You know what? I feel like doing a new "Zomby," so here's that.

Mill Creek comedy classics #33: "Never Wave at a WAC" (1953)

American hot WACs: Those dizzy dames won't leave soldiering to the menfolk in Never Wave at a WAC (1953).

"You know the glamour gals have stopped glamorizing. They're working in defense plants, wearing slacks. And some of the fine chicks are cutting out every day, joining the WAVES and the SPARS and the WACs." - Louis Jordan ("You Can't Get That No More," 1943)

The flick: Never Wave at a WAC (RKO Radio Pictures, 1953) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 6.1

Director: Norman Z. McLeod (The Marx Brothers' Horse Feathers and Monkey Business; W.C. Fields' It's a Gift; Bob Hope's Road to Rio and Paleface; also Topper, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, etc.)

General Omar Bradley

Actors of note: Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday, The Women, the title role in Auntie Mame), Paul Douglas (A Letter to Three Wives, Panic in the Streets, lots of TV anthologies), Marie Wilson (Babes in Toyland, Satan Met a Lady), Hillary Brooke (The Admiral Was a Lady), William Ching (In a Lonely Place, D.O.A.), Arleen Whelan (Young Mr. Lincoln), Leif Erickson (On the Waterfront, Invaders from Mars, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Snake Pit; shot down twice in WW2), Charles Dingle (Little Foxes, Duel in the Sun), Lurene Tuttle (Niagara, Sweet Smell of Success, Parts: The Clonus Horror; played Sheriff Chambers' wife in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho; did an ungodly amount of TV work), Regis Toomey (The Big Sleep, Guys and Dolls, Hitchcock's Spellbound, much more), Louise Beavers (Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus), General Omar Bradley ("the Soldier's General" portrays himself here; famed Army field commander in WW2 and last to receive five-star status; was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time he made this movie), Olan Soule (voice of Batman from 1968 to 1984; ubiquitous film/TV character actor; Hitchcock's North By Northwest, TV's Dragnet and The Andy Griffith Show, literally hundreds more credits)

Other notables: The score was composed by Elmer Bernstein, only his sixth movie. He did a couple hundred more over the next half-century, including Ghostbusters, To Kill a Mockingbird, Airplane!, The Great Escape, The Man with the Golden Arm, National Lampoon's Animal House, Stripes, Trading Places, The Magnificent Seven (probably his most famous score), and too many more to mention. Repeatedly hired by John Landis and Martin Scorsese. Won his only Oscar for Thoroughly Modern Millie, but was nominated ten more times. Worked his way up from Robot Monster to The Ten Commandments in just three years.

Roz Russell

The gist of it: Haughty Washington D.C. socialite Jo McBain (Russell), daughter of a prominent senator (Dingle), joins the Women's Army Corps in the hopes of joining her boyfriend, Lt. Col. Sky Fairchild (Ching), at his post in Paris. The senator promises his daughter she'll be commissioned as an officer, but when she gets to Fort Lee, VA, she finds out she'll be serving Uncle Sam as a regular private. While constantly infuriating her superiors with her unorthodox ways, Jo does make friends with another unlikely recruit, ex-showgirl and pinup girl Clara Schneiderman (Wilson), who wants desperately to bury her past as "Danger O'Dowd" and who immediately takes to army life. Sky promises Jo that she can still get her commission if she'll just be on good behavior during basic training, and for a while, she does try to do just that. But her ex-husband Andrew (Douglas), an ex-Army man and now a research scientist with whom Jo has a combative relationship, shows up at Fort Lee and decides he needs female soldiers for some tests he's running on various fabrics and goes out of his way to make sure Jo is one of the test subjects. He puts Jo through all kinds of endurance tests until she finally snaps. In front of her commanding officers, she slaps Andrew across the face and goes on a tirade about military life. After a hearing in which Andrew sticks up for Jo and places the blame on himself, our heroine is dismissed from service without graduating from basic training. Now "free," she's supposed to marry Sky, but she just can't leave the WACs -- or Andrew, for that matter -- behind her.

Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin

My take: You children of the Eighties might remember Private Benjamin, a 1980 Goldie Hawn vehicle which spawned a 1981-1983 TV series with Lorna Patterson. That hit movie was about a spoiled, silly woman who joins the U.S. Army and drives her superiors to distraction with her antics and general incompetence. People tend to forget that Goldie Hawn leaves the military midway through Private Benjamin and spends the last part of the movie mired in a lame story which has her almost marrying but then jilting total sleazeball Armand Assante. Never Wave at a WAC, its title a reference to two organizations which were created so women could serve during World War II, plays like a 1950s  version of Private Benjamin, only without the unnecessary Assante character. Like Judy Benjamin after her, Jo McBain drops out of the Army and almost forsakes her patriotic duty for marriage, but both women ultimately discover that military service has changed them for the better and that they are now stronger and more independent because of their experiences in basic training. The main difference is that Judy Benjamin is a directionless flake at the start of her movie, while Jo McBain is a force of nature from the moment we meet her. Roz Russell's first big scene in this movie is at a high society party she's hosting for all the movers and shakers in Washington. She glides from room to room, politicking, gossiping and networking like a seasoned professional. This was a few years before Ms. Russell would play her signature role, Mame Dennis in Auntie Mame, both on Broadway and onscreen, and it's easy to see Never Wave at a WAC as sort of a prequel to that famous film. The real fun of a story like this is, of course, the opportunity to see a unique individual whose quirky personality clashes with the rigidity of military life. That same basic idea has been the basis for, I'd estimate, a gazillion other movies, TV shows, cartoons, and comics -- everything from Beetle Bailey to Gomer Pyle USMC to Laverne and Shirley in the Army. Even Dobie Gillis and Maynard G. Krebs enlisted for a season of their show! This film is, plain and simple, Auntie Mame Joins the Army. Jo McBain arrives with lots of luggage and her own car at basic training and seems to regard the barracks as a kind of eccentric hotel, with the commanding officers as her personal servants. She calls lots of people "dahhhling" instead of "sir" or "ma'am" and frequently (and loudly) demands to speak to "someone in charge" whenever things don't go her way. In a war, she'd be about as useful as Lovey Howell from Gilligan's Island... until she learns her lesson, of course. I think by now you have an idea of what this film is like. If that description appeals to you, by all means watch Never Wave at a WAC. But you could skip it without missing anything vital. Incidentally, young Elmer Bernstein does establish himself as an up-and-comer with his witty and versatile score for this film. His music here is both comedic and militaristic, a combination which would serve him well many times in the future, particularly on Stripes (1981), another misfits-in-the-service comedy.

Is it funny: Sure, why not? This movie rests almost entirely on Roz Russell's broad shoulders. She is the star around whom the other characters all orbit, and the script seems tailor-made to suit her brassy-yet-refined personality. She's one of the few actresses who can make an air of regal superiority seem vaguely appealing. In the sidekick role, ditsy blonde Marie Wilson is just average in a role that Marilyn Monroe would have knocked out of the park. Wilson's romance with "singing sergeant" Noisy Jackson (Erickson) is largely a laughless, time-wasting enterprise. I suppose the movie's funniest scenes are those in which Andrew puts his ex-wife through test after test in rain, snow, mud, freezing temperatures, etc. Russell proves a surprisingly adept physical comic here. If any image sticks with me from this movie, it'll be Jo McBain tromping around in snowshoes on a treadmill.

My grade: B



P.S. - In terms of stereotypes, Louise Beavers is back as yet another domestic. As far as I can remember, other than a personal assistant, Jo McBain's servants are all black. But this might be reflective of the reality of the time, and the characters are not presented in a demeaning or exaggerated way whatsoever.

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Mill Creek comedy classics #32: "Money Means Nothing" (1934)

Try telling that to a landlord or a loan shark. See how far it gets you.

The flick: Money Means Nothing (Monogram Pictures, 1934) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 5.4

Director: Christy Cabanne (The Mummy's Hand; uncredited fill-in director on Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ [1925 version]; known for being prolific rather than talented; directed Life of Villa and The Life of General Villa, both featuring the real-life Pancho Villa)

Ford as "Phroso"

Actors of note: Wallace Ford (Harvey; Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt and Spellbound; was "Phroso the Clown" in Tod Browning's Freaks), Gloria Shea (The Last Days of Pompeii; B-movie star from 1929-1936), Edgar Kennedy (Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus), Viven Oakland (Mutiny on the Bounty; worked with Laurel & Hardy in Way Out West and A Chump at Oxford), Eddie Tamblyn (Follow the Fleet; father of Russ Tamblyn and grandfather of Amber Tamblyn, who's married to David Cross), Betty Blythe (The Postman Always Rings Twice, My Fair Lady), Tenen Holtz (Nothing Sacred), Richard Tucker (first official member of the Screen Actors Guild; appeared in Wings, the first-ever Best Picture winner and The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length talkie), Ann Brody (Three on a Match), Douglas Fowley (Singin' in the Rain, The Thin Man, TV credits ranging from Gunsmoke to CHiPs, a great deal more), Maidel Turner (It Happened One Night, The Raven)

The hero, heroine, and comic foil.

The gist of it: Against the wishes of her snooty family, rich party girl Julie (Shea) marries working stiff Kenny (Ford), an employee at an auto parts warehouse whose trucks have been getting hijacked an awful lot lately. Julie and Kenny move into a little Brooklyn apartment, where they are constantly being annoyed by their intrusive, overbearing neighbors, the Greens (Kennedy and Turner). Mr. Green happens to be Kenny's boss, so the couple is obliged to be nice to him. One night, Julie's wealthy relatives show up for her birthday, and the Greens invite themselves over for dinner, only to be offended by the way the rich folks treat them. In retaliation, Mr. Green fires innocent Kenny and tells the police he thinks Kenny is the one who's been tipping off the hijackers. His professional reputation ruined, Kenny cannot find employment, and soon the newlyweds are nearly destitute and must pawn their few possessions for food and rent. It's at this dark time when Julie discovers she's pregnant, but she still turns down an offer from her sister (Oakland) to rejoin the family and go to Europe. Kenny takes a job with an ex-coworker, Red Miller (Fowley), who turns out to be the real ringleader of the truck hijackers.

My take: Oh, goddammit. Another truck hijacking movie, Mill Creek? Wasn't The Gang's All Here enough? Money Means Nothing was made by cheapskate Monogram Pictures, so it probably always looked and sounded pretty crummy, but time has been particularly cruel to this thoroughly mediocre film, making the viewing experience even less pleasurable. The DVD version was clearly made from a clumsy VHS transfer, which in turn was mastered from a scratchy, badly faded print. The picture is so faint at times that the actors almost become invisible. But even if this film were given a meticulous, frame-by-frame restoration, it still wouldn't be any good. Apart from one pretty neat tracking shot (all but ruined by the DVD transfer), Christy Cabanne's direction is very flat-footed and unimaginative. Some poor dubbing adds to the film's technical woes. The script, which was "suggested" by a stage play, is very contrived and takes an unwelcome turn into melodrama about halfway through before morphing into a half-assed thriller. The leads are merely adequate. There is no reason to believe that Gloria Shea's vivacious character would fall instantly in love with an uninspiring dullard like Wallace Ford's tire salesman, simply because he makes a few limp wisecracks on the night of their first meeting. In all honesty, the rich girl is making a huge mistake by marrying this man and forsaking the family fortune, and the movie miscalculates badly by turning her into a noble martyr when she started the film as a fun-loving free spirit. In short, this film is a chore to watch. Perhaps the best thing I can say about this movie is that at least the hero and heroine share a double bed. A lot of the married couples in these movies have had separate twin beds... and even separate bedrooms!

The Greens are especially bad neighbors.

Is it funny: Nope. To be fair, Money Means Nothing stops being a comedy for a long, long stretch in the middle of the film and gets all weepy and depressing. Even at its best, though, it never rates any higher than "kind of cute." My favorite scene occurs early on when Julie's brother-in-law (Tucker) discovers that the young lady has spent hundreds of dollars on auto accessories and that one of the family's cars now has about half a dozen horns and all sorts of other unnecessary gizmos. (Further useless car parts are stockpiled in the garage.) The Greens should be a source of comedy in the film, but the nature of their revenge against Julie and Kenny makes them altogether too unpleasant to be amusing. The movie's best comic asset, beloved hothead Edgar Kennedy, is somewhat squandered here. If I could travel back in time and rewrite the script for this film -- and, believe me, that would be my top priority under such circumstances -- I'd completely ditch the truck hijacking angle along with any hint of melodrama and just turn Money Means Nothing into a comedy of manners. If there's any fun to be had here, it's from watching the young lovers deal with their tacky, talkative neighbors. My take on this material would emphasize that element of the script, seasoned with a bit of "culture clash"/snobs versus slobs humor. Even then, Money Means Nothing would probably still only rate a B+, but it would at least be more entertaining than the existing version.

My grade: C-



P.S. - No negative African-American stereotypes, but there are some questionable Jewish stereotypes, the first of their kind in this set. The Silvermans (Holtz and Brody) run a pawn shop where Julie goes to pawn the fur coat she got from her family at that fateful birthday party. The film portrays the elderly couple in a (basically) positive light, which is nice, but these characters border on cartoonish in their speech and mannerisms. So this is kind of a gray area.

"The Jetsons" predicted environmental disaster 51 years ago!

The Jetsons: Happy sci-fi family or harbingers of doom?

Where, exactly, does The Jetsons take place?

If your memory is a little hazy, you might have guessed that the Hanna Barbera animated series (1962-1963; 1984-1987) is set somewhere in outer space, like the vaguely similar, nearly contemporaneous live-action Lost in Space (1965-1968). But that's not accurate. Instead, The Jetsons takes place right here on Earth -- specifically the United States of America, judging by the characters' accents and the money they use. The titular family resides in a fictional and geographically vague locale called "Orbit City." Most sources claim that the events of the series occur in the year 2062, an assertion backed up by this vintage ABC network promo in which the show's main character, George Jetson (voiced by George O'Hanlon), mentions that he and his family live in "the 21st Century." The year 2062 seems logical, as it would be 100 years after the show's original premiere date.

Why so sullen, George?

So what is life like in 2062 America, according to The Jetsons? Most viewers would say that the show provides an overwhelmingly positive view of the future, with sleek architecture, clever appliances and computers which cater to every whim of the human race, and a labor-free, nine-hour work week. What's not to like about this world? Plenty. Though cheerful on the surface, The Jetsons contains some bleak omens for our planet and its inhabitants. When a feature-length film adaptation of the series finally appeared in 1990, that long-submerged pessimism rose to the surface. In other words, the subtext became just plain text. According to the environmentally-conscious script of Jetsons: The Movie, the surface of the earth has become uninhabitable due to pollution. This development should come as no surprise to long-time Jetsons viewers. The clues are all there in the original 1960s series, which debuted only a month before the Cuban Missile Crisis. The good news is, you don't have to watch beyond the first 60 seconds of any given episode of The Jetsons to find this. It's all right there in the opening credits. Let's examine this famous introduction carefully and consider its implications as we go. The renowned and innovative theme song by Hanna Barbera's house composer, Hoyt Curtain, is lyrically neutral to an almost suspicious extent. It is merely a roll call of the series' main characters.

Meet George Jetson!
His boy Elroy!
Daughter Judy!
Jane his wife!

The Jetsons was conceived, produced, and marketed as a counterpoint and companion series to The Flintsones, but that show's theme promised its viewers "a gay old time." The Jetsons makes no such promises. All its theme song  tells us is the names of four of its characters and their relationship to one another, with the father and lone breadwinner singled out as the hub or nexus of the family unit. That's it.
 
Visually, the title sequence begins by showing the vast, mysterious cosmos, but within seconds, our view settles on a familiar sight: Earth.

The vast cosmos; Earth comes into view.

We move in even closer to Earth and see a rather distorted view of North and South America. The Gulf of Mexico and the Hudson Bay are vastly expanded, while the western coast of South America, once the location of Chile, is submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean. Then, suddenly, the screen is filled with arrows and triangles in a sudden cataclysm which suggests an explosion.

A distorted North and South America, then a cataclysmic explosion

Many multicolored fragments or particles now fill the air, seemingly the debris from the explosion we just witnessed. One might call it "cosmic confetti." This transports us to our first view of civilization on Earth: four futuristic-looking, domed buildings built atop what seem to be very tall stilts.

Floating particles; buildings on stilts.

But this world is not unoccupied! The Jetsons, a family of four, enter the frame in their glass-domed flying "aerocar," a miniature spaceship for this world without roads.  The ship/car flies past a cluster of domed buildings on stilts, all tethered to a floating satellite. The blue sky behind them, however, seems to be the same troposphere we humans currently occupy. The Jetsons make a sharp turn and fly past the logo for their own show.

The family's spaceship/car cruises past floating buildings, the show's logo.

Inside the vehicle, the father, George Jetson, places his son, Elroy, into a small, enclosed escape pod or personal transport device. He deploys this like a bomb from the floor of the ship, and little Elroy floats happily away through what still appears to be a normal blue sky.

George places Elroy in an glass bubble, which is then deployed from the ship.

Elroy's pod nears its destination: Little Dipper School, an enclosed building which is on stilts. The small group of trees or shrubs on the right is the only vegetation we have seen or will see, and it appears to be well away from the school. Paint swirls in the background vaguely suggest the outer atmosphere. Meanwhile, back in the Jetsons' rocket car, George presses a button, and his daughter Judy drops through the floor of the vehicle in her own bubble.

Elroy's school is also on stilts; daughter Judy is deployed through the bay door.

Judy's destination is Orbit High School, a free-floating, cantilevered structure with an adjoining stadium. The football field, separate from the main building, is entirely under glass. Meanwhile, George and his wife Jane engage in bit of comedic pantomime in which the wife takes her husband's wallet and, with it, most of his money. This green-colored currency seems to be regular American paper money, further reinforcing the notion that The Jetsons is set in the United States.

Judy's capsule flies toward her enclosed high school; Jane, with George's wallet, is deployed.

Jane's bubble takes her to the Shopping Center. Here, we find more enclosed domes on stilts. George's car finally arrives at his destination: Spacely Space Sprockets, Inc., his place of business. This is the first structure we have seen which is built on the surface of the planet. In the background we can see that other domes on stilts are likewise attached to the surface of our Earth. The terrain is eerily smooth and featureless. There is no nature -- no animals, no trees, only man-made structures.

The Shopping Center is on stilts; Spacely Space Sprockets, inc. is attached to the surface of the planet.

George parks his spaceship on a walkway outside the building. The dome on his car opens, and the driver steps into the open air, which must be at least temporarily breathable, as we see a woman walking her poodle, then various pedestrians, including a mother with a young child. George's car folds neatly into a briefcase. There does not seem to be any room for parked vehicles in this world of elevated, man-made structures.

George exits his car/ship in the open air; the car folds neatly into a briefcase.

A moving sidewalk or conveyer belt carries George, who remains motionless, into the building. His empty, featureless desk awaits him.The actual machinery and computers appear to be built into a wall and not connected at all to George's work station. He doesn't even seem to be supervising the machines, as his desk points the wrong way for that. It appears that George's "job" is to sit at a purely decorative desk and stare stupidly into space all day.

A conveyer belt carries George into his office, where his empty desk awaits.

With no need to move even a muscle, George is carried happily right to his desk, where he puts his feet up, leans back in his chair, and falls asleep. Technology has advanced to the point that he, the human being, is redundant and obsolete. This suits George, who is lazy and without ambition, fine. Throughout this entire sequence, he and his family have been in a state of total, almost unnerving bliss. They literally cannot stop smiling. Have they been lulled into a false sense of complacency? Has there been some kind of mass brainwashing or conditioning by the government?

George reaches his desk, then promptly falls asleep.

George then freezes in this napping position. Recalling the earlier "briefcase" gag with the aerocar, the image itself now folds up neatly. A black bar covers the right half of the screen, then a second black bar approaches from left until the screen is totally blank. It is as if George has been swallowed up.

Like the car we saw before, the image of George is neatly folded until it, too, disapears.

What are we to make of all of this? Earth has succumbed, apparently, to not one but many disasters. Machines have taken over. Humans are their slaves but have been tricked into thinking that they are the masters. Technology is the real ruling party in this world, and the natural world has been utterly obliterated, erased entirely from the globe. As we have seen, the Jetsons and those of this era have not transgressed our normal atmosphere. There is still at least some breathable air, and some (perhaps many) of the buildings are attached to the ground. But the air can't be too plentiful or too healthful, as the residents of this world spend most of their time either indoors or under glass domes. And why are so many of the buildings attached to long stilts while others simply float? My guess is that these were two solutions for dealing with rising ocean levels. At first, architects simply tried to raise the buildings off the ground by building them on these gigantic, precarious-looking columns. But eventually, technology allowed for buildings which would simply float above the earth's surface. Judy's school, for instance, is probably a newer building than Elroy's. In either event, the lone structure at ground level is an industrial complex which resembles a giant air filter. Perhaps Mr. Spacely, George's notoriously tightfisted boss, was too cheap to build a factory off the ground and just stayed where he was despite warnings from scientists and engineers. When the water levels rise, he'll be ruined.

So there you have it, folks? According to The Jetsons, Earth is doomed but we'll all be too artificially "blissed out" to even care. Happy viewing, folks!

Mill Creek comedy classics #31: "The Milky Way" (1936)

Milk and funny: Harold Lloyd in The Milky Way.

The flick: The Milky Way (Paramount, 1936) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 6.7

Director*: Leo McCarey (Duck Soup, The Bells of St. Mary's, An Affair to Remember; considered one of the all-time great comedic directors for his work with the Marx Brothers. W.C. Fields, Laurel & Hardy and Cary Grant; won Oscars for The Awful Truth [directing] and Going My Way [directing and writing]; four more nominations for directing, plus one nomination for Best Original Song)

*Uncredited fill-in directors: Leo's younger brother Ray McCarey (directed some Three Stooges, Laurel & Hardy, and Our Gang shorts but never approached his brother's fame), Norman Z. McLeod (big-time comedy director; worked with W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, and Bob Hope, plus did that one Twilight Zone episode with Buster Keaton)

Charles Lane: The man.

Actors of note: Harold Lloyd (regularly earned $1 million per picture for his 1920s silent comedies; he's the nerdy-looking guy hanging from the giant clock in Safety Last!; also appeared in The Freshman, The Kid Brother, and the original version of Ben-Hur), Adolphe Menjou (Pollyanna, Stage Door, A Star is Born [1937 version], Kubrick's Paths of Glory, so much more), Veree Teasdale (Adolphe Menjou's real-life wife at the time; appeared in Goodbye Love), Helen Mack (His Girl Friday, The Son of Kong), William Gargan (False Pretenses), George Barbier (Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Man Who Came to Dinner), Dorothy Wilson (The Merry Widow, The Last Days of Pompeii), Lionel Stander (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1941, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; lent his famous gravelly voice to Transformers: The Movie; played Max on TV's Hart to Hart), Charles Lane (everything, basically; 360+ TV and film credits from 1931 to 2006, including It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Music Man; episodes of TV's The Twilight Zone, I Love Lucy [frequent foil to Lucille Ball on all her series], The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Soap, etc., etc., etc.), Marjorie Gateson (You'll Never Get Rich, Wife vs. Secretary)

The gist of it: Underachieving milkman Burleigh Sullivan (Lloyd) becomes a media sensation when he takes the credit for knocking out obnoxious middleweight champ Speed McFarland (Gargan), who had been harassing Burleigh's sister, Mae (Mack), on the street. In truth, it was Speed's own trainer, Spider (Stander), who had accidentally slugged the famed pugilist during a confusing melee, but Burleigh had always wanted to get his name in the papers and this seemed as good an opportunity as any. Scrawny Mr. Sullivan can dodge punches very well but can't throw one worth a damn. In Spider's words, Burleigh is "as soft as a bag of dead mice." In order to save the disgraced boxing champ's reputation, Speed's sleazeball manager, Gabby (Menjou), decides to turn Burleigh into a celebrated fighter and rigs a series of matches for the milkman to "win" before a big rematch with Speed. Though dubious of his own (non-existent) boxing skills, Burleigh agrees to become a prizefighter in order to pay the medical bills of his beloved horse, Agnes. Gabby's plan works perfectly at first. The previously-unknown Sullivan "beats" his opponents easily, becomes a public hero, and truly begins to believe he is a great fighter. As the rematch approaches, the once-humble milkman has no idea he's about to be creamed.

Yes, here's the Harold Lloyd clock scene. Happy now?

My take: If people know one thing about film comic Harold Lloyd, it's that he hung from a giant clock in a movie once. Well, yes, he did. It was in a very successful 1923 silent feature called Safety Last! If people know two things about Harold Lloyd, other than the fact that he wore funny-looking round glasses, it's that he was a major silent star in the 1920s but never really made it in the talkies. That's true, too. After his last big silent hit, Speedy (1928), Lloyd made a series of under-performing sound features, including this one, before his early retirement in 1938. Luckily he'd invested his money wisely. The actor made one big comeback attempt in 1947 with The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, but that film (which is coming up in this very series!) was a money-losing disaster, one of Hollywood's biggest fiascos. His film career now really done, Harold Lloyd spent the rest of his life pursuing his twin passions: doing charity work for the Shriners and taking nude 3D photos of glamor models. (You think I'm making this stuff up?) On the basis of the reasonably-funny and well-made boxing comedy The Milky Way, I have to wonder why Lloyd never cut it in the era of talking pictures. He's at least as good at verbal comedy as he is at physical slapstick humor. Like seemingly every comedy from the 1930s and the 1940s, The Milky Way is nonstop, rapid-fire banter. The zingers fly fast and furious here, and Lloyd is more than able to keep up, although many of the best one-liners go to Gabby's deathly cynical mistress (and real-life wife). In a way, the appeal of The Milky Way is similar to that of Hay Foot. It's satisfying to watch the nerdy little guy make a chump out of the angry bruiser over and over again, and that's just what Lloyd gets to do in this film. In fact, the only major wrong turn the film took, in my estimation, was turning Speed McFarland into a "good guy" near the end and having him romance Burleigh's sister, Mae. Speed's treatment of Mae at the beginning of the film is unacceptable and most likely unforgivable. He and Spider gang up on the much-smaller Mae, taunting her and playing keep-away with her hat. That's what sets the whole plot in motion. Lloyd's character, Burleigh, although lacking in physical prowess, is a ridiculously straight-laced do-gooder in the tradition of Underdog, Roger Ramjet, and Dudley Do-Right. (Like Underdog, he even has a sweet, virginal girlfriend named Polly!) Burleigh gets himself into this whole mess by defending his sister's honor, putting his own safety at risk in the process. After such an event, it's very difficult to believe that Mae would actually fall in love with Speed. Anyway, even though this flick lost money, it must have made an impression on someone. It was remade as The Kid from Brooklyn in 1946 with our good buddy Danny Kaye and then again in 2004 as The Calcium Kid (cute title, huh?) with Orlando Bloom. Supposedly, two-time Oscar winner Anthony Quinn got his start in the movies as a fight spectator in The Milky Way. I wasn't trying to spot him, though. If you want to attempt it, my advice would be to search for Quinn's famous dark eyebrows. Those might stand out in a crowd.

Is it funny: It has its moments, definitely. Like any movie comedian worth his seltzer, Harold Lloyd has a knack for getting himself into the darnedest situations, i.e. trying to take a small horse with him in a taxi without the cabbie catching on and then pretending to sing to cover up the animal's constant neighing. As I mentioned, Gabby's worn-out, tough-as-nails mistress -- who, admirably, doesn't give a damn about any of the silly plot complications -- is a one-woman joke factory. If you like snarky putdowns and withering retorts, she's your gal. Not every comedy sequence is a winner, though. An early scene in which Burleigh interrupts his boss's presentation with loud hiccups (or "hiccoughs") was a laugh-free experience for me, as was a scene in which Gabby shares a sleeper car on a train with the annoying Burleigh, who keeps him up all night with his noisy, unfunny shenanigans. At that point, even I wanted to take a swing at the milkman.

