The Stooge

Year 8, Day 173 - 6/21/16 - Movie #2,373

BEFORE: I'm still trying to catch up after taking a weekend off - I watched movies at my parents' house, but I still missed a screening night by staying up all Sunday night and taking the Monday morning train - plus I missed out on two days of clearing shows off my DVR, so it's still full as can be - my mistake for telling the DVR to record all possible episodes of a show called "Carnival Eats" from the Cooking channel.  Hey, I like learning about new innovations in fried foods, what can I say?  Where else can I watch people eating burgers on glazed donuts, or deep-fried gummi bears on a stick?  I'm still watching the last few shows from March on VHS tapes, so progress is being made, but very slowly.  Two hours of episodic TV per night, and talk shows all weekend, but I may need all summer to catch up.  Thankfully summer reruns are here, and I have zero interest in new shows.

Meanwhile, my wife has caught the "Hamilton" bug.  Ever since the Tonys, she's been playing the music non-stop in the car whenever we drive anywhere, and I admit that some of the rhymes have perked up my ears, but I'm not ready to commit just yet.  It still seems like history told in rap to me, and I'm not a fan of rap.  Plus the damn thing's just too popular, and sometimes I don't like things that are popular, just because they're popular.  Like "Twilight" or "The Fast and the Furious".  I'm sticking to my guns on this one, I'm not ready to give in just yet, I'm resisting.  I concede it might be a great show, but it's either got to win me over, or I've got to find it on my own terms.  Sometimes, the more people push me to enjoy something, the less I want to, and the hype overkill on this thing is off the charts, hence my negative reaction.  Hey, as Hamilton would agree, the Constitution guarantees me the right to life, liberty, and the ability to enjoy a stage play on my own terms, when I'm ready.
 

THE PLOT:  Egotistical vaudevillian Bill Miller basks in the limelight with his successful musical-comedy act, but his success is due to his unheralded second banana.

AFTER: Well, this is a far cry better than "At War With the Army", and I think it's because I can believe Martin and Lewis as a couple of stage performers, because that's what they were, before they got into movies.  Could this be a semi-autobiographical version of their early careers?

Martin plays a guy named Bill Miller, who splits from his musical/comedy partner,  Ben Bailey, to do a solo act.  But it doesn't go well at first, his jokes are bombing, so his agent suggests bringing in a "stooge", someone who will sit in the upper balcony box and pretend to be a songwriter or something, but who'll then start to act up and cause a bit of trouble, so that the star will have someone to play off of, make fun of, or who'll get under his skin.  I think the idea is that if he's got trouble with someone, the audience will sympathize with him, and he'll win them over.  

This leads him to stock-boy Theodore "Ted" Rogers, who as we should suspect, as played by Jerry Lewis, is a klutz and a danger to everyone around him.  So to keep him from breaking everything in sight, he needs to be on stage where his physical awkwardness will come in handy.  And even though he's a bit dim, he takes to the role of the stooge and wins the audiences over.  Some reviews even call him the highlight of the act, which naturally causes friction between him and Bill.  (Hey, Bill and Ted, I just got the connection....)

Bill Miller is an odd character, because he seems genuinely talented as a performer, but he doesn't seem to be a very good husband or friend.  He misses his wife's birthday party, and then resists all attempts to give Ted equal billing.  I can sort of see his side of things, because he had a career before and Ted didn't - from his position, Ted hasn't paid his dues yet.  But his agent and wife corral him into doing the "right thing".  Ted, meanwhile, resists all attempts from other managers to woo him, and defends Bill to the end, even though he's not receiving any credit for his efforts.  

Lewis has referred to this film as his favorite of the films he made with Dean Martin, simply because it came the closest to replicating the stage act they had, before they were movie stars.  Well, that's insightful, if nothing else - it helps me to understand where these guys came from, at least.  But that's two films in a row where I was forced to see Jerry Lewis wearing a dress, and that's two too many.
 
