Mon héros

This fun 1948 comedy by Edward Sedgwick is like a cross between "Uncivil Warriors" (the 1935 Three Stooges short with the stooges playing Capt. Dodge, Lt. Duck, and Lt. Hyde) and "Advance to the Rear" (a 1964 comedy starring Glenn Ford and Stella Stevens). It is not quite as zany as the Stooge classic but has more physical comedy than Ford's film, including stunts designed by Buster Keaton.

Red Skelton plays Aubrey Filmore, a bumbling hotel bellboy in 1865 St. Louis, who spends most of his working hours tracking down imaginary spies among the guests. Aubrey's bumbling pays off one afternoon when he accidentally knocks out a guest who turns out to be a legendary Confederate spy called the "grey spider". His good fortune continues when a southern belle, Sallyann Weatherby (Arlene Dahl) mistakes him for the spider. Wanting to exploit these events, the Union secret service gives him phony plans to pass along to the enemy and instructions to pass along to another union agent behind enemy lines. Predictably Aubrey gets the two packets of information mixed up and places the union agent and himself in jeopardy.

"A Southern Yankee" is quite funny if not especially noteworthy, the cast is solid and the production design of good quality.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

As a fan of old films I always look for the character actors. This film has a lot of notable ones: John Ireland, George Colouris, Reed Hadley (what a voice), Art Baker, Louise Beavers, Charles Dingle, Paul Harvey, and many others. This movie has a mix of slapstick, stunt gags, screwball comedy, and one-liners like "Morning Electra". I must admit I enjoy these no-limit comedies.

Red Skelton and Bob Hope and Danny Kaye often did scaredy-cat but bluffing buffoon type characters in films. Skelton expanded this by adding his usual rubber-faced over-reacting but he managed to get away with it.

THE GENERAL is my favorite movie of all time while Red Skelton is not a favorite of mine (I don't hate him, he's just not my cup of tea), so I am ashamed to admit I went into A SOUTHERN YANKEE fully expecting to hate it. To my surprise, it was not bad.

Though often called a "remake" of the Buster Keaton classic, A SOUTHERN YANKEE's plot is entirely different: Skelton plays a bellboy/aspiring secret agent who bumbles onto a real Confederate spy plot. General farce ensues, with only a few gags lifted from Keaton's earlier film. For what it is, A SOUTHERN YANKEE is quite enjoyable. Even some of the dumber gags had me howling.

I remember Red mostly from TV in the 50s. To my knowledge I had not seen even one of his films until this one a few years ago.

I found it amusing and well worth the viewing time.

It's also in something of a counterpoint to most of his TV sketch comedy which was too broad and pointless to me even as a child.

One of the interesting features of this film was that it was set in the American Civil War and was mostly a comedy. The film was produced in the late 40s (I think) in a period when most - if not all - Civil War films were completely dramatic ("Gone with the Wind" had a few pointedly amusing lines from Rhett Butler but was a serious film.) The Civil War by then was some 80 years in the past, but the South was still very much the South, so to lampoon the South in any way (even if also the Union received comic dusting) would seem to me as quite a stretch by the producers. Like they were willing to write the South off their distribution lists.

Bottom line, Red was much better than I can ever remember seeing him and that alone was worth it.

This movie is about a hotel bell boy who wants to be a soldier in the Civil War (Red Skeleton's role). By sheer luck,he becomes a spy (Northern spy pretending to be a Southern). The flag carrying scene (I won't give it away anymore) is definitely one of the funniest scenes I have ever seen. My only critique is that the last part of the movie was not quite as humorous as the first part (at least in my opinion). However, this movie is definitely worth seeing.