Category Called Comedy #10

 

CCC: Dean/Jerry/Irma/Monkey, Opera Objections, and Fairbanks Faces Away

WHEN MARTIN-LEWIS HEAT WAS ON --- This no doubt opined by others before … I’m thinking Jerry needed Dean more than Dean ever needed Jerry. Might Martin have been better leaving Lewis, let’s say five years sooner, to stake his own singing and romance place in films, clubs, television? Doing so, that is, before becoming so entrenched in a public’s team expectation? Seeing this Lewis-centered trade ad for My Friend Irma Goes West prodded me to at last unpeel Paramount’s DVD. Remember sticky labels, “security” measures to keep us from stealing these off presumed store shelves? Hardly seemed worth the guff once adhesion was finally got off, My Friend Irma Goes West ninety-minute hell to follow. My thumb numbed from fast-forwarding Jerry in extended antics with a monkey, Jerry frankly doing anything. How to cope with two rib-tickle pairs tag teaming? Friend Irma surely was more so on home radio, here embodied by Marie Wilson as frightfully stupid, a distaff Lewis where we hardly need one of the sort. Laughter came of 1950 source quite alien to what amuses now, and I must inquire what becomes of Jerry Lewis standing once his original fan base finally shuffles off in toto. To think he preserved everything to document a long career. Do scholars consult it? Lewis could be clever --- I don’t blame those who laughed then --- but a little of him goes a long etcetra, and again, Martin seems the better overall bargain. This trade ad sorts out priorities for the time, Dean in an upper corner and nowhere else, Jerry mugging with Para merchandiser captions to instruct us when, if not why, to laugh. Lewis hosted the trailer, which interestingly had John Lund first in official billing, Corinne Calvet pushed prominently. Read her book for realities of being Wallis-owned. Was the producer asked if he thought the team was funny? Wallis would surely have asked back what makes that a relevant question?, his a first yok team since Abbott and Costello to phenomenally click, and ask yourself how long they might have sustained had not break come in 1956. My Friend Irma Goes West was years out of circulation before the DVD came. It streams at present with a High-Def option, but is not available on Blu-Ray. Occurs to me that Kino lately leased a post-49 Paramount group that did not include any Martin-Lewis, commentary perhaps in itself.

NO MORE MARX AND WE MEAN IT! --- Is it fair to expect a thing that seemed funny in 1935 to be similarly so in 1949, let alone in 2025? A Night at the Opera was profitable for its first release, if somewhat barely so. MGM figured to try again with a reissue, years enough later to wonder how many could care about the Marx Brothers, them less active by 1949 and scattered for most part to separate careers, Love Happy of that year less a team venture than Chico-Harpo with Groucho a cameo afterthought. Opera receipts this time showed $746K gain after cost of new prints and publicity, the Marxes as before appealing to some regions and audiences more than others. Did Wickes, Arkansas with its “small town and rural patronage” represent majority of then-modern sentiment? If so, the Brothers may just as well have retired as a team. Manager C.O. Taylor was on no payroll other than A&T Theatre’s circuit, and they obviously kept no leash on him, the whole point of exhibitor comments being freedom to speak minds, truth to power that was distributors big and small. Where we want honesty of expression, here was where to find it. “Talked into buying” A Night at the Opera, Mr. Taylor speaks for himself plus “other exhibitors … not doing any business” with the aged comedy. Most damning was when even kids “came out holding their noses.” Has anyone reading this ever observed “walkouts by the droves” from A Night at the Opera, taking oath of “no more Marx Bros. for us”? Tastes change I know, the Brothers fluctuating like any act, old or new, from year to year. So given an audience acid test today, would A Night at the Opera stand or fall? Status once conferred might always be challenged --- remember when Woody Allen seemed unassailable? A Night at the Opera is hard to evaluate without an audience, us to observe for ourselves if they would or would not hold noses.

NEVER MIND MY CLOSE-UP --- There is a particular technique to acting called “backting.” Sheila O’Malley describes it skillfully at her site. Simple put, it is a player conveying emotion while turned away from us, idea to put across drama somehow other than head on. We see this lots without noticing, in life as well as film. Accurate read can be got from other characters looking at your object of interest, his expression key to how an onlooker, them on screen, or us watching, will feel. To snatch meaning from something other than your face is acting done well, but it needs close observe to appreciate. I was years exposed to 1930’s Reaching for the Moon before realizing what magic Douglas Fairbanks caught in bottle that was simplest exchange near a start of the show. Doug is a Depression-era self-made millionaire speculator, his Wall Street success being celebrated at a dinner in his honor. Being late but unconscious of same, Doug breezes in and interrupts a windy speaker, the old man offended enough by the interruption to take up his briefcase and head exit-way. Realizing he has hurt his guest’s feelings, Fairbanks rushes to explain and apologize. Their exchange has the man facing Doug, and Doug in at most quarter profile, yet we “see” Doug clear as if he were close-up, part because we imagine just how Douglas Fairbanks himself might react to a circumstance like this.

In fact, his “Larry Day” clears this social hurdle very much the same as Fairbanks himself undoubtedly would in a similar situation. Knowing Doug as audiences did in 1930 was to understand how he’d react where caught in a social Waterloo, but being Douglas Fairbanks, he’ll finesse it. How he does so is insight to the actor-entrepreneur’s own style at calming an impasse. See Doug tilt his head to the right as sheepish entreaty, “please forgive” from a boy/man whose exuberance this time went too far. Imagine times Doug got in such a pickle at United Artists board meetings or his “don’t spank” whenever Mary caught him in the jam jar. Ever used the Fairbanks head-tilt to defuse an awkward moment? Looks to me sure-fire, but would it come so easy to the rest of us as it clearly did to Doug? Much here has to do with personality, “Doug just being Doug,” so sure, we’ll forgive him. Here was splendid application of star persona brought to bear on performance where scenes play ultra-shorthand because we know how the man we’ve paid to see will react to any given crisis. Fascinating is Fairbanks himself as far more complex, no complicated, than breezy figures he enacted. Given to periods of depression, sometimes extended, Fairbanks regularly had to pull himself together so Doug could reliably be Doug again, this to settle any question of how capable an “actor” he was. Reaching for the Moon is long since PD, so is all over You Tube.