Also starring Polly Bergen (also carrying over from "At War With the Army"), Marion Marshall (last seen in "I Was a Male War Bride"), Eddie Mayehoff, Richard Erdman, Frances Bavier.  

RATING: 5 out of 10 straw hats

At War With the Army

Year 8, Day 172 - 6/20/16 - Movie #2,372

BEFORE: Martin and Lewis carry over, I'm moving back three years into the past from "The Caddy" to include this one.  I've got some Abbott & Costello films coming up too, so I'll compare this one to "Buck Privates", I guess.  

THE PLOT: Alvin Corwin is low man on the totem pole, and goes from one mishap to another at an army training camp in World War II. 

AFTER: For a film made in 1950, something doesn't feel right - you'd think that a few years after World War II, people would have had enough experience, having lived through the war, to make a semi-accurate film about what it's like to be a soldier.  I know, I know it's a comedy and therefore it doesn't have to be super-realistic, but why not find comedy in an accurate portrayal, or at least a semi-accurate one.  Because if this film is WAY off from what soldiers really went through, doesn't that do them a dis-service? (pun intended.) 

Jerry Lewis plays characters who are screw-ups, I get that.  But he can play a sad sack private who's down on his luck or even mildly incompetent, but I feel like he went a bit too far here, and played his character like a true moron.  Again, it doesn't help the cause of U.S. soldiers to show them as mentally unfit - and if they were this dumb, then they wouldn't be serving in the army in the first place, right?  I mean, you have to at least have the mental capacity to make it through basic training and an obstacle course, right?  So all the physical humor of Lewis as Private Korwin failing to swing on a rope correctly, or trying to cheat his way around the obstacles, I think this humor is poorly aimed, and possibly even anti-patriotic.  

So, I'm scratching my head here, how do you come to release a film in 1950 that portrays U.S. Army soldiers as either dumb, misguided, or in Dean Martin's case, a real Don Juan?  I mean, we all know there were servicemen who were interested in getting laid, or had a "girl in every port", but I don't think Hollywood was supposed to depict that, right?  Some of the comedy here comes from Martin as Sgt. Puccinelli, who mistakenly thinks that he got a girl pregnant, since she keeps showing up, asking to have a meeting with him.

Ha ha, aren't unplanned pregancies hilarious?  Well, no, not really.  Not to mention VD and the moral implications of sleeping around, which again, seem very out of place in a 1950 comedy.  And then as a result of all the confusion, and Puccinelli's frustration with not getting promoted, he punches an officer in order to bust himself down to private.  Ha, ha!  Insubordination and a man sacrificing his whole military career, that's not really that funny, either.  

Also seeming very out of place is the suggestion that it's the officers' wives who are really running the camp.  While I'm all for feminism, this is also a strange bit of humor, because it suggests that the soldiers themselves are incompetent, and that the military chain of command is no match for the gossip chain that the women have formed.  Well, then what are they going to do when they get shipped overseas, and their wives aren't there to help them out?  I guess they're a bunch of goners, then.  Also, as a NITPICK POINT, why put this behind-the-scenes female network out there and show how superior it is, then have a key point in the film where it fails, miserably, and only causes more confusion.  So, is the fact that women really run the show a good thing or a bad thing?  This is quite unclear.  

OK, so it's the film where Jerry Lewis gets to sing "The Navy Gets the Gravy, but the Army Gets the Beans" as he cooks and serves food.  Am I supposed to take this literally, or is it just a metaphor.  So, there's NO gravy served in an army mess hall?  I find that hard to believe.  And what's the navy going to do with all that gravy that the army's not serving?  Dean Martin gets to sing some songs, too, since the two men perform in the officer's club from time to time - but "Tonda Wanda Hoy"?  Is that Hawaiian?  Because it seems out of place among soldiers that are planning to be shipped to Europe, it might have made more sense if they had been training for the Pacific theater, but that wasn't the case. 

