showbiz-3

The script is a hoary show biz tale: a mother dies and leaves her baby in the care of a quartet of fellow performers. Two of them are Jimmy Savo, who provides one of the two top turns in the film, his famous "River Stay 'Way from My Door" routine. Savo's eccentric dancing earlier in the film is reduced to a few seconds to make room for a lucklustre singer. The second highlight is "The Song of the Woodsman", one of Bert Lahr's best routines. The third great comedian in the film is Alice Brady, one of Broadway's and Hollywood's most underrated actors. She dithers like Billie Burke, but in a few other films is a straight actor of considerable power, Stanwyck or Davis. Mischa Auer and Billy House are both in fine form, and they, Savo and Lahr play the four stepfathers. Louise Fazenda, Hattie McDaniel and veteran Richard Carle are underused, but Dave Apollon does his thing for his fans. The director, Irving Cummings was a Grade C hack who rushed through 76 movies in 29 years years, screwing up films starring comedians Groucho Marx, the Wiere Brothers and in this, Lahr and Savo. Cummings even made Spencer Tracy look bad in two of Tracy's worst films. This could have been a '8' out of a '10' movie, but the script, the pacing and the look take it down a few stars to a '5'. It seems (I have a 16mm copy) as though Unversal only allowed the production two cameras and three lights. Yet this film is a must for comedy buffs and students who wish to see two of Broadways great and most unusual comedians, Savo and Lahr, do their specialties and try to be funny when there is little to make amusing. Joy Hodges, the grown-up orphaned baby, is an awkward and lifeless presence in the film. Every minute she is on stage the energy and believability level drops below zero.

Penn & Teller have a right to stop being funny and go political if they wish to and as long as their audience supports them. No quarrel with that. But Showtime should advertise the Penn & Teller: Bull%#&@! show for what it is---a right wing political forum. Penn is very selective about what he targets. He includes just enough crackpots to make legitimate people and causes seem guilty by association. I doubt he could stand his ground in a fair debate with some of the people (like Ingrid Newkirk) he tries to smear. His cut-and-paste commentary is cowardly stuff. It's the kind of a show old Las Vegas comedians (Penn is 55 and Teller is almost 60) do when they are no longer funny and when there are so many better comedy-magic acts around. What has happened to Teller? Sad.

There are millions of young folks who grew up on Disney and Jerry Lewis movies and fondly recall Mary Poppins, Babes in Toyland and Cinderfeller. They may not remember Ed Wynn's name but when, during presentations about vaudevillians, I show a clip of Ed Wynn in this show with his guests, The Three Stooges, there is instant and happy recognition. Eighty years ago, Ed Wynn was regarded on a par with Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx. By the 1940s, he was largely forgotten. Ed Wynn was the first big comedy star with the nerve to try a weekly TV show. He proved that TV was safe for comedians and they followed: Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason, Imogene Coca & Sid Caesar, Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante, Eddie Cantor, Olsen & Johnson, Donald O'Connor, Lucille Ball, Joan Davis, Burns & Allen, Jack Benny and even the Marx Brothers--solo. Any Ed Wynn TV Show is fun. The one with the Three Stooges may be the best--only a half dozen have been reissued on video, but also look for Ed's shows with guests Buster Keaton, Leon Errol and James Barton. Ed Wynn told bad jokes. No one did it better and funnier. He was one of the few comedians who was funny when he was young, when he was middle-aged and when he was old. -- fc/American Vaudeville Museum