Webb Wilder, Detective and Hillbilly Noir Roots Rocker!

Whether you call him “The Last of the Full-Grown Men,” “The Idol of Idle Youth,” or an electrifying roots-rocker with a talent for deadpan comedy, Webb Wilder is The Man! We of Team Bartilucci first discovered him in 1990; how fitting that we became his fans at the beginning of a brand new decade! It all started when I noticed a TV Guide listing for A&E’s Shortstories series, with its self-proclaimed “award-winning short films from around the world.” One of the shorts that day was a 1984 film, Webb Wilder, Private Eye, a.k.a The Saucer’s Reign, written and directed by one Stephen Mims at the University of Mississippi, from a story by Mims and Robert Field. I’d never heard of it, but since I’m a sucker for any kind of detective story, and since Vinnie and I had some free time, we watched it. We were hooked from the very first scene. A lanky, bespectacled young man looks us viewers in the eye. He wears a hat looking like a fedora and a Stetson fell in love and had a baby. As he addresses us in the audience, he’s illuminated by beams of light, camera right, looking all film noir-ish in glorious black-and-white. In a sepulchral yet hilarious deadpan Southern twang that brought to mind a thin young Southern-fried Alfred Hitchcock, he tells us viewers, “I’m like that Greek hobo with the limp. You know, the one who went from Hades to Yugo-Slovakia lookin’ for an honest man. Well, I got my own quest. What it is, is I’m lookin’ for the dishonest man. I am — Webb Wilder, Private Eye.”

“Urgent,” it said. But it wasn’t the same “Urgent” as the one on all my bills…".

After a fast-paced, rockabilly-scored credit sequence in which we see Webb’s dance moves (kind of like an amazingly cool spastic dancing the Frug) and his skills at running up and down stairs while brandishing a gun, we slide on into the case of The Saucer’s Reign. In voiceover like any noir film (parody) worth its salt, our hero is retained for “fifty bucks a day,” and opts to “drop…my current case,” after which we see Webb exiting a JC Penney in security guard garb. Webb’s off to Wakefield, Mississippi with his autographed Slim Whitman photo. His client is small-town postmaster Hiwayne Suggs (Roger Brinegar), who lives in “a one-chiropractor town that seemed peaceful enough. But an ant bed is peaceful till you step in it.”


Suggs is anxious for Webb to find his mysteriously missing wife, Pristene: “Space critters, