Category Called Comedy #3

 

CCC: Million Dollar Legs, The Lucky Dog, They Got Me Covered, and Big Jack

MILLION DOLLAR LEGS (1932) --- Really wacky, almost perverse comedy. Million Dollar Legs got latter years boost when Pauline Kael wrote somewhere that it was good, and so of course, others followed suit. How could one tire of mere 64 minutes? Looks like everybody who ever raised a laugh was hired, none so long as to fatigue, Jack Oakie most visible. Shown if at all because W.C. Fields is aboard, Million Dollar Legs has him by-playing with other comics. We wonder how competitive these clowns were, on-set or off. This was Bill’s first time talking for Paramount, them trusting him for support or specialties for the time being, starring work to wait until a public seemed ready. Gags are saucy and travel fast. There’s constant sense of having missed something that might be funny. Laughter arises from the unexpected, at times outrageous. Young Joseph Mankiewicz was among writers. He’d recall later what a mess it all seemed. Paramount refined a sense of the absurd thanks to talent not of norm (Fields, the Marx Bros.), seemed intent on being the lead comedy shop, at least for features. But hold, they were releasing shorts too, from independents, including mighty Mack Sennett in waning days. If the Million Dollar Legs applied to a character, that would have been Susan Fleming, appealing and offbeat presence sold as “Girl With …” the title assets. She stayed with movies until trade-up to marriage with Harpo Marx that endured till he died in 1964. She lived to age 94 and left memoirs lately published, a book I keep meaning to read, as word says it is fine and thoroughly candid. TCM released Million Dollar Legs on their DVD label in 2013, ran it a few times on the network, an old transfer unfortunately, plus there is a Region Two disc as part of a crowded W.C. Fields box. I’ve not so far seen a Blu-Ray offered.

THE LUCKY DOG (1917? 1919? No, 1921) --- The Lucky Dog marked a first time Laurel and Hardy performed on screen together. Not upon many screens however, as this two-reel subject played precious few venues due to fold of the firm producing it, The Lucky Dog interchangeable with others of commonplace content. We care for obvious reason of L&H and not a lot else, the century old obscurity made meaningful from initial “rediscovery” in 1963 when Robert Youngson came across a 16mm print and blew it up to highlight 30 Years of Fun. Found footage was less a thing then, Youngson and crew wrong as to when The Lucky Dog was made (they said 1919, others had floated 1917). Never mind though, as it was unexpected joy to see Laurel and Hardy cavort in something few knew existed till Youngson’s reveal. Truth was The Lucky Dog being around and sold to hobbyists on 16mm since the early 30’s, but how many of these still had their print, or remembered L&H both being involved? What Youngson came across was 1963 equivalent to The Battle of the Century turning up more-less complete in 2015. Lucky Dog would be a basis to benefit 30 Years of Fun. Who would assert, or care enough, that it had never been lost? Emerging Laurel-Hardy fans of nit-pick nature challenged 1919 as production date for The Lucky Dog, one among them noting a license plate barely visible in the film, car confirming date that was actually 1921, not news in a mainstream sense but meaningful to community from which members compiled a Blu-Ray of L&H silents to lately enter the public domain. What impresses me and undoubted others is hunt and gather of more Lucky Dog footage since Robert Youngson shared his four or so minutes in 1963, visual quality hugely improved as expected, this completing a historical record plus giving us not just an artifact put right but an entertaining comedy, in Blackhawk parlance, “substantially” as seen at few theatrical slots The Lucky Dog filled in 1921.

THEY GOT ME COVERED (1943) --- So much war reference as to date grievously, fun had for that reason mainly, us to wonder the while if there were really spy conspiracies to approach what Otto Preminger and crew have in mind here, or for that matter, what German operatives planned in Saboteur and All Through the Night. Bob Hope was his own resistance force apart from what he did in movies, the public well abreast of the comedian's globe canvas on victory behalf and hazards he willingly faced in the doing. Hope as radio spokesman for films he made was guarantor of earning, $3.3 million in worldwide rentals for They Got Me Covered more than anyone else’s comedy could dream of. Bob as hopeless bungler of a war correspondent misses the German invasion of Russia, so must compensate by quelling Axis takedown of US industry. This he does by check-off of then-hot topics meaningless to us now, but again, that’s essence for watching and a history lesson if not the laff riot Covered must have seemed in 1943. Hope did not make movies for the ages anymore than contemporaries Danny Kaye or Abbott-Costello, but these were clowns that prospered best in their day, freshness as then perceived, while immortals we’d propose, Keaton, Laurel-Hardy, even Chaplin, represented humor fashion now past. Hope was quick, relevant, and naughty as a vigilant Code allowed, the comic for whom daily news supplied gags. Watching him was to be hep to headlines almost before they happened, Hope good as any barometer to show how our war was going. They Got Me Covered was untypically for Goldwyn rather than Paramount, so production is elevated, Rudolph Maté for instance behind cameras, this to make Covered desired by collectors in 16mm, him supplier of handsome look for whatever he photographed. They Got Me Covered is playing “free” at present on You Tube. Don’t know how long that will last.

BIG JACK (1949) --- Wallace Beery’s last picture. Why discuss him at all? Maybe for fact that of all MGM stars, his vehicles never lost money, and vehicles they most resolutely were, change or variation things anathema to Wally’s fans as well as employers. Could he have sustained the fifties? Possibly … imagine Beery’s First in Cinemascope! or him being shotgun-toting dad to some of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Beery may have had questionable appeal for ladies, but was catnip to men who’d lay about home with suspenders down and being truculent to wives. Wally was truculent too, not to everybody as some would allege. Jeanette MacDonald in fact liked him, said Beery gave her best advice of all from Hollywood, Squeakiest wheels get the grease, he said, and she from that point on applied the principle to Leo’s front office. A few of kid co-stars liked him OK; it was mainly ones he had to work with repeatedly that got Beery’s goat. Margaret O’Brian famously tells of how he stole her box lunch on Bad Bascomb’s location. Yeah, but can you prove that, Margaret? To my untrained eye, Beery was one of the best performers the business ever had, simply for going totally his own way and hang the dialogue others prepared for him. Players learned to follow his lead and find marks where they could. Would director/producers straighten Wally out? Good luck with that. Beery kept a cabin in the woods, being like Chaney for preferring his own company. Big Jack might as well be called Big Slob for Beery expectations met. In fact, they all could have been titled that. Co-star was Marjorie Main, who wouldn’t seem so inadequate had not Marie Dressler been around in the early thirties to show how such a part should be played.