Viso pallido

I'm not sure if it was intentionally spoofing The Paleface, or it was a rip-off, but The Court Jester borrowed plenty of gags and most of the storyline from Bob Hope's hilarious western. It also payed homage to plenty of other films, like The Adventures of Robin Hood, but look at the similarities to The Paleface: A hapless fool gets accidentally mistaken for an assassin and a spy, his brunette female companion is much tougher than him, and during a scene when he has to fight in a duel, he gets different pieces of advice and gets them all mixed up. Yes, that's right. Bob Hope gets, "He draws from the left, so lean to the right," mixed up with, "The wind's from the east so aim to the west," and, "He crouches when he shoots,so stand on your toes," in a hilarious build-up to the duel. Needless to say, if you love Danny Kaye's "pellet with the poison" scene, you need to rent The Paleface.

In addition to Bob Hope's hilarious antics and endless jokes about not getting any alone time with his lady love, Jane Russell stars as Calamity Jane in this western spoof. She's tough, pretty, and a master sharpshooter. I'll never understand why two years later, when the leading lady dropped out of the picture, Jane Russell wasn't cast in Annie Get Your Gun. And I'll certainly never understand why she wasn't cast in 1953's Calamity Jane. She could have easily been in both of those musicals!

You're going to have to get past some politically incorrect jokes, and the fact that "Buttons and Bows" won Best Song at the Oscars, but this is a very funny movie that will keep you laughing from start to finish.

Jane Russell plays Calamity Jane who is offered pardon on a ten year sentence if she tracks down the culprits who are selling weapons to the Indians. She hitches up with a dim-witted dentist, Bob Hope, so that she can trick the bad guys into thinking that he is the federal agent tracking them down, instead of her. Hope is conned into thinking that he has killed a dozen or so Indians, in one of the funnier scenes. Hope is extremely funny in this comedy western as he struts his stuff through the old west. Most jokes hit their mark, and Russell is as much fun as Calamity Jane as well. The catchy Oscar winning tune "Buttons and Bows" is given a voice by Hope early in the film.

The movie, as I recall, was a smash hit, along with the catchy "Buttons and Bows" musical number. It's also one of Hope's best roles. He's Painless Potter, dentist extraordinaire; just don't let him anywhere near your teeth, or anything else, for that matter.

As bumbler-in-chief of about everything, Painless muffs one funny challenge after another, as fashioned (in part) by the imaginative Frank Tashlin. There's also a couple of Bob's gag writers credited, so the one-liners fly as fast as Tashlin's sight gags (for example, the occasional comic strip blurbs cartoonist Tashlin was noted for). At the same time, the complicated plot is just a handy rack for Hope to hang his polished shtick on. And catch that final gag with Bob's breaking character with an aside to the audience that just about sums things up.

But instead of Crosby to pair up with, Bob has the luscious Jane Russell, and while she may not be as funny as Bing, I love it when Painless mistakes an Indian for her on their wedding night. (Note how the screenplay marries them early on, thereby avoiding censorship problems. Note too how her buxom measurements are downplayed, likely a concession to the expected family audiences.)

I don't know if there's a downside since it's a funnyman romp all the way. Maybe, for me, a downside is finding out from IMDb that Iron Eyes Cody, such a great Indian, is not an Indian at all, but was instead born in Italy. Oh well, it's all Hollywood make-believe anyway, so who cares since it's a darn amusing movie, Italian Indians or no.

This works pretty well as a showcase for Bob Hope's comedic and other talents. While it's hardly anything to take seriously, it allows the ever-likable Hope to be himself and to make use of the opportunities for one-liners, sight gags, and a song or two, including his "Buttons and Bows". The story is exaggerated enough to render moot most questions of believability or character motivation.

Hope is in good form, delivering his lines well and in a style that keeps things light-hearted while not pushing it too far. His role as 'Painless' Potter suits him well, and he is able to carry much of the movie by himself. That is fortunate, since most of the rest of the movie is rather slight. Jane Russell starts off well enough, but it's not long before she has little new to offer, and her character is left with some unfulfilled potential. The other characters are mostly one-dimensional to begin with.

Then again, this kind of feature is not really meant to be analyzed. It gives Hope a chance to deliver his easygoing style of comedy, and should just be taken as such. It also worked well enough to provide the basis for a pretty good sequel.

Bob Hope is in his element in this type of role, here he plays a dopey dentist named Painless Peter Potter, he is the kind of dentist that pulls the wrong teeth and gets high on his own laughing gas. Here he manages to get involved with Calamity Jane {a positively smouldering Jane Russell} and a caper set around rouge Cowboys selling guns and dynamite to the Indians. After mistakenly being taken for a hero after repelling an Indian attack and killing a number of them during said attack, we are taken on this delightful journey as Potter the coward transforms himself into a bravado gun slinger whilst not realising it's actually Calamity pulling his strings and shooting the pistols. It's a smashing comedy that perfectly showcases Hope's immeasurable talent for delivering one liners, in fact few comedians in history can deliver a quip better than Hope could. The chemistry between Russell and Hope is as sharp as the writing, and to cap it all off we get the delightful song Buttons & Bows to hum along to, smashing uplifting comedy, 8/10.