Vecchiolarry wrote:Hey Judith!!
"Bubble, bubble; toil and trouble
May Her Hitler wind up in the rubble!".........
And, he did; so it works!!!!!
Larry
You're right, Larry. Who's to say this bunch didn't have a hand in the defeat of the Third Reich?
Now, I want to talk about something else: did anyone see "Turnabout," which was shown in the middle of the night last Monday? I taped it, but just got around to watching it last night.
Very nice; I really liked it.
This movie was directed by Hal Roach in a semi-screwball style. That is to say, I think his intention was that it be a screwball comedy, but it wasn't quite on the mark. Some parts sort of dragged and sputtered a little, and toward the end more than once I thought it was ending, but it kept going.
Nevertheless, the dialogue was very clever and the performances were great. In fact, I had it in my mind that the female lead was Carole Lombard, when it was in fact Carol Landis, but Landis was so skilled and good in this, she very well could have been Lombard. I didn't make the connection until the credits ran at the end.
The male lead was a Hal Roach player named John Hubbard (a/k/a Anthony Allan). I'm sure I've seen him before, but I just didn't notice him. He was terrific in this. His performance as a woman in a man's body was very funny, and brought to my mind Steve Martin in "All of Me," although in "Turnabout" things were not quite so subtle. For example, the husband and wife still had their own voices (dubbed in), although they had each others' bodies.
This movie was part of the "Screened Out" series, and Mr. Barrios explained that there was some censorship. For example, Franklin Pangborn (playing a character named "Mr. Pingboom") is a client trying to see the husband, who hates him, and assiduously avoids him. When the wife is in the husband's body and goes to the office, Mr. Pingboom barges in to have an audience, and the wife (who looks like her handsome husband) is very sweet and flirtatious with him. Apparently, Mr. Pingboom responded in kind, but the censors decided that was too much for the American public, so most of the scene was cut.
There is so much going on in this movie that it would take paragraphs to explain it all. I was a little surprised that the transformation - the switch- didn't occur until about 2/3 of the way through, but it was very funny when it happened.
The supporting cast was uniformly excellent. The husband's business partners were Adolphe Menjou and William Gargan, each of whom had his own little story and many "bits of business." Mary Astor and Joyce Compton played the partners' respective wives, and there were several very funny wisecracking secretaries in the Eve Arden mode as well.
I don't think I've ever seen Mary Astor look as beautiful as she does in this movie, and that's saying something. She was gorgeous, and very effective as the waspish wife. The real surprise for me was Menjou, who was really very funny as the partner with a constant yen for a drink. He was actually quite expansive in his performance in the broad comic style we expect from Hal Roach, and he did it very well.
Oh, yes, Marjorie Main is in it as the couple's cook, and she's hilarious and has some of the best lines.
There was one brief scene of note (among many, actually): Menjou and Gargan are trying to turn off a radio that won't stop playing a raucus tune they don't want to hear. They begin to take it apart, and every time they step on a tube, a few more instruments stop playing. Finally there's only a screeching clarinet playing, and Menjou steps on another tube, and the music stops. The whole thing was so Laurel & Hardy, and these two actors did it very well.
So, I give this one a strong recommendation; it's really very good. It's also of interest as one of the first, if not the first, body-switch movies; and I think it would be a great party movie as well.