High Society

Now how anyone at the Motion Picture Academy could possibly have confused this High Society with the classic High Society that came out the following year is beyond me. But they did and contributed to one of the great faux pas in the history of Hollywood.

This film which came out in 1955 through a clerical error of massive proportions got an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay which must have sent writer/director Edward Bernds into cardiac arrest. The better known High Society came out in 1956 so the Academy did not even get the year right. Bernds had the graciousness and good sense to turn the nomination down.

With no Cole Porter songs or Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra to sing them, this High Society involves a scam to use one Horace DeBussy Jones in a scam to deprive young heir Ronald Keith of the inheritance from his grandfather Terwilliger Jones. Since that is Huntz Hall's actual character name, the very high falutin' nature of that name with a little doctoring of Hall's actual birth certificate and certain other unscrupulous relatives have manufactured another heir.

Someone not as essentially decent as Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall were would have wanted a decent cut of the scam when they found out about it. But they wouldn't be the Bowery Boys then.

This rather ordinary entry in this series becomes a Hollywood legend. Positively stupefying.

"Bowery Garage" General Manager, General Superintendent, and General Treasurer in overalls Leo Gorcey (as Terence Aloysius "Slip" Mahoney) finds his absent-minded mechanic Huntz Hall (as Horace Debussy "Sach" Jones) sleeping on the job. Waking the hapless helper only causes a car wreck. But, the vehicle's owner thinks Mr. Hall might pass for "Terwilliger Debussy 'Twig' Jones", the long-lost son and heir to a family fortune. Hall accompanies Mr. Gorcey and fatherly Bernard Gorcey (as Louie Dumbrowsky) to the Jones' Larchmont, New York estate...

David "Condon" Gorcey (as Chuck) and Benny "Bennie" Bartlett (as Butch) appear in the opening and closing scenes.

Perceiving Hall as an easy to control idiot, money-grubbing adults want Hall to claim his fortune from its rightful heir, young Ronald Keith (as Terwilliger Debussy "Twig" Jones III). Young Keith isn't going down without a fight, however. Hall and Gorcey in "High Society" leads to laughs, of course, with the latter's expectation they might meet a couple of "debu-tramps" and settle into the upper-crust treading a funny line. "The Bowery Boys" movie series had been sputtering in earlier years, but some of these final Gorcey-Hall team-ups are relatively smooth and successful, considering.

***** High Society (4/17/55) William Beaudine ~ Huntz Hall, Leo Gorcey, Ronald Keith, Bernard Gorcey

It's not one of the better Bowery Boys pictures -- by the mid 50s the gang seemed pretty tired. It's main interest is seeing Amanda Blake just before Gunsmoke and, hell, I'd never turn down a chance to see Leo and Huntz, even when they're not at the top of their game.

But F Gwynplaine MacIntyre has it all wrong. The writers who were nominated for High Society weren't some delusional losers who thought some way they might actually win an Oscar. They were Hollywood veterans who had been in Hollywood for a quarter-century -- Bernds in fact started as a sound engineer at Columbia who worked on Frank Capra's 30s classics. Bernds and Ullmann toiled (profitably) in the world of B comedies and short subjects, working, in tandem or alone, on such fondly remembered endeavors as the the My Little Margie TV series, many Three Stooges shorts, some Blondie and Ma & Pa Kettle movies, and films starring Elvis, Brett Halsey, Zsa Zsa Gabor,Stanley Clements, Scotty Beckett (in a couple of Gasoline Alley pictures) and Rad Fulton.

They were fully aware of their place in the industry, and when they withdrew their Oscar nomination it wasn't for any self-serving reason but to spare the Academy any embarrassment when its writers branch screwed up so royally. As they said when they did so, the nomination "was clearly a case of mistaken identity." Ironically, although the MGM musical High Society is much better than the nominated Bowery Boys picture, I definitely prefer the best Bowery Boys films (Blues Busters, Blonde Dynamite, Live Wires, Bowery Bombshell) to the Charles Walters musical with Crosby, Kelly and SInatra.

There's a lot more to the famous Oscar controversy concerning this entry in the series. True, it was mistaken for an MGM musical, but according to writer Ed Bernds, had they not informed the Motion Picture Academy of the mistake, the Bowery Boys film had a good chance of winning for original story. Bernds said the story category did not have many entries, and in itself was kind of a misleading. Do the math.

For decades, Huntz Hall was asked about this and he firmly said, had it been up to him, he would have told the Academy nothing. He said they deserved it for their many years of work. He had a valid point, and especially since comedians (with the exception of Laurel and Hardy), never received Oscars. Laurel and Hardy received two Oscars. Even Abbott and Costello were never considered, which was a shame, although their "Whos on first?" routine is honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Subsequently, The Academy said how grateful they were to Ed Bernds for pointing out the error, sending both he and co-writer Elwood Ullman Academy nomination placques. It was the least they could do, and Ed Bernds said he kept it in his office for years.

