So You Want to Be a Musician

So You Want to Be a Musician (1953)

** (out of 4)

Lesser entry in the long-running series has Joe McDoakes trying to play in a classical band but one mix up after another has him thrown out. He ends up taking any job he can but gets back with the big guys just in time for a major concert. Will things work out okay? If you're familiar with the series then you'll know the answer to that but unless you're a major fan then there's not too much of a reason to check this one out. I was really disappointed in this one, which could be the least entertaining out of all of them up to this point. I found the writing to be pretty lazy as there weren't too many jokes thrown in and the ones we do get are all pretty boring and routine. I really don't recall laughing a single time, which was a first for this series with me. Even George O'Hanlon seems to be rather bored here and just going through the numbers.

AUTHOR GEORGE PLYMPTON once said that the most difficult thing that he'd ever tied to do was playing the Cymbal with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Being the guy who made his by writing about such disparate occupations as Musician and Pro Football Quarterback, he has been dubbed a sort of real life Walter Mitty. It was his book, PAPER LION, about his flirtation with being a "Quarterback" at the 1963 Detroit Lions training camp.

IT IS WITH that in mind that we run straight at today's honored reviewed movie short.

UTILIZING SOME SNIPPETS of Classical Music from guys like Liszt and Rossini, the credits roll without the usual theme song. We cut to a rehearsal of a small orchestra under an obviously stern martinet (Maurice Cass). Everything in this particular movement of the William Tell Overture goes off without a hitch; that is until the very end, when Bassoon Player, (you guessed it), Joe Mc Doakes cannot hit the final note.

DEJECTED, DEPRESSED and DISHEARTENED, he leaves the orchestra in need of another gig. The usual sort of illogical happenstance befalls him after unsuccessfully trying to remedy his situation. His frustrated meandering takes him to a music instructor, a pawn shop and as a "Gypsy Violinist".

PERHAPS AS COMMENTARY for "Modern Music" we also see him performing in a joint featuring Bee-Bop and infested with Teens.

WE SHOULDN'T WISH to offend or neglect anyone here. So let's hear it for the cast, here featuring: Fritz Feld, Maurice Cass, Chester Conklin, Johnny Duncan, Jack Mower, Fred Kelsey, Shep Houghton, Paul Maxey and Phillip Van Zandt.

THIS SHORT WAS produced to be different and succeeded. The fracturing of the Classical pieces is somewhat reminiscent of that being done with the likes of MICKEY MOUSE (FANTASIA & SILLY SYMPHONIES), BUGS BUNNY and WOODY WOODPECKER.

THIS JUST REINFORCES our old contention about the JOE MC DOAKES Series; that being that it is basically a live action cartoon.

This Joe McDoakes short is very odd in that he really is essentially an entirely different character--no wife, no job at the office and no goofy friends or neighbors. Instead, Joe is in an orchestra playing the bassoon. Unfortunately, he's not very good at it and is soon tossed out of the group. So he tries his hand at playing the violin at a restaurant and eventually gets a chance to rejoin an orchestra...playing the cymbals.

The biggest problem with this short, apart from the total lack of continuity is that it's really not all that funny. My assumption is that Warner Brothers tried a film like this due to the success of Bugs Bunny as well as Tom & Jerry doing similar sorts of classical nonsense. Overall, a disappointment and a short that just doesn't seem to fit in with the series at all.

George O'Hanlon is a poor musician in every sense of the word. His bassoon playing flats out, his being a gypsy violinist at a restaurant has the customers attacking him, and he finally has to hock his instruments. But when conductor Fritz Feld is short a man in an orchestra, O'Hanlon has a chance to redeem himself on the cymbals in a performance of The Poets And Peasants Overture.

Who are we kidding? In the long-running Joe McDoakes series, O'Hanlon never managed anything successfully, although he was invariably funny in Richard Bare's shorts, in a world which never made sense. This is an outlier in the series. There's no sign of a wife.