Yard.

   It’s a tenuous concept for a comedy, but it gets more than its share of laughs, mostly because Babbington, Fitch’s partner in not-solving crimes is played by veteran comic actor Claude Hulbert.

   Hulbert specialized in playing the Silly Ass, and even essayed a turn as Algy Longworth in Bulldog Jack (aka: Alias Bulldog Drummond). Everyone involved had the wisdom to give him free rein here, and he’s simply and completely hilarious, even when the jokes are not. Indeed, he gets a tour de force dance number that he handles with amazing gracefulness (sorry) and split-second timing.

   Friend ultimately devolves into a farcical set-to inside an explosive-laden Big Ben, but by that time I had surrendered to Hulbert’s charm and found myself enjoying this nonsense in spite of myself. You might, too.