Catching Charlie.

Jerry Lewis at last pulls even with one of his heroes – the great Charles Chaplin – as he fulfills all the roles that Charlie used to fill in his movies: writer, director, producer, editor, star. And SILENT.

THE BELLBOY is a triumph for Jerry Lewis – in all the disciplines cited above. Though he had worn various combinations of all these hats previously (including uncredited directing of segments of his films), BELLBOY was the first Jerry Lewis picture to actually credit him with such a big head—I mean, with a head so big to wear all those hats at once—I mean, in wearing all those hats simultaneously, his head obviously had to be big—uh, I better stop trying to help Jerry…

Just like my pitch on hats, THE BELLBOY is about nothing. In a cold open, the executive producer of Paramount Studios (actually, actor Jack Kruschen) tells us that instead of the romantic comedy or space movie the studio could’ve made, they decided to make this movie with “no story and no plot.”

“Hang on, I’ve got 4 more slapstick moves,
then I’ll be right with you…”

And in the next 70 minutes, Jerry Lewis proceeds to prove it, as he launches from one skit to the next as Stanley the Bellboy, at the busy Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. Filmed in black and white (I presume for cost – less expensive cameras, no color correction needed, easier lighting, etc.), the skits are lightning-strike gags, flitting breezily from Stanley setting up chairs in an auditorium, to answering phones, from Stanley walking dogs, to delivering suitcases, and taking a message to Milton Berle (playing himself – and then cameoing as a bellboy!)…Yet the movie leads to a poignant conclusion that sneaks up on us, proving that even if the movie is about nothing, it is not for nothing.

The Bellboy himself never speaks (or gets the opportunity to), so the movie is a showcase for Jerry’s inimitable physical comedy, honed to razor-sharpness in this outing. Consider one bit where we see him in a steady long shot, simply walk across a huge bare ballroom; he varies his gait as he wonders whether to rush or relax; there are no funny/smart lines of dialogue, no slapstick, no nothing, yet this long echoing walk is hilarious. In VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET, though the movie was an artistic failure, his physical shtick was still a standout aspect. Still, Jerry consulted a ringer in physical comedy – Stan Laurel (of Laurel and Hardy) – for advice on the script. Wikipedia says, “It is unknown if Lewis used any of Laurel’s ideas in the production,” however, Jerry himself has said he used all Stan’s suggestions. And in further homage, named his Bellboy character Stanley! And in further-further homage, Stan Laurel keeps popping up in the film (Laurel lookalike Bill Richmond, who does a great mimicry job, to the point where I used to think it was Laurel himself).

This film’s very existence, and how it came about, is amazing: Jerry had his next film, CINDERFELLA, in the can (produced by Jerry, written and directed by Frank Tashlin), and Paramount wanted to release it as a summer movie (June-July in America), while Jerry – exceedingly proud of that product – wanted to save it for a Christmas release. By Jerry’s account, he made a deal with the insistent Paramount in January 1960 to have a completed film for summer release instead of CINDERFELLA. Thus, when he arrived at the Fontainebleau early that year for his scheduled engagement, he called his film crew as well, and THE BELLBOY was created in herks and jerks as Jerry fulfilled his performance contract with the hotel, whilst being allowed to film in and around it when he was not onstage (saving on location scouting, set dressing, production costs, et al). It wasn’t exactly guerrilla, but it wasn’t exactly big-budget studio finesse either. And all of a sudden, Jerry Lewis was now not only the star, writer, producer, et al, but the director as well! No more skulking in the shadows of the guys in berets and megaphones – now he had full onscreen credit as captain of the ship.

That’s why the film feels so meta; it is in on its own gag. Never more apparent than when Jerry Lewis himself arrives at the Fontainebleau, with a massive retinue, checking into the hotel prior to his engagement, in the film’s funniest segment.

As director influences, Jerry cites Frank Tashlin (SON OF PALEFACE, ARTISTS AND MODELS), Norman Taurog (BOYS TOWN, THE STOOGE) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (THE GHOST AND MRS MUIR, ALL ABOUT EVE) – but now he would surpass them as an influential filmmaker in his own right, by inventing something which no filmmaker these days can do without – a playback monitor. Around this period, Jerry revolutionized the WAY movies were shot by creating what he called the “video assist monitor,” which was simply a video mounted on the camera, recording everything the camera was shooting; after a take, the director and cinematographer could view the take; this process meant the director didn’t have to guess how good the take was, and it also cut down on the number of safety takes. Remember, this was at a time when filmstock had to be sent to a lab to develop before you could view it! The playback monitor seems so obvious now because it is an integral part of filmmaking; like, as integral as a frickin’ camera. But before the King of Comedy invented it, filmmakers were eyeballing and guesstimating through the Golden Age of Hollywood!

THE BELLBOY would benefit from this invention, with its speed of production and economy of takes.

As Jerry tells us about his filmmaking ethos: “I was in every dept. I was in everybody’s hair… I spent so much time in the makeup department, the miniature department, wardrobe, sets, art direction, you name it – I had to learn everything! And I was having a marvelous time, learning about the film business, and learning my craft.”

As was Charlie – into everything. As Charlie’s son Sydney remarks, “If he could have done so, he would have sewn the costumes…” The only thing Charlie Chaplin could really hold over Jerry was the quantity of his written/directed/starring works, otherwise, with THE BELLBOY, Jerry had at last pulled even with one of cinema’s greats.

And his best is yet to come…

END

The Shrinking of Gore’s PLANET.

There are parts in VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET where Jerry Lewis astounds us with his physical art, yet that is not enough to save this attempted comedy from an atrocious script that exudes astronomical ignorance, and by that I mean: ignorance in astronomy… or maybe, also…?

Jerry is Kreton, from an alien race that lives “on the other side of the universe” (whatever that means), who revels in visiting Earth against the orders of his supervisor, Mr. Delton (John Williams – not the composer, just an old That Guy). On this particular visit, Kreton befriends a middle-American family and stays with them a few days, with the approval of Mr. Delton, on the proviso Kreton only studies them and doesn’t get involved. But Kreton starts helping the family with his omnipotent alien magic, and seemingly gets entangled romantically with the daughter, so Mr. Delton removes Kreton’s powers. It’s played as “a lesson to Kreton” to show him how painful it is to be an Earthling – but Kreton never once wished to be an Earthling. Unless I missed something.

Also, Kreton maintains all love and sex has been excised from his species, so how does he end up desiring the family daughter Ellen (Joan Blackman)? Or is it a simulacrum of desire that he cannot comprehend is not real? So many interesting questions never posed or answered. Kreton gets hubristic, thinking “falling in love” won’t lead to any trouble, and that Mr. Delton won’t be the wiser of Kreton contravening his conditions – all while being part of a culture where he KNOWS he can be spied on 24/7 by Mr. Delton, who can intervene with magic at any time. Which Delton does, zapping Kreton’s powers away. And in doing so, causes Kreton’s trouble. Is anyone paying attention to the contradictions? Or did I miss something else?

VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET was originally a Broadway play written by Gore Vidal, which starred none other than Eddie Mayehoff (Jerry’s father in THAT’S MY BOY)! Earning three Tony noms, it also aired as a TV play in May 1955, and was apparently an intelligent satire on Earth’s self-destructive nature and how aliens misapprehend that nature, the tagline being: A visitor from another planet arrives on Earth and seems anxious to provoke a war – “one thing you people do really well”. (Almost THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, 1951.) Which might explain why Vidal was incensed at Jerry Lewis being tapped for the film version. He knew his concept would be shrunken down to a mere nub of its original intent. But if only Jerry had followed through on his GEISHA BOY introspection and made VISIT faithful to its source material, that might have elevated his cache as a serious filmmaker, and might have saved this confused mess of a dog turd.

Bland, irritating, minimally funny, screenwriters Edmund Beloin and Henry Garson, with director Norman Taurog (who did six other Martin-Lewis movies), scream their inadequacy of astronomy dialect with almost every line of “space” dialogue. In the beatnik bar (which is the most cogent sequence for being so “far out”) someone asks where he can get silver space-duds like Kreton’s, and Kreton replies, “Well, do you know where the Milky Way is?” and points up somewhere. (Daddy-O, you’re IN the Milky Way!) “Well, you turn right at the second nebula” (they obviously don’t have any clue how amorphous a nebula is), “and it’s the third planet at the end of the star cluster.” (Jargon they picked up from an encyclopedia supposed to sound space-y.) To fully deconstruct even this one sentence, we’d have to re-educate the writers from kindergarten: How do we find the third planet past a star cluster if all the stars have planets too? And planets don’t float in arbitrary deep space – isn’t the planet you speak of orbiting a star itself, and doesn’t that make the planet’s star part of the cluster? It’s like Han Solo saying, “It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.” Bullshit dialogue that someone thought sounded like legit space jive. Speaking of which, Kreton’s age is “21 million light years” – and we thought Han was the first doofus to confuse distance with time.

As a youth, I was inclined to think GEISHA BOY was a slow-pacer, and now appreciate it for its depth, whereas VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET was a great lark when younger, but now I realize it is purely for kids and non-thinking adults.

Fred Clark is the father (veteran of two other Martin-Lewis adventures), and Lucille Ball’s own Mr. Mooney, Gale Gordon, over-emotes as a scared neighbor. Buddy Rich cameos as a beatnik drummer.

Tangling with her boyfriend Conrad (tiresome, overacting Earl Holliman), on the couch, I did a double-take when Ellen actually said the line, “Conrad, as you may have suspected, I find you sexually attractive. But you just don’t have any money.” In a 1960 movie! With her mother in the room! Also – blatantly coming right out and admitting she’s a gold-digger. With her mother in the room! Also, Conrad accosting her openly and begging to get married, if not, laid – with her mother in the room! Our culture has moved too far for me to discern exactly how inappropriate or not these kids are being, or whether it’s just another poorly-written scene. Later someone says, “We do think an awful lot about sex around here – but it only happens when no one is looking.” Is this a Jerry Lewis movie, or are these lines left over from Gore Vidal?

Kreton’s powers would be a precursor to the Marvel movies that would come 55 years later, where he can do anything the plot calls for, without any rationale: he can time travel to any point in Earth’s history, disintegrate objects, levitate cars, make a camera spurt milk in someone’s face, tune in on people’s thoughts and enable the pets to talk. While he tries to explain some powers, there is no explanation for these others, so why bother explaining any of it? It’s magic who cares fuck you.

For context, this film was one of the first to poke fun at alien beings, or view them as inept pratfallers; released into a movie climate packed with malign extra-terrestrials, like the aforementioned EARTH STOOD STILL, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951), WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953), and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956)…

When Mr. Delton takes away Kreton’s powers, there is no lesson learned: no pondering on what sacrifice Kreton might have made to retain true love; no yearning on the love he lost by choosing to fly away with Mr. Delton. Just a nothing ending; all he’s learned in his time studying humans, is that he doesn’t want to be without his powers.

We don’t like seeing him much without his powers of comedy either…

END

Men making man-musk.

Koo-Koo Eleven.

They’re not master thieves – they’re ex-paratroopers. And they’re going to rob five Las Vegas casinos. Koo-koo, baby!

Frank Sinatra is Danny Ocean in OCEAN’S 11, a breezy heist flick that is too cool for its own Camel filtered cigarette, too slick for its own Brylcreemed pompadour, too koo-koo kutchoo for its own swingin’ hep cats.

Like his character Ocean led a paratrooper outfit during WWII, Sinatra leads the 1960’s version of the Rat Pack (although they prefer the term The Summit). Core members of the Pack/Danny Ocean’s team – Dean Martin (playing Ocean’s right-hand man), Peter Lawford (as the rich playboy with a doting mother whom he can call for “play money”), Joey Bishop (as the Ringo) and Sammy Davis Jr. (as the Pack’s beard, so that people wouldn’t know they were spoiled, privileged, racist white guys. D’ya think their other moniker – The Clan – might have tipped people off?)

Together with other unofficial members of The Rat Pack (Henry Silva, Norman Fell, Richard Conte, Buddy Lester, et al), Ocean’s plan is to heist the five casinos along the Las Vegas strip on New Year’s Eve, planning it like a military operation. Akim Tamiroff is discomfited overlord Spyros, the gang’s funder.

Towering Cesar Romero is Duke Santos, a “connected” guy who dates Lawford’s mum. His interference in the aftermath of the heist would be the trigger that causes Danny Ocean to make one fatal mistake in his plan.

Rat Pack “mascots” Angie Dickinson and Shirley Maclaine fill out the female color. Dickinson’s role as Danny’s ex, is that of an independent strong woman, but in the end comes off as nothing more than a throwaway plaything of a powerful man (especially with that waist the size of a wrist); Maclaine’s cameo is purely juvenile fun.

The most interesting parts of OCEAN’S 11 are “getting the band back together” – the ex-soldiers being recruited from civilian life. It would culminate in that iconic shot of the Eleven around a pool table, swearing an oath to the heist. (This sequence was another of the many instances Frank would overrule his director on a film – here, veteran Lewis Milestone (ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT) gets the Frank treatment, when Frank insists they got it on one take and refused to do another.) The actual heist is a low-tech affair, so is dated beyond snoring belief, with lots of sneaking around in plain sight, crossing wires in fuse boxes and spraying door knobs with ultraviolet paint. The excitement is almost bearable.

Unlike the many copycat films that would follow OCEANS 11, including the 2001 remake with Clooney and Pitt, Vegas looks so easy to rob that a few guys who jump outa planes could do it. Just create a blackout from the one telegraph line that feeds the city, then “cross the wires” on the emergency lighting so that when it’s meant to flip on, it will instead unlock the vault doors. Oh, and make sure the vaults are guarded by rickety old guys with no guns. Koo-koo baby!

This was back in the day when all of Vegas’s cash was stored in basic, off-the-rack wall-safes. And the Vegas police department was one doughy guy and five grunting apes. Four white guys on Ocean’s team boost the cash and stow it in the garbage cans of each hotel (again, back in the day when major casinos’ garbage was just housed in steel trash cans from Sylvester the cat cartoons), awaiting the black guy disguised as a garbage man to gather all the money bags in a garbage truck, take them to the dump, then go rooting through the garbage to pick them out. Not racist at all.

…Onto the next roaring, rogering, gorging and puking…

The last plot twist is hilariously bittersweet – a sucker punch to the smarmy faces and glib hepness of our anti-heroes – and the final shot is the movie’s most blasé of its many self-aware gags, as the Rat Pack dejectedly file past a casino marquee heralding Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop.

Proving that crime might not pay, but it can be koo-koo, baby…

END

Stay Lost.

Dinosaurs! Uh, no, just komodos and iguanas with horns and spikes duct-taped to them….

Didn’t matter when you were ten. And THE LOST WORLD (the second film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle‘s 1912 novel) is definitely FOR ten-year-olds, seemingly made BY ten-year-olds.

Been decades since I read the book, but screenwriter-director Irwin Allen takes Conan Doyle’s exciting meat and potatoes story, changes it unnecessarily to accommodate his interminable padding (the gripping “volunteers” segment, the compelling “arguing-over-taking-a-woman” vignette, the tension-wracked “tentacles-that-don’t-kill-anyone” obstacle, the thrilling “walking-slowly-through-the-dead-dinosaur-ribcage” scene – there’s more padding here than in Kiera Knightley’s bra) – then Allen adds cheese and plastic.

THE CHEESE:

• As Professor Challenger, Claude Rains overacts into leading an expedition to a prehistoric Amazonian plateau, accompanied by:
• Michael Rennie (smug overactor, because he made the Earth stand still for one day)
• David Hedison (actionboy overactor, who would soon VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA)
• Fernando Lamas (Spanish overactor, who does a mean Ricardo Montalban; father of Lorenzo; some kind of gay subplot with him and another guy in a locket together – ?)
• Richard Haydn (British overactor – best known for helping Chris Plummer and Julie Andrews escape nazis in THE SOUND OF MUSIC)
• Jill St. John (stereotypical woman overactor, whom Challenger doesn’t want on the expedition because she’ll bring her girl germs and pink luggage)
• a puling Jay Novello (who’s Italian, but playing Mexican – I think? Who knows?)
• a teen model (heartthrob overactor, taking time off from a Frankie Avalon beach shoot)
• the hot cavegirl (Vitina Marcus, with her animal-skin miniskirt designed by Tommy Hilfiger – d’ya think she’s wearing undies? In 1967, she would become The Girl From The Green Dimension, who found Dr. Smith “handsome pretty handsome.”)

Voyage To The Bottom Of The C-List

THE PLASTIC:

Spikes, horns, sails, spinal plates, head frills – all lackadaisically taped to plodding komodo dragons, soporific iguanas and an unfortunate caiman, which made them look like dinosaurs to people with the intelligence of cavemen.

We can expect bad effects from pre-CGI movies, but THE LOST WORLD fails for many other reasons: foremost being its blatant disinformation, voiced via its ignorant characters, and by association, the ignorant filmmakers.

After being “chased” by a forced-perspective komodo with a taped-on frill (roaring like an explosion coming through a tunnel), Challenger says, “We’ve just been visited by a Jurassic Brontosaurus!” If I can stop my head from exploding in outrage, I’ll outline why this statement proves Irwin Allen’s braincase is as small as outmoded thinking perceived dinosaur braincases to be: Brontosaurus (correctly termed Apatosaurus) was known since the late 1870s. Even schoolkids in 1960 knew Brontosaurus. (Exactly how retarded does Allen think his audience?) And if you knew Brontosaurus, firstly, you knew this sleek, splay-footed lizard looked NOTHING like the bulky, tree-limbed Brontosaurus. You also knew it was a herbivore, and herbivores don’t chase people to eat them – unless they are taunted by magnificent overacting.

At least other stop-motion dinosaur movies of the time displayed a level of art and ingenuity, in trying to portray dinosaurs at the state that science knew them. The great Willis O’Brien is listed as an effects technician, but I think he just lent his imprimatur to this farce, and let the buffoons in the effects department go nuts with animals and glue, while he sat in the corner and read a good book. Truly, these people just don’t care! It’s like that maverick mediocrity Bert I. Gordon in KING DINOSAUR (1955), calling a forced-perspective iguana a Tyrannosaurus rex and expecting everyone in his audiences to squint real hard.

In this movie’s defense, it came during an unenlightened age, when biological science took a step backwards and started regarding dinosaurs as big dopey versions of modern lizards. Very soon, it would be realized that dinosaurs were not reptiles, but in the Archosaurs clade. They resembled reptiles as much as this movie resembled JURASSIC PARK. Their physiology, movement, bone structure, habits, appearance – were nothing like reptiles.

After the eight mismatched explorers stand around yammering for a good part of the film’s running time, all standing facing the fourth wall to get their screentime on like an episode of FRIENDS, they are kidnapped by white-skinned natives who look suspiciously like extras who can’t act.

The hot cavegirl helps them find a path out of their cave prison by helpfully showing it to them right in front of their faces. (We wonder what axe she’s grinding against her own people to aid the intruders’ escape. Someone that hot would be spoiled bitchless in cave-culture – unless the gene to perceive hotness wasn’t invented yet and she was considered mutated.)

Naff subplots about diamonds, past expeditions, Lamas sacrificing his life to save the others by letting a doll that looks like him fall into some lava…enough cheese and plastic to make a modern corporate theater hotdog proud.

END

…And the Wind Cries Jesus.

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind; And the foolish shall be servant to the wise of heart.
— Proverbs 11:29

Video stores in Kansas must have burned their copies of INHERIT THE WIND. (Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.)

Back when fundamentalist Christians used to carpet-hymn the streets and gather at grassy knolls to filibuster hellfire (at least, that’s how dem ignint folks does it in this movie), the thorny battle of Evolution versus Creation was met in Tennessee at the infamous “Scopes Monkey Trial” of 1925. INHERIT THE WIND is based on that trial and its sociopolitical shockwaves; though it displays kinetic potential, the film falters due to misapprehension of its own subject matter, and characters rendered in hyperbole.

It’s amusing to note that all the character names of the principals in the movie resonate rhythmically with their real-world counterparts, hence Spencer Tracy plays lawyer Henry Drummond (read Clarence Darrow), Fredric March is fundamentalist Mathew Harrison Brady (read William Jennings Bryan), Gene Kelly is reporter E.K. Hornbeck (read H.L. Mencken) and Dick York (forever stereotyped as “the original Darrin”) is schoolteacher Bertram T. Cates (read John T. Scopes).

Drummond is summoned to a small Tennessee town to defend schoolteacher Cates for teaching outlawed Evolution Theory, facing off against Brady in a trial which embodied a lot more than just a legal infraction. At the time of the real-life trial, nothing less than the future of intelligent thought was at stake.

In an attempt to test the limits of the newly-instated, controversial Butler Act (of March 1925, “…prohibiting the teaching of the Evolution Theory in all the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of Tennessee… and to provide penalties for the violations thereof…”), the American Civil Liberties Union proposed a “willing scapegoat” to undergo prosecution. John T. Scopes stepped forward as that scapegoat, though this aspect was not made clear in the movie, where we are simply shown Cates (the ad hoc Scopes) being arrested during his biology lesson, seemingly for no reason other than the town being a bunch of Jesus freaks.

Though it is sincere in its debunking of Creationist dumbo-jumbo, INHERIT proves itself more of an entertaining diversion than an historical document whereby, in an artful dodge, the world-girdling, bio-environmental process that it rallies for – Evolution itself – is never explained! By 1960, Evolution was generally accepted as doctrine, so the word “Evolutionist” is used in the movie’s context merely to represent Intellectuals, or Forward-Thinkers, whilst the word “Creationists” represents the Close-Minded contingent.

Poffolution

One stuttering schoolboy expounds on an unintelligible version of the process of Evolution, while subpoenaed “experts” are denied their testimony by the court – obviously to avoid bogging the movie with technicalities and esoteric jargon – yet isn’t this “dumbing down” omission exactly what this movie is against? To cry out against ignorance and then to pander to it by not educating is the height of hypocrisy, at least from an Intellectualist’s point of view. Here the movie takes a hit in the Intellectual cahonnes – if only the Fundamentalists were smart enough to see it that way. The irony is that they can’t, and that even if they did, to rail against this movie for “keeping them ignorant” must necessarily grant an admission of ignorance in the first place – a shortcoming which they feel their god has cured them of…

There are no reasons given for being supportive of either camp – you come into this movie as either cognizant of Evolutionary theory or an Ignoramus who believes in talking snakes. And you’ll probably go out the same way…

The movie leans so heavily in favor of Evolutionists (rendering Creationists as blathering, Bible-bent fanatics) that in stacking the deck so obviously, it makes for a less convincing argument for Evolution! Therefore, any “logic” that Drummond displays in the courtroom is cursory at best, because we know the crazy-eyed Jesus-freak Brady is sure to put his foot in his mouth – because the script will make it so! The smart Evolutionists in the movie will gladden their equivalents in the audience and the exaggerated hellfire-filibustering Creationists in the movie will either gladden the fanatic Bible-thumpers in the audience or cause them to be even more averse to the Evolutionists’ message due to the unfair hyperbole.

As usual, we’re ALL preaching to our respective choirs.

As every generation must face its own Scopes Monkey Trial (Kansas: the lights are on, but the Intelligent Designer ain’t home), stupidity will never go out of fashion. Thus, neither will this movie.

Performances by Tracy and March are passionate, if not a tad over-acted, with Gene Kelly scathingly loquacious in one of his rare dramatic roles. While Darrin Stevens perfects that look of a man who has just seen a fruity Uncle Arthur appear in his living room with a bathing suit on.

As in the real Scopes trial, the Evolutionist ultimately loses the case legally, but wins intellectually, promoting the ideal of Scientific Method over blind faith. Mirroring real world events, the William Jennings Bryan creationist character has a mental breakdown and is carried from the court – in real life, Bryan would die one week after the trial. The Clarence Darrow evolutionist character would be awarded the last licks, “An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral, and the advance of man’s knowledge is a greater miracle than all the sticks turned to snakes or the parting of the waters.”

Tell that to Kansas.

END