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Between Will Rogers and Bob Newhart, Henry Morgan out of radio and into cinema. "I don't know. I like the movies. I go all the time. But still, I always feel like something's missing..." Indiana after the Great War, a cozy spot but not for the wife (Virginia Grey) longing for metropolitan thrills, "your idea of a good time is taking off your shoes!" Off to New York, an inheritance dwindling in the search for a suitor for the sister-in-law (Dona Drake). Conventions crowd hotels, subtitles are needed for cabbies and change dispensers for tips, Broadway's lights are mentioned but the camera remains ankle-level on a dirty sidewalk. "They say you have to pay for experience and we certainly paid for ours." Richard Fleischer plays with form to complement the humorist's low-key sarcasm, freeze-frames and slow-motion and silent-movie irises punctuate the tour, cf. Stone's Hi Diddle Diddle. The Wall Street skunk (Jerome Cowan) experiences the Midwestern wallop, the moneyed collector (Hugh Herbert) counts shrunken pygmy heads among his prized possessions. The racetrack dandy in the thirty-gallon stetson (Rudy Vallee) flees furious bookies to the tune of the William Tell Overture, "so that's how they improve the breed." A parallel with Fred Allen (Wallace's It's in the Bag!), a pitch of Arnold Stang and a load of Leo Gorcey, an indoors luau interrupted by the missus right out of Sons of the Desert, shotgun and all. The dream of the Ziegfeld Follies comic (Bill Goodwin) is a somber project, his drama opens to snoozing critics and giddy hecklers and sends the protagonists home poorer but wiser. "No slackers in the big town!" Hill's Funny Farm reverses the setup while preserving the spirit. With Dave Willock, Frank Orth, William Bakewell, Wilbur Mack, Larry Steers, and Dick Elliott. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |