Once Upon a Honeymoon

Writing music for a television show ought to be a glamorous profession but it seems the songmeisters of yesterday's TV variety shows lived in modest houses with outdated furnishings and crappy appliances. Jeff is one such unlucky composer, but he's in a good mood. He and his wife, Mary, are about to set off on a long-delayed honeymoon. That is, until the phone rings. It seems the diva slated to appear on the show wants a new song and wants it now. No honeymoon until new song is in the can! What's a young musician to do? In the face of this bad news, Jeff is up to smoking the better part of a carton of cigarettes but not much more. Luckily, Jeff's flamboyant guardian angel is loitering on the roof with a bag of nose candy, and Mary's got a fixation with telephones...

Phones, and their place in the interior design of the 50's, are about as close as this short comes to having a point. While Jeff struggles with his new assignment, Mary wanders about the house, wishing for updates to her decor. Every upgrade includes a new phone, although I suspect a phone in the bathroom would be a little weird.

This short is good, if pointless, fun. The songs are catchy, and Mary is quite fetching when she's done up in her evening wear. There's no reason given for why Jeff and Mary went a whole year with no honeymoon. However, given that one of the lines in Mary's wishing song is, "I wish that refrigerator door would close and stay closed," maybe they were waiting for a time when neither of them was down with salmonella.

The MST3k gang give Once Upon a Honeymoon a good working over. This was the short that taught me never to drink water while watching MST3k.

I didn't quite get what this was. It's about an angel named Wilbur that lands on a couple's roof and stays up there sprinkling dust that apparently goes through their roof into their house. Meanwhile the couple, Mary and Jeff are struggling because Jeff needs to write a song so they can go on their honeymoon. Then Mary bursts into a long musical number out of nowhere that seems to be advertising for telephones. They end up finding Jeff's song by turning the telephone dial, which somehow makes him think of this song, so they go on a honeymoon. It really makes no sense and I'm not quite sure what the plot actually is. The angel did absolutely nothing except he dropped dust on the telephone, and it really could've been shortened to not have the angel. One particularly funny scene takes place over a couple hours and it seems Jeff has smoked about 40 cigarettes. This is a really bad short.

My rating: BOMB/****. 15 mins.

I have to agree with the other comment! I had no clue what the whole short was about. I thought that Mary just had an unnatural obsession with the telephone. I had no idea that it was a Bell Telephone commercial. And the whole idea with Sonya and Gordon just made the short even dumber. But, the beginning of the short where you have all the angels up on "Cloud Seven" just adds insult to injury. The short by itself is awful which is why I only gave it a 1. However, with the MST3K team adding commentary and humor to it, it's definitely a 10! Hopefully anyone else who reads this comment will find it helpful! And I really wish that MST3K would come back!

Included in MST3K's Shorts Vol. 3, this short was produced for Bell Telephone to show how the telephone can help out in everyday situations, or something - it's really hard to tell what the film's message was supposed to be. A young couple is ready to leave on a (postponed one year already) honeymoon, but they can't until the husband re-writes the "dreaming" song for copper-bottomed ballerina diva Sonia. Thanks to inspiration from the rotary dial of the telephone the husband, after smoking what appears to be three packs of cigarettes, is able to finish the song and the young couple is finally able to leave on their honeymoon. The telephone had so little to do with the story that Tom Servo's comment at the end of the film pretty-much sums it up for me: "What the hell was that all about?"

A Fifties couple (choreographer Ward Ellis and dancer Virginia Gibson as songsmith Jeff and his wife Mary) are on their way out the door for their honeymoon, delayed one year already, when the show's producer Gordon (long-time character actor Alan Mowbray) calls up with bad news - their show's diva Sonya doesn't like the tune to a big number, and demands an immediate rewrite! Jeff, predictably, suffers from writer's block being asked to produce a new tune on demand - so supernaturally adorable Mary goes into the ::shudder:: outdated kitchen and begins singing about the modern kitchen she wishes she had, complete with telephone -

Speaking of "supernatural", there's an Angel on their roof, Wilbur, who looks and acts like Charles Nelson Reilly playing Sammy Glick, but who is actually longtime B-movie star Chick Chandler. He's been sent to expedite Jeff's and Mary's honeymoon - good thing he has an eight- ball of coke (er, "bag of magic dust") handy, hmmm?

This bit of charming/mindroasting whimsy/insanity was intended to market Bell Telephone's new color-coordinated phones, which could match the decor of any room and came in a variety of shapes as well, but that particular selling point is buried in a supernatural musical comedy one-act that looks like a demented precursor to THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW. Directed by legendary dance choreographer/director Gower Champion, it's remarkably well done, the script has genuine bits of wit to it, the music is superior to its purpose as a marketing tool, the cast is top-notch and game - and as Tom Servo wondered when it aired on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, "What the Hell was that about, anyway?"

Watched on its own its charms this short might not be appreciated, but watched with Mike and the 'Bots, it's a classic of WTF?ery for me. Watch it yourself, and see how you feel....