Oscar winning or not, HIGH SOCIETY is hilarious, directed in fine style by William Beaudine. While working in a garage this time, run by Slip of course, Sach learns he is heir to the estate of the late Terwillinger Debussy Jones. He and Slip are invited to the mansion to sign some important papers --naturally Louie, Chuck and Butch follow-- and they discover that 12 year old master Terwillinger the Third (or Twig) is the rightful heir. Ronald Keith plays Twig, and he's great. You can tell he's having a blast with the gang.

In typical Bowery Boys fashion, Twig's unfaithful cousins are out to get him and claim the fortune for themselves. The rats! This is fast and goofy stuff with lots of gags and sucker punches.

Leo Gorcey said in later years the most fun he had was doing the fight scenes, and it shows. You have to admit, there was a lot of fancy footwork to doing those scenes, and to especially insure nobody got injured.

There's also an early appearance of young Amanda Blake, playing sneaky Clarissa, just before she joined the cast of GUNSMOKE. The supporting cast is filled with veteran character actors, such as Paul Harvey playing an exasperated lawyer, and Addison Richards.

Best of the rest has Sach meeting up with a Liberace look-a-like (about to play the piano) while mischievous Twig sprinkles itching powder into the audience. The phony Liberace and Sach make one insane team.

Not to miss the hilarious "cold plate" scene where Sach takes a bite out of the fine China, sort of in the tradition of the THREE STOOGES, who Ed Bernds also wrote for.

Great line department: Slip tells the lawyers, "There's only one thing more important than the money. WHEN are we gonna' get it!"

A bit of Sach's family history is also thrown in for fun. Louie explains that his mother was not named Gwendolyn, but Gertie. This shows that Louie must have known the guys for a long time... but the audience is still in the dark about who their parents actually are and where do the Bowery Boys live?

Enjoy the insanity. This episode was followed by SPY CHASERS, very similar in style Released via Warner Brothers dvd, 6 to 8 films per box. Thank you TCM for rerunning the Bowery Boys!

'High Society', starring the Bowery Boys, is a bit more serious than most of their films, but otherwise extremely typical of their output ... except for one bizarre detail. The script of this Bowery Boys movie was nominated for an Oscar. Yes, it's true! The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences actually listed this movie on the 1956 Oscars ballot to receive an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay!

There's a catch, of course. Like every other Bowery Boys movie, 'High Society' got an extremely limited release (to road houses and neighbourhood cinemas), and then it vanished into oblivion pending its release to television. A few months later, MGM released a big-budget musical with a Cole Porter score, starring Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly. This movie was ALSO titled 'High Society'. (Can you see where this is heading?) Several members of the Academy rather ignorantly nominated this MGM musical for Best Original Screenplay. But 'High Society' (the Crosby-Sinatra one) was doubly ineligible for this award, as it was a remake of the Cary Grant-Katharine Hepburn film 'The Philadelphia Story', which in turn was adapted from Philip Barry's stage play. Any Oscar nominations for this movie's script should have been in the category of Best Screenplay Adaptation.

On the other hand, 'High Society' (the Bowery Boys movie) DID have an original story ... terrible, but original. As bad as it was, this movie (unlike the Crosby-Sinatra musical) was eligible for the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. When all those nominations came rolling in, some misguided schlub in the back room at the Academy allocated them to the Bowery Boys movie. I'd like to have seen the look on the faces of the four hacks who wrote this movie, when they got word that their Bowery Boys opus was up for an Oscar!

Now here's where it gets well and truly bizarre. Many Hollywood screenwriters have a perverse sense of humour. With a Bowery Boys movie on the ballot for best screenplay, there was a genuine risk that a significant number of screenwriters in the Academy would wilfully vote for this film, just to spite the Academy and watch some obscure hacks step up to accept the award! Immense pressure was put on Edward Bernds and Elwood Ullman to withdraw their script from nomination. Alas, both of these poor deluded scribblers had faint hopes of some day winning an Oscar legitimately, and they didn't want to anger the Academy by accepting an Oscar they'd won under false pretences. With great regret, Bernd and Ullman withdrew their Bowery Boys epic from consideration ... and never again in their careers were they within shouting distance of an Oscar.

I really wish that this movie had won. Unfortunately, 'High Society' (this one) isn't even a particularly good movie even by Bowery Boys standards. Bowery Boys fans will be disappointed to encounter fewer gags than usual here, and more sentiment. I'll rate this movie 2 points out of 10, plus a counterfeit Oscar. (I've got a crateful of counterfeit Oscars in my cellar, just next to the dungeon.)