He also sings "You and Your Beautiful Eyes", recording it on disc to be sent to a manager back home, but this was another plot point dropped in that went absolutely nowhere.  But he sang it to Polly Bergen's character, who was some kind of steady girlfriend, but didn't this contradict the image of his character as a womanizer?  This story was firing in so many different directions at once, and never followed up on any of the elements it introduced. 

What was going on with the supply sergeant and the extra clothing?  Will Private Corwin ever get to see his new baby?  Will they ever get the vending machine to work properly?  Why is it OK for a staff sergeant and a private to fraternize and sing musical numbers together, isn't that against the rules?  (Some parts played like a poor man's version of "Catch-22", just without any impact or deeper meaning about the true nonsense of the army.)  Well, it doesn't matter because everyone's getting shipped out to Europe, where they'll probably die.  So why the heck are they all so happy about that?  I'm not sure that I understand. 

Also starring Mike Kellin, Jimmie Dundee, Dick Stabile (also carrying over from "The Caddy"), William Mendrek, Danny Dayton (last seen in "The Sting II"), Angela Greene, Polly Bergen, Jean Ruth, Tommy Farrell, Frank Hyers,  Kenneth Forbes, Douglas Evans.

RATING: 3 out of 10 Coke bottles

The Caddy

 Year 8, Day 171 - 6/19/16 - Movie #2,371

BEFORE: I could have followed the Jimmy Stewart link away from "Bandolero!", as I just got a couple other films added to the list with Mr. Stewart in them. But dropping in 2 more films I hadn't planned would really screw up how my film list is going to coincide (or fail to) with July 4.  So I'm moving ahead as planned, no substitutions.  

I could also have kept up the Western theme with something like "Rio Bravo", with Dean Martin and Angie Dickinson, but that would have brought me back around to John Wayne, and though it seems like a film for Father's Day, in that it's something Dad might enjoy, I didn't want to circle back to John Wayne.  

So it's a nice, quiet round of golf for Father's Day, and it's Martin and Lewis this week, or sometimes just Jerry Lewis, as I watch the films that TCM aired in March, to celebrate Jerry's 90th birthday.  I got as many as I could, I was having trouble with my DVR recording movies from that channel, it gets glitchy from time to time, but they made several of them available on the Free Movies On Demand channel.  I've watched a few Jerry Lewis films over the course of this project, but oddly, no films featuring the famous comedy team - time to rectify that. 

I was going to double-up on films today, but I didn't have time, since we went out to see "X-Men: Apocalypse", which I'll review with this year's other Marvel movies - I'm guessing in mid-August. 

THE PLOT: Although gifted golfer Harvey Miller is too nervous to golf in public tournaments, he acts as coach and caddy for friend Joe Anthony.

AFTER:  I guess it's as good a place as any to start a Martin/Lewis chain, since this is the film in which Dean Martin sings "That's Amore" with Jerry Lewis goofily singing along, and nearly ruining it.  But it's the ninth film that Martin and Lewis made together, so by now I guess the on-screen relationship was pretty well established, Dean would drink and romance the girls, and Jerry would get into comic situations and knock down a lot of things.  (There you go, one film into the chain, and I cracked the code.  Damn, I'm good...)

The film flashes back during a performance by the comedy/musical team of Joe Anthony and Harvey Miller, Jr., to detail how the pair met, and this happened at a time when they were both forced to make career changes - Joe returned home to San Francisco after odd jobs around the country, and Harvey got fired from a department store after breaking everything in sight.  But they bonded over golf, with Harvey having the skill and knowledge to compete, but since he was unable to perform in front of a crowd, he became coach and caddy to the equally talented Joe.  Hey, playing in golf tournaments beats working on your family's fishing boat, especially if you get seasick, or just sick of fish. 

Unless, of course, you're the caddy and you get treated like the hired help, forced to hitchhike from country club to country club, and bed down in cheap hotel rooms, or even the club's stable.  And the other caddies just LOVE to haze the new guy.  You can't feel too sorry for the guy, because at least he's got a steady girl he's engaged to, who happens to be Joe's sister, so someday he and Joe will be brothers-in-law.  

