Friday, February 18, 2011

For Love of Chair: IT'S IN THE BAG! Has a Sit-Down with THE TWELVE CHAIRS


This week we of Team Bartilucci salute two relatively modern versions of The Twelve Chairs, based on the classic 1928 Russian novel by Ilf & Petrov. As you’ll see, each version puts its own zany twist on the story. Pull up a chair of your own and enjoy! J

Vinnie’s Pick: It’s In The Bag! (1945)There are a number of comedians all but forgotten by modern culture, like the Ritz Brothers or the legendary Bert Williams, first black man to headline the Ziegfeld Follies.  In the world of radio, Fred Allen was once a powerhouse, but today, only fans of the entertainment of the era know him.  He’s responsible for the oft-repeated quip about television being called a medium because “it’s neither rare nor well-done”* His radio show inspired the work of Stan Freberg, Johnny Carson, and if they were honest about it, damn near every comedian to come along since.

His forays into film were few, and his only starring role was It’s In The Bag!, the topic of today’s treatise. Allen plays Fred Floogle, a man of no fixed vector of success, barely scraping by with his flea circus.  When he discovers he’s the only heir to an unknown uncle’s twelve million dollar estate, he thinks he’s made it, and starts a spending spree worthy of Monty Brewster. Alas, Fred discovers his uncle had been wiped out, leaving assets totaling a pool table (rack and balls included) and five chairs.  He quickly sells off the chairs to an auction house…a bit too quickly. A phonograph record from his uncle reveals that he was swindled out of his fortune by persons unrevealed. Evidence of the crime, as well as three hundred thousand dollars in cash has been secreted…in one of the five chairs.

So begins a mad dash across town for the chairs, events including a sizable cameo by Allen’s on-air (and only kayfabe) foe, Jack Benny; Miss Pansy Nussbaum, a beloved character from his radio show; and eventually the hideout of gangster Bill Bendix (played by…William Bendix!).

The sequence in a wildly overpacked movie theater is a classic – Dave Willock and Walter Tetley (best known to modern cartoon fans as the narrator of the Wacky Races and the voice of Mr. Peabody’s boy, Sherman, respectively) appear as ushers who run Floogle and his wife from pillar to post in a quest for a pair of seats, finding none. A nightclub scene features Allen singing (a term used here to describe the sounds coming from his mouth, in absence of a more illustrative term) with Don Ameche, Rudy Vallee and Victor Moore. Other guest stars include Robert Benchley, Jerry Colonna, Sydney Toler and John Carradine, not to mention a small army of character actors.

A screwball comedy that still holds up today, It’s In The Bag is available via Netflix Instant Streaming.

*At least that’s how Ernie Kovacs quoted it on one of his specials; another version goes: “It’s a medium because when it’s well-done, it’s rare.”  I like Ernie’s version.

Dorian’s Pick: The Twelve Chairs (1970)
After writer/director/uberfunnyman Mel Brooks won his well-deserved Oscar in 1968 for his original screenplay for The Producers, his next film was the 1970 farce The Twelve Chairs, based on Ilf & Petrov’s 1928 novel. That’s right, Fred Allen didn’t create It’s in the Bag; he was just one of several talented people who’ve adapted it over the years. Alfred Hitchcock fans, take note: Mrs. Hitchcock, writer/editor Alma Reville, was one of It’s in the Bag’s screenwriters. How fitting, then, that the world of The Twelve Chairs skillfully blends sorrow and treachery with comedy like Hitchcock did! Of course, I wouldn’t go so far as to claim the world is “a foul sty (full of) swine” like Joseph Cotton did as Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt (1943); life and The Twelve Chairs all have plenty of joy, satirical moments, and outright hilarity, too. When The Twelve Chairs came out in theaters, New York Times film critic Vincent Canby grumbled, “One of these days someone is going to put together a smash-hit television special called The Greedy, Fraudulent World as Seen by Mel Brooks.” In my opinion, Canby missed the point. A gleefully unapologetic comedy with a sting in the tail like The Twelve Chairs stirs me to slightly paraphrase Steve Martin: comedy isn’t always pretty. Brooks’ best work has always had a knack for showing us, through a funhouse mirror, the best and worst of people and the world we all live in. 

The film’s frantic shenanigans take place in 1927 Soviet Russia, where former nobleman Ippolit Vorobyaninov (Ron Moody, two years after his Oliver! Oscar nomination) has been reduced to a desk clerk under the new regime. When he hears his mother-in-law is on her deathbed, he rushes over so fast he doesn’t even let go of his rubber stamp (leading to the one of the film’s darkest, funniest sight gags). She confesses that when the Revolution kicked in and the Bolsheviks invaded, she’d hurriedly hidden the family jewels—real jewels, you naughty-minded people—inside the upholstery of one of the titular chairs from the Vorobyaninov clan’s dining room set. Of course, those chairs have since gone all over Russia one way or another, so Vorobyaninov has his work cut out for him. Enter suave, street-smart con man Ostap Bender (Frank Langella, before Dracula made him an even brighter star of stage and screen in the late 1970s), smoothly insinuating himself into a partnership with Vorobyaninov to find the chairs. And boy, does Vorobyaninov needs the help; the remains of his entitled attitude haven’t prepared him to live by his wits or use the fine art of finesse! Our fortune hunters are also up against Father Fyodor (Dom DeLuise), who took advantage of the Confession booth to glean info about those valuable chairs. Luckily, the not-so-good Father is as stupid and bumbling as he is greedy—and uproarious!
Even with the bittersweetness of life in the then-new Soviet Union, The Twelve Chairs is frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious. The theme song alone cracks me up, with lyrics like “Hope for the best, expect the worst/You could be Tolstoy, or Fannie Hurst.” One of our family’s favorite running jokes is “I am Cousin—CHAIR!” Moody and Langella are as memorable a comedy team here as Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder were in The Producers; now there’s a crossover story I’d like to see (of course, it would have to be science fiction since the stories are centuries apart; details, details! J). I must say Langella was quite the hottie. (Heck, Langella still cuts a dashing figure today!) The ending has bite to it, to be sure, but that doesn’t kill the mirth of the preceding 90 minutes. Besides, I’m intrigued by the idea of friendship trumping pride, even if it involves Dostoyevsky and faking epilepsy. According to Wikipedia, there’s another novel about the adventures of rakish Ostap Bender. I may have to look that up sometime!

