Kind of shocking that Gable received the Best Actor Oscar in 1939 over Charlie
McCarthy's performance here. Yes, it is a bit wooden at times and it splinters
off into different directions but it is as solid as a Redwood tree. Explaining
this film to someone under 40 is near impossible. It takes absurd and doubles
it and then throws in some racist humor just because that was the norm back
then. Some of it is fairly amusing but it is hard to know how to take it.
We have a sort of serious plot in which a newspaper owner has corrupt going-ons
with a gangster, two of his reporters are snooping into this with one being
murdered and the other thrown into prison in South America and finally another
murder. All basic mystery crime material. Then in the middle of this they
plop down Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. Two Dummies
and a Doofus.
Edgar Bergen (father of Candice) was an enormously popular entertainer from
the 1930s through the 60's - beginning in vaudeville, radio, a few films
and a big nightclub act. He was if you didn't know a ventriloquist and Charlie
and Mortimer were his dummies. Not evil ones as in so many films but funny
ones. Charlie was the wit and Mortimer was the dummy - the dummy dummy. Bergen
is remarkably good at it. The timing between him and his tools of the trade
is split-second perfection. A lot of it is quite funny. He used to have Charlie
and W.C. Fields enter into insult contests, Charlie would flirt with Mae
West and nearly every pretty face (this may be where the expression "to get
wood" came from). Bergen was the straight man. At one point in the film Charlie
sings (but he can't dance). But singing as a ventriloquist has to be hard.
I am the slap happy sleuth
I am higher than Moto in his long black
koto
Or Philo Vance in his pants
Setting this in a straight comedy ie You Can't Cheat an Honest Man - makes
sense but in this film it is a head scratcher. Everyone plays it as if McCarthy
and Snerd are real - Snerd doesn't even have anyone with him and at one point
gets into a conversation with the police man played by Edgar Kennedy. Bergen
takes McCarthy with him everywhere and people just accept it. They engage
in conversations with Charlie. A little surreal but in the middle of the
murder mystery the film stops about every ten minutes for a Bergen/McCarthy
comedy routine. But they are often funny. As more comedy relief they have
black comedian Ray Turner - called Gravy here - do the typical black man
routine of being scared and a little crooked - but he also does some physical
comedy near the end that is great.
A screwy film. I like seeing films that could never be made any more. Do
ventriloquists even exist anymore? Who would pay to see one? Another part
of Americana that just disappeared. In this also is Bob Cummings, John Sutton,
Louis Calhern, Harold Huber and singer Constance Moore does two numbers.