My grade: B+



P.S. - No racial stereotypes per se here, but the film comes close a couple of times. One headline says that Burleigh has an "African sparring partner." Cut to: Harold Lloyd walking into a lobby with a lion. Ha! The only person "of color," as they say, is a porter or bellboy who has no lines and merely stands in the background briefly in one scene.

Mill Creek comedy classics #30: "Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus" (1938)

Bad boy, bad boy! What ya gonna do? What ya gonna do when the circus comes through?

The flick: Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus (Sol Lesser Productions, distributed by RKO, 1938) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 5.9

Director: Edward F. Cline (a former Keystone Kop; directed several W.C. Fields films, including The Bank Dick, My Little Chickadee, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break)

Louise Beavers

Actors of note (and there are a bunch): Tommy Kelly (played Tom Sawyer in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; cameos in Gone with the Wind and Battleground), Ann Gillis (Becky Thatcher in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; appeared in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and did voice work for Disney's Bambi), Edgar Kennedy (a founding Keystone Kop; the angry lemonade vendor from the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup; starred in roughly 200 short subjects), Benita Hume (Tarzan Escapes), Billy Gilbert (comedian known for his exaggerated sneeze; inspired and voiced Sneezy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; appeared onscreen with Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy, and the Marx Brothers), Grant Mitchell (Arsenic and Old Lace, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), Nana Bryant (Harvey, The Song of Bernadette), George McFarland ("Spanky" from Our Gang/The Little Rascals, appearing in over 100 shorts from 1932-1942), Louise Beavers (Imitation of Life, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, The Jackie Robinson Story; played the title role in TV's Beulah), William Demarest (Behave Yourself!; Uncle Charley on TV's My Three Sons), Mickey Rentschler (His Private Secretary), Fay Helm (The Wolf Man)

The gist of it: Smartaleck Willie Peck (Kelly) pulls a stupid frog-related prank right before he's supposed to leave for summer camp, so his parents (Mitchell & Bryant) punish him by making him stay home with the maid, Cassey (Beavers), while they go on vacation. That means he won't be able to beat his rival, Herman (Rentschler), at the camp's obstacle course and bring home the coveted trophy for a third straight year. But Willie secretly gets each of his parents to relent, and both wind up giving him money for train fare to camp. Willie and his eleven pals, including tough little Pee Wee (McFarland), have some time to kill before the train to camp, so they decide to take in the circus which is visiting their town. After a great deal of haggling and confusion over the entrance fee, Willie ends up spending all his money to cover the cost of admission for himself and his friends. While the other eleven head to camp on the train, Willie stays with the circus and gets involved in territorial war between bareback-riding child sensation Fleurette (Gillis) and scheming, jealous Myrna (Hume), who is the assistant to incompetent lion tamer Arthur Bailey (Kennedy) and also the wife of the circus' manager Mr. Daro (Demarest). When Myrna sabotages Fleurette, sidelining the horse-riding wunderkind before a big show, Willie has to impersonate the girl and perform in her place before making a mad dash via chariot (!) to the camp to compete in the big race.

Insincere Bart Simpson lays on the charm in "Kamp Krusty."

My take: Perhaps you've heard of Peck's Bad Boy. Created by the 17th Governor of the Great State of Wisconsin, George Wilbur Peck, the mischievous young lad debuted in a series of humorous newspaper articles in the 1870s. The character caught on, and the enterprising author/politician gave the public more and more (and more!) of him for about three decades. Before, during and after his political career, G.W. Peck churned out one volume after another about his infamous proto-Bart-Simpson, finally conking out with Peck's Bad Boy in an Airship in 1908. The fictional boy then hopscotched to plays, films, and even a gender-switched TV series, Peck's Bad Girl (1959-1960) starring Patty McCormack, the homicidal demon-child of The Bad Seed. In 1921, five years after Gov. Peck's death, our pal Jackie Coogan starred in a full-length silent film version of Peck's Bad Boy. It was remade as a talkie in 1934 with the very similar-sounding child star Jackie Cooper, a veteran of the Our Gang series. And four years after that came this quasi-sequel, based on a book of the same title which Gov. Peck published in 1905, when he was nearing the end of his Bad Boy cycle. I think you'll agree, that's a whole lotta Peck's Bad Boy. Was there any juice left in this particular turnip by 1938? Judging by Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus, the surprising answer is yes! I'm not sure how well it works as a comedy, but it's so packed with bizarre incidents, wild characters, and completely insane plot twists that it easily holds the viewer's attention 75 years after its release! As a diehard fan of The Simpsons, I was fascinated by the plot of this film because it so clearly presaged two of that series' most famous episodes, "Kamp Krusty" and "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie," both from the fabled fourth season. In "Kamp Krusty," Homer threatens to keep Bart from going to Krusty the Clown's summer camp because of a dismal report card, but he then relents and lets Bart go anyway. In "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie," just five episodes later, Homer and Marge agree that they've spoiled Bart by letting him get away with irresponsible behavior and insincere apologies, so Homer vows to truly punish Bart by preventing him from seeing the most popular movie of the year. The parenting debate Mr. and Mrs. Simpson have in "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie" is very much like the one Mr. and Mrs. Peck have in Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus, except the Pecks simply admit to spoiling their son and laugh it off, while Homer and Marge actually try to deal with the problem. I was further reminded of "teletherapist" Dr. Will Miller's review of the Dennis the Menace TV series (1959-1963) in his book Why We Watch: Killing the Gilligan Within (Fireside, 1996). Please note Miller's use of the term "bad boy."

