1h 18min | Comedy, Fantasy, Music | 28 April 1945
Director: Raoul Walsh
Stars: Jack Benny, Alexis Smith, Dolores Moran, Allyn Joslyn, Reginald Gardiner, Franklin Pangborn, Margaret Dumont, Robert Blake, Mike Mazurki
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037790/
bootleg; strange badness: every other row & column is black. But this is good enough for this film.
I've always remembered this fondly; one of the funnier JB movies (for my money). Home of the giant advertising coffee pot/cup/spoon. Uses the trope of recycling JB's real-life acquaintances as his dream characters.
I usually find Alexis Smith unmoving. But maybe comedy was her forte, and the studios missed it. She was in 17 of them, but the few that have been in this quest, she's playing her usual straight-spined persona. Here she's still elegant, but very emotional: worried about her crush JB, and very obvious about it. It adds to the comedy, just as Franklin Pangborn's or Margaret Dumont's fretting does.
JB does not play his usual character either. He admits he's not a great horn player, and that he's probably not the man for the job. There's nothing about penny-pinching: he's an angel who knows nothing about cash. Nor does his age come up, nor any feud with Fred Allen. So he's not as annoying as he has been in other films in this quest. Then again, we also don't get Rochester here, and I always prefer seeing him. (BTW, I find the vanity and penny-pinching funny in his TV series. Go figure.)
Great supporting cast, including the other young woman, Dolores Moran. A familiar face, but not her name. She's gorgeous, scheming, hopeless, seductive, whatever the scene requires.
I could go on, but it's just a fun film. Oh, and it has one of my favorite Cole Porter tunes: Blow, Gabriel, Blow... of course. But not a lot of song performances; more than what the Soundtracks lists, but I wouldn't lobby to tag this as a musical if it weren't already.
Warner, dir. Walsh; 6+