12 comments:

  1. Hmmm...wonder what Alfred Hitchcock would have done with THE TWELVE CHAIRS? :-)

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  2. Very nicely written!
    I had never even heard of these two films before, they sound worth watching.

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  3. Jack L, thanks for your compliment! Yes, do rent these delighful movies if/when you can; I bet you'll be glad you did!

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  4. I swear I'm constantly learning all sorts of new things from you two. For instance: "kayfabe" (which I had to pause and look up before continuing).

    Having discovered people such as Allen only in retrospect, I once again apply a quirt to the deceased pony in my backyard and bemoan a culture where such treasures risk being forgotten by all but a few dedicated individuals. If I pray for anything these days, it's that I'm able to live long enough to hear people go "Justin Who?" and "Lady What?"

    And here's a mystery for Dorian to someday write about: exploring why THE TWELVE CHAIRS doesn't get nearly the ink it deserves. Frankly I get more than a little weary at people who think Mel Brooks suddenly burst onto the scene with BLAZING SADDLES.

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  5. Pardon me, Vinnie, but what's a "kayfabe"? How many states is it illegal in? I'm always amazed that THE TWELVE CHAIRS is so unknown; you'd think that, occupying the hammock position it does between THE PRODUCERS and BLAZING SADDLES, it would get at least a little reflected glory from those two. But I was unaware of the underlying story's rich history; if I ever get Netflix, I'll definitely look for IT'S IN THE BAG.
    <-----2011-2-18-----MSG----->

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  6. Thanks for your witty comment and question, Marc! "Kayfabe" (pronounced just like it looks/sounds :-)) is a wrestling term for "a work," a.k.a. "a fake; a put-on."

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  7. Michael, we of Team Bartilucci are always delighted to add your already impressive store of pop culture knowledge! I, too, am amazed at how comparatively lesser-known THE TWELVE CHAIRS is, let along Mel Brooks' earlier triumphs as a writer of YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS/CAESAR'S HOUR or his Oscar-winning 1963 animated short THE CRITIC -- which is on You Tube, by the way: youtube.com/watch?v=otPkk1… via @youtube

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  8. You'll also spot John Brown--a longtime Allen crony; he used to play "John Doe" on Fred's radio show--outside the movie theater as Joe, the guy who keep announcing immediate seating inside.

    Fred Allen is one of my comedy idols, and you might be interested to learn that there are actually two versions of It's in the Bag!--the one not being streamed by Netflix contains Fred's voiceover wisecracks throughout, almost as if you were watching a DVD commentary. I wrote about both versions during the 2010 For the Love of Film blogathon here.

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  9. Ivan, thanks for the skinny on John Brown in IT'S IN THE BAG and the alternate wisecracking version! Our family has also enjoyed John Brown as Digger O'Dell in LIFE OF RILEY and the soused Professor Collins who forgets he chatted with Farley Granger in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. He sure got around! :-)

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  10. I haven't seen ANYONE talk about this Mel Brooks film in ages! (I'm so glad I found your blog.) It remains one of my favorite films though I haven't seen it in many years and hardly remember it at all EXCEPT that I loved it. I always think of this film - for whatever reason -in conjunction with THE WRONG BOX, another forgotten comedy set, I believe, around (more or less) the same time. I am going to have to make an effort to buy these two. I think it's the only way I'm ever going to see them again.

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  11. Yvette, I'm glad you found our blog, too! Welcome to TotED, and thanks for weighing in about THE TWELVE CHAIRS! This relatively obscure gem has long been one of our family's favorites, and it always warms my heart when nifty people like you discover or rediscover it. THE TWELVE CHAIRS is available on DVD separately and also as part of a terrific Mel Brooks boxed DVD set (if it's not in your local store, look it up on Amazon.com). Thanks so much for sharing your enthusiasm, Yvette, and please feel free to drop by our humble but feisty blog anytime! :-)

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  12. George Ulrich, who runs the wonderful Alice Faye Web site at http://www.alicefaye.com, sent me the following e-mail:

    "I enjoyed your write-up on 'It's in the Bag'.

    If you don't mind, I have a correction. Walter Tetley played the elevator boy in the theatre and not an usher. Aside from Dave Willock, the other usher was Steve Brodie who later appeared in several film noirs.

    Thank you,
    George"

    Thank you, too, George! Please feel free to drop by TotED with movie-related tidbits any time!

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