Love Thy Neighbor

Though I've not seen this movie since the 1960s, I do have the musical numbers on an audio cassette (somewhere ...) and can attest to the great soundtrack. Jack Benny was one of a kind, a comedian who could have you in fits of laughter simply by lifting an eyebrow, or gazing at the camera as if to say: "I told you so." If this ever appears on dvd, I'll be at the front of the queue!

This film is funny even if you don't know anything about the characters other than Jack Benny, perennially portrayed as a skinflint, and Rochester (Eddie Rochester Anderson), his long-suffering on-air butler. Benny and Fred Allen were radio personalities during the 20 years preceding television, and had a running faux feud with each putting the other down in their own trademark style. This film makes a feature length joke out of that long-running act.

Mary Martin plays Fred's niece, Mary, who attempts to patch up a feud between her uncle and Benny, ends up being confused with a dancer with a completely different name, and ultimately ends up romantically entangled with Jack, here portrayed as a bachelor. Benny was actually married to Mary Livingston from 1927 until his death in 1974.

The film is virtually without a plot, yet hilarious and punctuated by interesting if not tuneful musical numbers. Keep a lookout for Benny's chambermaid. She is played by Mary Kelley, and is always calling Jack "kid" in the film. Before Jack married Mary Livingston he almost married Mary Kelley, which he said would have been a huge mistake because they were always arguing. He said the almost marriage happened because when George Burns and Gracie Allen got married (both longtime friends) their love was so contagious that he caught it too! At any rate, years later, she wound up working for Jack at various times, and this was one of those times.

Highly recommended for fans of Jack Benny, Fred Allen, and old time radio.

"Love Thy Neighbor" captures something of a bygone era. In the first half of the 20th century, radio had many "shows" that made stars out of performers. Some were comedies, others were musicals with singing, and others were plays. The latter included drama, mystery, comedies, sci-fi and horror – just about anything that the movies offered that could be portrayed with sound alone. There also were some early game or contest shows. Commercial television developed after World War II, and had many of the same types of programs. Some of the best radio programs segued to TV and continued to be hits. But, many more soon died out as radio programming changed. Radio acting shows were becoming obsolete.

Jack Benny was one of the most successful entertainers to make the transition. His 24-year radio show gave way to one of the longest running TV programs. The Jack Benny Program was on the air from 1950 through 1965. His was a combination sitcom, revue, and stage show with jokes and songs. Benny also was one of the entertainers who succeeded in movies.

The plot of this movie develops around a fake feud that Benny and Fred Allen concocted. Allen had his own radio show, and the two comedians constantly lambasted one another on the air. They exchanged guest appearances a number of times. Their feud was so overblown that all the radio audience knew it wasn't real. But it was a constant and sure source of much laughter week after week.

The plot being what it is in this film, the main characters play their real lives. Besides Benny and Allen, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson is in in a fine role and performance. Marty Martin, Virginia Dale and Jack Carson have good roles. It's too bad the plot couldn't have been written to include at least cameos of the other mainstay people on Jack's show. Those would include his wife, Mary Livingstone, singer Dennis Day, and comedy sidekicks Don Wilson, Phil Harris and Mel Blanc. Most of these moved with Benny from radio to TV, at least for a few years.

I think the feud begins to wear thin in this film, although the humor otherwise is very good. Mary Martin is a delight in her song, "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." No doubt older people will enjoy this film more than younger viewers. It is a nostalgic look at some of the good entertainment of years gone bye.

Jack Benny and Fred Allen, in their respective popular and long-running shows in the golden age of radio, carried on probably the most famous and well-loved comedy mock-feud in history. The battle, carried on in snide remarks and guest appearances on the two series, was at its height around 1940, and "Love Thy Neighbor" capitalized by extending it to the movie screen.

The result is a slightly strange-feeling but enjoyable musical that seems torn between being an extension of the Benny and Allen radio series and being a standard-issue Hollywood musical. The two leads carry over their characters, but in spots seem to be playing toned-down versions of them. Jack Benny is still the butt of countless jokes for his vanity and cheapness, but he also, uncharacteristically, is the romantic lead who get the girl.

The girl, incidentally, is called Mary, and Jack's saying of that name reminds us that while this sometimes may seem like "The Jack Benny Program" with pictures (and a decade before it appeared on television), we do miss Mary Livingston, Don Wilson, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, and the other regulars. The one who is here is Rochester, who gets a very substantial subplot to himself. Eddie Anderson runs with this and proves if proof were needed that's he's an enchanting performer. His song-and-dance number is a delight, and he actually gets more introspection and character than Jack and Fred do. His subplot does wrap him up in gambling, womanizing, and partying, though -- aspects of his radio character that were phased out after World War II for being too stereotypical and which don't play too well today. It also involves him losing a lot of money at dice to his girlfriend; they have an odd relationship.

the movie is at its best and funniest when Jack and Rochester get to play off each other -- or when he and Fred Allen simply go at each other (the scenes with the car at the beginning, or backstage of Jack's show). These are very wittily written and it's great fun to watch the chemistry between the two. However, it must be admitted that without the Benny-Allen feud element, there would not be much to this movie besides an old hidden-identity plot and a few songs.

It's a little unbelievable for Jack Benny to be falling for Fred Allen's niece, but the niece is very engagingly played by Mary Martin. As a musical, though, this suffers from the fact that the soundtrack seems to be pushing one not-to-special song, "Isn't That Just Like Love," a little too hard to be a hit.

There are some off moments of humor here as well. Fred Allen absurd and witty barbs are just as funny as ever (I would be surprised if he did not contribute heavily to his part of the script), but he also seems to be a trigger-happy madman. He shoots the neon sign for Jack's upcoming show through out through his bedroom window (helps him get to sleep). Then later he seems to get on a motorboat and chase Jack's boat around while firing a gun and trying to shoot him dead. All this is played off breezily and they then briefly even make up, but having Fred try to kill Jack in cold blood seems a little over the top. We also have him taking about 60 sleeping pills in an attempt to alleviate the insomnia Jack has given him. He survives, and I suppose the filmmakers missed the suicidal implications.

Sometimes-out-of-character schizophrenia, this film is great fun for fans of Jack Benny and/or Fred Allen -- and it's essentially fun because of them and Rochester. When this film is fun, it is a triumph over the material, which veers from glorious film meeting of two of the funniest radio series ever, to mediocre standard musical.

This is one of the lesser efforts of the Pre-TV Show Jack Benny episodes that passed for B movies in the 1940s. This is the fault of the very poor screenplay/script that was created during one of the lunch hours on the studio lot. It is trite and silly. Make sure you see this Benny film AFTER exhausting all the other ones by the entertaining star.