Jay North as Dennis.

A smokescreen suggesting Dennis was an incorrigible child, this show is, in fact, not about a bad boy. It is, rather, a show about bad parents. The Mitchells are weak, indecisive, and unable to set appropriate boundaries. As in most of these cases, what is not understood by many parents is that permissiveness is not an excess of kindness. It is rather a cruel form of abandonment . . . Of course, parenting is wearisome! Certainly your children's boundless energy and incessant pressing exhaust you. But there is no option, you simply must endure. It is an act of love. Children need you to set the boundaries because they cannot see the fences on their own. Continuing to give in to their immature, developmentally unformed will has dire consequences for you later. You will regret it for the rest of your life! (pp. 126-127)

Even if you don't care about Dennis Mitchell or Bart Simpson, there is still plenty to hold your attention in this utterly berserk film. The modern-day viewer will likely interpret many of the scenes in Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus as examples of child abuse, animal abuse, or both. Did parents supervise their children at all in 1938? Nowadays, a kid can't even ride his bike around the block without first donning full-body armor, but standards were apparently lax during the Roosevelt years, so Willie Peck and his buddies (sort of a junior version of the East Side Kids, minus the "Noo Yawk" street slang). Fleurette's dangerous horse-riding act seems like a gross misuse of both the child and the animal, dragging them from town to town so they can perform for half-empty audiences under a filthy tent. Yet we are supposed to with the child's mother (Helm), a former circus star herself now living vicariously through her daughter/meal ticket, in the battle for circus supremacy against Myrna. Why? Watch this movie and tell me what makes Fleurette and her mother any morally superior to Myrna. There's a fine line between this mother-daughter pair and the one in TV's infamous Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. If that's not enough, there is a major subplot in this film revolving around Mrs. Peck's sleeping pills, which (through convoluted circumstances) wind up in her son's possession. Willie feeds some of them to the circus lions, and rest are consumed by Pee Wee after Willie tells him the pills are "candy." Think about that a moment. "Spanky" from The Little Rascals is gobbling down sleeping pills like M&M's. That sounds like the setup for a tasteless cutaway joke on Family Guy, featuring its controversial "Herbert the Pervert" character. Yet, back in 1938, this was no big deal.

Edgar "Slow Burn" Kennedy

Is it funny: Yes, though not always in the manner the film intended. It's the film's audacity and oddness which made me laugh more than its jokes. The film gives plenty of screen time to the acrobatic clowns in the circus, but this only reminded me of Here Comes the Circus, an unsettling short film once featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Tommy Kelly's "wise guy" characterization got on my nerves at first, but I got some laughs out of the genuinely-funny scene in which he dresses in drag as Fleurette and does a hapless, clumsy imitation of her act while dangling from a wire. Kelly spends pretty much the last third of the film in a dress, which was a bold choice for one of pop culture's most celebrated "tough kids." Fleurette herself, though meant to be a serious and sympathetic character, made me laugh more than Willie Peck because she was such a little drama queen. When her act is given a slightly-less desirable time slot one night, she treats it like a major career setback. And there's one moment in which Willie's shenanigans somehow "cure" Fleurette's injured leg, and she throws her crutches away like she's just been blessed by a faith healer at a revival meeting. Marx Brothers fans will dig the opportunity to see famed comedic foil Edgar Kennedy do his patented "slow burn" routine a few times, and Kennedy even participates in the ludicrous chariot scene which sets up the almost-as-ludicrous obstacle course finale. Kennedy also gets the movie's best line. When the chariot speeds around a dangerous curve, Kennedy asks Kelly, "You didn't want to live forever, did you?"

My grade: B



P.S. - As for the issue of racial stereotyping in this film, Louise Beavers plays yet another mammy-type domestic character, and the script makes her say things like "Is you is or is you ain't?" She also mispronounces "scram" as "scrum" several times. But Beavers is a very talented and accomplished actress, and her intelligence shines through even as this cliched character. Cassey seems like the most reasonable, levelheaded person in the Peck household and the only one to recognize what a brat the title character truly is.

Mill Creek comedy classics #29: "Lonely Wives" (1931)

A top-hatted owl promises me that I'll be surprised by Lonely Wives (1931). Who am I to doubt?

The flick: Lonely Wives (Pathé Exchange, distributed by RKO, 1931) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 6.0

Director: Russell Mack (The Stolen Jools, Hollywood Party; 1920s Broadway actor and father of Cynthia Wood, whose "Broken Angel House" was used as the setting of Dave Chappelle's Block Party but then was foreclosed upon)

Actors of note: Edward Everett Horton (Arsenic and Old Lace, Top Hat, narrator of "Fractured Fairy Tales" on The Bullwinkle Show), Esther Ralston (The Marriage Cycle; Sadie McKee; an extra in The Kid; was promoted by showman Flo Ziegfield, Jr. as "The American Venus"), Laura La Plante (The Cat and the Canary, The King of Jazz), Patsy Ruth Miller (the silent version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Lon Chaney, Sr.), Maude Eburne (I'm from Arkansas), Spencer Charters (Arsenic and Old Lace, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Yankee Doodle Dandy), Maurice Black (The Bride of Frankenstein, Scarface [1932 version])

Edward Everett Horton

The gist of it: Sober, serious defense attorney Richard Smith (Horton) becomes a skirt-chasing party animal at 8:00 every night. And what's more, his wife Madeline (Ralston) has been on a mountain retreat for months. Temptations abound! In fact, Richard makes a date with two women: his slinky new secretary Kitty (Miller) and her friend Diane (La Plante), a "lonely wife" who is seeking a divorce from her actor husband. But before these three can hit the town, including a nightspot called the Whoopee Club, Richard has to deal with his hovering, smothering mother-in law, Mrs. Mantel (Eburne), who wants to make sure that Richard and Madeline stay together and have children. What to do? Well, at just that moment, a celebrity impersonator named Felix (also Horton) shows up at Richard's home office to ask for permission to portray the famed lawyer onstage. Richard says he'll grant his permission... if Felix will stay at home and pretend to be him for the benefit of Mrs. Mantel. But things get complicated when Madeline unexpectedly shows up and wants to get romantic with her "husband." Richard stays out all night, while back at home, Felix tries to fend off Madeline's wifely advances. The next morning quickly takes a turn for the absurd when the real Richard arrives before the fake one has left. And things only get worse when a very drunk Diane -- who turns out to be Felix's wife! -- shows up at the Smith residence owing an irate cabbie (Black) fifty bucks. Richard and Felix both believe their wives have been unfaithful to them with their respective lookalikes!

Now that's show business: Fractured Fairy Tales.

My take: I've said it before, but it bears repeating: to me, having worked on NBC's The Bullwinkle Show is more prestigious than having won an Academy Award. After appearances by Charlie Ruggles (Aesop) and Hans Conried (Snidely Whiplash), we finally have a third Bullwinkle alum in this collection. Edward Everett Horton, the droll storyteller of Fractured Fairy Tales, stars in the rather naughty early '30s bedroom farce, Lonely Wives. And not only that! There are two of him in this movie... three if you consider that the lawyer has a Jekyll-Hyde personality. This movie is classified as "pre-code," meaning it was released before a strict and terrible 1934 decree known (inaccurately but commonly) as the Hays Code, i.e. Hollywood's self-imposed ban on virtually everything fun or interesting in motion pictures. The code was, of course, put to the test and challenged every year of its existence and was finally ditched in favor of the still-imperfect MPAA ratings system in 1968. But back in 1931, you could still (just barely) get away with a movie whose central question is: did we sleep with each other's wives last night? Oh, naturally, you couldn't actually say that out loud, but you could certainly imply it. You couldn't really say that much, in fact, back then. Lonely Wives -- and, yes, the title is meant to be suggestive -- has a little fun with this idea. In one scene, Richard tries to discuss the topic of adultery with the impossibly naive Diane while avoiding any crude language or direct references to sex, but he soon finds it impossible and gives up. The movie hints at as many things as it can, as in one scene in which we are allowed to watch Kitty take a shower behind a very improbable shower curtain which shows her from the shoulders up. (In one delightful moment, Diane asks her if she's "decent," and Kitty replies, "No, but come in anyway.") Your enjoyment of a film like Lonely Wives will depend on your tolerance for farce. If you like comedies in which all the characters run around frantically while the complications, lies, and miscommunications keep piling up, you're likely to find Lonely Wives a real hoot, as I did. It's fairly obvious that this was based on a stage play, but the one principal location -- Richard's plush home (defending murderers, his specialty, is lucrative) -- is a versatile set with plenty of bathrooms to hide in, windows to climb out of, drainpipes to shinny, and bannisters to slide down. Modern audiences might tend to look down their noses a bit at farce, but I'd be quick to remind them that the genre is the granddaddy of Fawlty Towers (especially sex-centric episodes like "The Wedding Party"), Ruthless People, Seinfeld, and much more. As a would-be writer of comedy, I'm always impressed with the way a good farce can keep so many plates spinning at once. In stories like this, you have to have a character who simply can't believe what he's seeing and feels he must be going insane. In this case, that time-honored tradition is fulfilled by poor, put-upon Andrews (Charters), the Smiths' drunken butler who finds himself catering to two different versions of his boss, one of whom doesn't even seem to know the layout of his own house! Of course, it doesn't hurt that this movie is chock-full of ladies who are very sexy in that 1930s kind of way. The Jazz Age of the 1920s was over and its spirit supposedly extinguished by the Great Depression, but America clearly had not yet lost its appetite for sin. By the way, there is one scene that modern audiences will not be able to believe, and it occurs early on when Richard asks his new secretary, Kitty, to demonstrate her sexy "wiggle" for him... and she does so, gleefully! Clearly, the term "sexual harassment in the workplace" had not been coined back then. If it had been, Lonely Wives wouldn't have been able to include a subplot (one of many) about Mr. Smith's flirty French maid either. That would have been a real shame.

Is it funny: Oh, dear heavens, yes! In his pre-cartoon days, Edward Everett Horton specialized in playing ineffectual, "milquetoast" characters, so it's great fun to see him get to play a dirty dog here! In order to distinguish between the two Hortons in this film, the well-to-do lawyer has a very sleazy-looking little devil beard (technically, a Van Dyke), plus slicked-back hair and little round glasses. Felix, the actor, has a fake beard which he can apply or remove as need be. Both display rather questionable morals throughout Lonely Wives, which makes their story all the more entertaining. Richard is a would-be scoundrel, were it not for his ever-present mother-in-law, and Felix is not beyond temptation either. One of my favorite moments occurs when the actor, trying desperately to keep Madeline at arm's length, waits impatiently for Richard to return his phone call and save him from this compromising situation. But when the phone finally rings, Felix has lost his "struggle" with Madeline and allows her to kiss him full on the mouth. He ignores the phone call, looks to us in the audience and says, "Too late."

My grade: A-



P.S. - Not a racial stereotype for miles! God bless this movie!