The framing device seems sort of tacked on, possibly to cover the fact that the team's goal was to make money in the big tournament, and they never really get that big check, because things get out of hand on the big day, Harvey as caddy keeps dropping everything and being disruptive, and then the whole freaking Italian family shows up, bringing their cars right out on to the golf course, because they didn't understand the sign that said "Driving Range".  Ha, ha, stupid Italians!   Thankfully the pair's antics lead directly (somehow...) to them becoming famous performing comedians, who just happen to look exactly like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. 

Also starring Jerry Lewis, Donna Reed (last seen in "From Here to Eternity"), Barbara Bates (last seen in "The Inspector General"), Joseph Calleia (last seen in "My Little Chickadee"), Argentina Brunetti, Fred Clark, Marjorie Gateson, Lewis Martin, with cameos from Nancy Kulp and golfers Ben Hogan, Sam Snead et al. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 roller skates

Bandolero!

Year 8, Day 170 - 6/18/16 - Movie #2,370

BEFORE: Almost to Father's Day, and Dad probably likes Westerns, right?  So this makes three in a row, with Raquel Welch carrying over from "100 Rifles".  And that's pretty odd, I had cast members of "The Dirty Dozen", Clint Walker and Jim Brown, in the last two films, and tonight there's a third, George Kennedy.  The connections are all around, so that sort of thing probably happens all the time, I just fail to notice it.  

THE PLOT:  Mace Bishop masquerades as a hangman in order to save his outlaw brother from the gallows, runs to Mexico chased by the sheriff's posse and fights against Mexican bandits.

AFTER: Another day, another Western.  Ho hum, another bank robbery (hey, at least these people know how to take money OUT of a bank, not put it back, like Sam Whiskey...) and another trip down to Mexico to get away from the sheriff.  But it's a dangerous trip through the territory that's overrun with bandits.  

Probably the most ingenious thing was the way that the gang avoided being hanged - usually in one of these films, once they've got the noose around someone's neck, that's it, end of story.  But sometimes a screenwriter finds a way to make what's usually an ending into a new beginning - and I'd never seen it done this way before.  

I suppose it's also a bit notable that the lead characters were the bank robbers, and not the lawmen chasing the bank robbers.  In the Westerns of the 1940's and 50's, I'll bet the lead was always heroic, like Gene Autry or Roy Rogers.  And then at some point there was a subtle shift, leading to the spaghetti Westerns of the 1970's, where Clint Eastwood and others played immoral-ish gunfighters.  I wonder if this film is firmly in the middle and could be seen as representing the shift from heroes to villains...

Jimmy Stewart and Dean Martin play the two brothers, and I guess if you look at them together long enough, they could pass as brothers.  Martin plays Dee, the younger, more wayward one, and Stewart plays Mace, who's supposedly the more honorable one, if you don't count the odd crime of opportunity, like masquerading as a town official, or busting his brother out of jail.  

That's it, no more Westerns on the watchlist, I've cleared the category once again.  I mean, another one could always pop up, and I wouldn't mind seeing "The Hateful 8", as soon as some channel runs it - I'm even holding a slot for it, right around Comic-Con, if the cable channel programmers will comply.  

Also starring James Stewart (last seen in "Vertigo"), Dean Martin (last seen in "What a Way to Go!"), George Kennedy (last seen in "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot"), Andrew Prine, Will Geer (last seen in "Jeremiah Johnson"), Clint Ritchie, Denver Pyle (last seen in "Maverick"), Harey Carey Jr. (last seen in "Gremlins"), Tom Heaton, Rudy Diaz, Sean McClory, Perry Lopez, Don Barry (last seen in "Hooper"), with cameos from Dub Taylor (last seen in "The Cincinnati Kid"), Jock Mahoney (hey, he's that stuntman that was Sally Field's stepfather!).  

RATING: 5 out of 10 saddlebags