L'affaire du Fort Dixon

Red Skelton played the radio sleuth known as "the Fox" in three comic mysteries of the early 1940s. All had the word "whistling" in the title.

This is the second of the three, and by far the weakest.

The first one, "Whistling in the Dark," was an excellent remake of the 1933 film of the same. The last one, "Whistling in Brooklyn," was an extremely enjoyable farce. I recommend both.

"Whistling in Dixie" can be funny at times, but too often it's boring. I suspect it was made simply because the title seemed irresistible. The phrase "whistling 'Dixie' " was popular American slang at the time. And Ann Rutherford, who co-starred as the Fox's love interest in all three movies, was best known for her role in a Southern epic, "Gone With the Wind."

This movie is full of corny "Southern" dialog, and there are some dated portrayals of African-Americans. Nothing here is any more more offensive than what you'd find in the typical 1940s film about the segregated South. But gosh, this kind of stuff was tired even then.

Skelton's slapstick routines are weaker than usual. He and Rags Ragland, his sidekick and foil in all three "Whistling" films, work very hard, but some of the material falls flat.

If this movie leaves you cold, don't rush to judgment. You may like the other two "Whistling" entries, because they are much better. And if you love this one, you will definitely want to see the other two.

Sequel to Whistling in the Dark has Red Skelton once again playing radio star Wally "The Fox" Benton. This time he's headed to Georgia along with his fiancée Carol (Ann Rutherford). There they get mixed-up with a mystery involving Carol's old sorority sister and a treasure hunt. Red and Ann are both good fun in this delightful comedy. Solid support from George Bancroft, Guy Kibbee, Celia Travers, and Rags Ragland. Rags plays a dual role in an amusing follow-up to the last movie. In addition to adorable Ann Rutherford, Diana Lewis provides the pretty. It's not quite as good as Whistling in the Dark but it's still a very enjoyable comedy-mystery. Lots of funny gags. Also lots of awful fake Southern accents.

Whistling in Dixie finds Red Skelton as radio detective the Fox and gal pal Ann Rutherford away in Georgia where Red's kind of faked an illness so he and Rutherford can get away and maybe get married down there. Rutherford has another agenda as well. Her old sorority sister Diana Lewis has sent her a pre-arranged signal that the sisters have in one needs help.

Finding out that there is a five day waiting period in Georgia, the two of them get involved in a mystery where Lewis has witnessed a murder, but no body can be found. It all leads to some buried Confederate treasure in an old arsenal guarded by Civil War veteran Lucien Littlefield who's a might addled.

Rags Ragland appears here as twins, both are convicts, one quite a bit nastier than the other. This film marked the farewell performance of George Bancroft as the sheriff who retired right after Whistling In Dixie was in the can.

And of course unless you got Raymond Walburn, no film like this would be complete without Guy Kibbee as an expansive, mint julep drinking, son of the South colonel.

With that kind of cast, this film can't miss being funny and the comedy is eternal.

Red Skelton and Ann Rutherford are "Whistling in Dixie" in this 1942 programmer also starring Guy Kibbee and Rags Ragland (in a dual role). Skelton played the role of Wally Benton a couple of times. On radio, Benton is "The Fox," a detective, but in his private life he gets dragged into real mysteries as well. This one is at the behest of a friend of his fiancé's (Rutherford) who asks them to come to Georgia to investigate a murder.

There are some funny moments in this film, but it's rather silly, with a lot of corny jokes, funny faces from Skelton and slapstick. Actually Skelton is much better when he's straightforward - he comes off as sweet, sincere and natural.

Some of the supporting cast has the worst southern accents I've ever heard. It's hard to blame them, though, because these types of films were made very quickly. I'm sure they had no dialect coach. However, the horrible accents were very distracting.

Okay, but "The Fox" isn't one of my favorite detectives.

This early Red Skelton comedy is one of several in which he portrayed an actor who was a radio detective called the Fox who also got mixed up in real mysteries, is quite agreeable, at times very funny, and handsomely filmed. The supporting cast, including pretty Ann Rutherford, and the not so pretty George Bancroft and Guy Kibbee, is good and doesn't play in the usual fright film spoof manner. This one isn't really all that inferior to the kind of film Bob Hope, Danny Kaye or for that matter Abbott and Costello were making at around the same time, but Skelton's appeal hasn't worn the years well. Like most comedians he tended to play "innocent" characters, but in his case there was a country bumpkin aspect. Skelton is decidedly not a city guy even when he's playing one. He looks out of place walking down a busy New York street in a double-breasted suit and fedora. There's a child-like quality to him, with none of the knowingness of a Harpo or a Lou Costello, that makes him at times embarrassing to watch. He belongs to another time, when people woke up to roosters rather than alarm clocks, and the first thing they did after breakfast was milk the cow, not jog around the block five times. Modern day hipness has eradicated the country boy sensibility, or removed it from the mainstream; and to a large degree hipness has become almost dictatorial, and can be measured by the extent to which naivite of any sort has been obliterated in our culture. Skelton's films offer a fascinating glimpse of a bygone era, as we can clearly see that behavior that was regarded as quite normal sixty years ago would be considered bizarre by today's standards, and not at all funny.

Anyway, back to Red. One area in which Skelton excels: he believes in the heroic ideal. He may not be the ideal screen hero, but when he swings into action you believe him, or his sincerity anyway; and when he gets the girl you can see him beaming. When Skelton triumphs in these silly comedies it's like virtue triumphing, not because Skelton has so much more virtue than the average person, but because he believes in it. I'd like to see Adam Sandler try that one on for size some time.