Falsa Felicidade

If you've ever wondered where the sit com comes from look no further. This little programmer, which clocks in at almost exactly an hour, is nothing more than a series of set gags (or situations) which the lead players have to play out. The main characters exist as the narrative thread to hold together the otherwise unrelated gags. This is virtually a pilot for early fifties sit coms lacking only a laugh track and commercial breaks. It reminds me of Sam Goldwyn's premonition about television: Why should people go out and pay to see bad movies when they can stay home and watch them for free.

Jack Haley is the lead here and Anne Jeffreys, before her fondly remembered sit com fame in TOPPER, is the wife who phones in her straight role. (Actually if you watch those Toppers today you discover that she has zero acting ability and is barely able to pull a face as the director clears the deck to line up one of her high school level reaction shots. Really public access grade comedy acting.) The script so convolutely turns in on itself that long time partners Alan Carney and Wally Brown never appear in a scene together. There is a doubling and even tripling of that old Checkov quote about the pistol seen on the mantelpiece in act one having to be fired in act three. Since the whole plot is: set up - gag, set up - gag, it should come as no surprise that the ending has somehow, in an almost astronomically surrealist sort of way, set up in the first scene. It's not done consciously or artistically, as when Laurel and Hardy carrying a piano meet an ape while crossing a tight rope across some mountains or just about anything done by Fields, but because of a certain smooth professional incompetency. It leads to pretty much the same place, however.

Once upon a time, one or another of the short subject manufacturers would turn out short comedies driven by one personality like Leon Errol (or Edgar Kennedy) and this film is just an afterthought wedged in between that era and television. (I have subsequently learned that the film's chief writer, one Charles E. Roberts, was the writer of the Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy shorts and many others too. Apparently, this was "his thing".) I mean, Carney and Brown could have been paired up, but it is possible they were in an earlier version of the script, as a more comical threat, but a different direction called for a different script and their pairing would have produced less menace in their roles and so their roles were switched around for a straighter menace for the leads to play off of. As long as they were already under contract. Just switch. Maybe. But its all that arbitrary.

The rating of this film when I saw it was a five which is about right. It aims low and hits its mark and there is some nostalgia value and its no more a waste of time than most TV today anyway. And its free.

Jack Carroll (Jack Haley) buys a ridiculous military surplus amphibious vehicle and a mine detector to go treasure hunting near Reno which will finance his rabbit farm. He and his wife Eleanor (Anne Jeffreys) have their friends over for dinner, but their friends are a non-stop bickering couple. They pretend to fight during their next gathering, but it turns into a real fight over Eleanor's mother. While she runs off to her mother, he decides to go to Reno without informing her. He stops at a Reno bank where a bank robbery happens to take place. The robbery crew buries the loot near a cave which is exactly where Jack ends up digging.

It's convoluted. It's way too convenient. It's a wacky screwball comedy with more misunderstandings than a bad sitcom. It really goes over the top when the sheriff pulls off his pants. It's silly non-sense and would fit in a lot of silly non-sense sitcoms.

Wally Brown and wife are so unpleasant to each other when they visit with Jack Haley and Anne Jeffreys that the latter couple decide to behave the same way when they return the visit as an example of comedy plotting. They are so abusive that Miss Jeffreys goes home to mother, while Haley prepares to go on vacation to Reno to hunt for treasure with his new metal detector. First, though, he is the unwitting witness of a bank robbery. When he gets there, the robbers have preceded him, and buried the loot, which he promptly discovers, and they try to get him to shut up as a witness by having Iris Adrian claim to be his wife, while his luggage gets mixed up with Myrna Dell's, who has a jealous, pugnacious husband in Matt McHugh.

If it sounds like three or four shorts colliding, that's because where writer Charles Roberts spent most of his time at RKO, and director Leslie Goodwins was no stranger to the department. The individual set pieces are very well run by the practiced farceurs and that kept me smiling. While I was annoyed by Haley playing his nebbishy comedy character yet one more time, Miss Jeffreys is a delight at less than half his age.

Jack Haley is goofy but sympathetic as a dreamer named Jack out to strike it rich. Armed with a metal detector and an old map, Jack heads to a Reno dude ranch determined to find buried treasure on his vacation.

A gang of bank robbers, a dogged deputy sheriff, and marital misunderstandings complicate his plans and it all adds up to a wild if somewhat cluttered 60 minutes.

Anne Jeffreys is fine as Jack's wife Eleanor. Early in the story, Jack and Eleanor stage a fake argument for the benefit of another bickering couple; not surprisingly, it turns into a real fight and Eleanor goes home to mother. Will they get it straightened out before the end of the picture?

Iris Adrian is funny as a young woman named Bunny who is amused to find herself mistaken for Jack's wife. The supporting cast also features energetic performances from lesser-known actors like Constance Purdy (hilarious as the stereotypical raging mother-in-law) and one Matt Willis as the deputy sheriff who won't give up.

One funny gag: Haley hangs up the phone…but the angry shouts of the mother-in-law on the other end cause the receiver to pop off the hook, bounce into a pitcher of water, and start the water boiling.

Haley, at the center of it all, is fun to watch. His mostly clueless yet very earnest character makes us smile but has us rooting for him too.

For its first third or so, this resembles the very corniest of short subjects from its day, or earlier. It elicits more groans than laughs.

Jack Haley has a nice comic touch as we all know but the material here is from hunger.

About a third of the way into it, Haley ends up in the title city. Marital squabbling is replaced by bank robbers and confused identities. When the Robbers, Haley, his wife, a sailor and his wife, the sheriff, and assorted others are running from room to room, it turns into a sort of French farce. Not a funny French farce, mind you. More "oh not THAT again" than "ooh-la-la." The supporting cast is amusing, in a very broad way. Haley's mother-in-law, an actress unknown to me, is a monster as intended and is quite funny.

It seems like an older crowd, however, and somehow the lovely young Anne Jeffries is made up or directed, or both, to seem tired and worn down like the others.

It's not offensive in any way. And I sat through the whole thing. So I guess the real joke was on me.