Les pieds dans le plat

This is Danny Kaye's last starring comedy, and like the last films of many comedians, it is quite sad. Frank Tashlin's film is much better suited to someone like Jerry Lewis. Kaye is completely out of place in the film. The true scene stealer of this film is Telly Savalas. In this film, Kojak has hair and plays the villain. And what a fine villain he is! But where are the musical specialties for Kaye? There is not one. Kaye was a comedian who depended on facial expressions, funny sounds, and musical patter. Here, he is expected to be a slapstick comedian. "On the Double", Kaye's previous film is a masterpiece next to this.

This movie attempts to replace Danny Kaye's usual verbal fireworks with adolescent slapstick, and it doesn't work.

Slapstick can be very funny, when done properly, and Danny did a good job of it in "The Court Jester", but here it falls flat.

I honestly didn't laugh at a single gag in the movie. It obviously wasn't tailored to Danny Kaye"s unique talents, which his earlier comedies were. It's much too generic. But worse, it's simply not funny.

And since Danny Kaye can be an incredibly funny performer, the fault obviously lies with the weak script, which plays like a throwback to an old Buster Keaton silent movie - without the laughs.

Don't waste your time. Instead, go watch one of Danny's classic comedies, like "The Court Jester" or "Wonder Man".

It's a bit of a silly, over-played comedy, with danny kaye. When ernie approves a diners club charge card for ron pulardos (telly savalas) all hell breaks loose. It turns out that pulardos is a well known mobster, busted for taxes, and wants to disappear in an arranged fire. Of his own gym. So ernie tries to get the card back before pulardos can use it! Ann guilbert (millie, on dick van dyke!) is ella, in the computer room. George kennedy is george, working for pulardos. A funny scene where ernie gets to beat up his boss at work, when he pretends to be the massage therapist. And probably the last film to feature a dumb-waiter as part of the plot! Directed by frank tashlin. Made a ton of films with jerry lewis, but died at 59 of thrombosis. Did you notice the opening song was sung by steve lawrence? Showing on free tubi channel. It's pretty good... a whole lot of slapstick and the usual misunderstandings.

Although another viewer said that Danny Kaye looks like he was doing something originally meant for Jerry Lewis, The Man From The Diner's Club actually is taken part and parcel from the Bob Hope comedy Alias Jesse James.

In the Hope film he plays a life insurance salesman who sells a policy to Jesse James and spends the whole film trying to get it back and rescinded. In this film Kaye works at the Diner's Club Credit Card company and accidentally okays a credit card for gangster Telly Savalas.

Savalas has enough of his own problems, his American assets are frozen in lieu of an income tax liability and he's trying to flee the country to Mexico where he's got cash stashed away. Savalas has a distinct physical trait in that he's got one foot a size 10 and the other a size 11. He's got a guy picked out for a homicide with the same characteristics who goes and gets killed in traffic accident.

But when Kaye comes to call about the Diner's Club card, Savalas notices he has the same set of feet. Another pigeon, but Kaye in his usual bumbling way manages to get through it all.

The Man From The Diner's Club sports a good supporting cast in Martha Hyer who is so beautiful you can't conceive of a bumbling Danny Kaye getting anywhere near here. Cara Williams plays a nice part as Savalas's brain dead moll and she has a terrific drunk scene. George Kennedy plays a similarly brain dead muscle guy for Savalas and he shows a nice flair for comedy that rarely was utilized in his career. Everett Sloane is Kaye's excitable boss and Martin Caine is his sneaky rival in the company.

Kaye has some good moments in the final chase scene where just about the entire cast gets involved. His best moment is with Ann Morgan Guilbert who has designed a system for information retrieval on those old punch cards that computers back in the stone age utilized. Twice in the film the bungling Kaye flips a switch that sends a blizzard of punch cards spewing around the office. That bit was partially taken from the Tracy/Hepburn comedy Desk Set. In fact I think some of the set for that film's computer Emirac was used in this film also from Columbia.

It's not Danny Kaye's best film and it certainly was cobbled together from other sources, but I think his still legion of fans will be pleased with it.

This may be (I only did a little research) Danny Kaye's final lead role in the movies, yet comes only a few years after our favorite Danny Kaye movie, Me And The Colonel. I enjoyed The Man From the Diner's Club when I first watched it, which must have been whenever it arrived on television after its release in 1962-63 (when I was nine years old).

Seen today, the movie generally moves too slowly, especially in the beginning, as if most of the movie is a set up for the final climax and resolution. Yet the movie never quite catches fire, perhaps held back by the reliance on the familiar Danny Kaye "schtick", which by this point in his career must have been very familiar to theater goers.

We watched it during the Christmas holiday, 2015, as I wanted to share my decades old fondness for the film with my best friend, who gradually warmed to the movie as it developed.

But for me, a dyed in the wool Danny Kaye fan, the film stayed slow until the end.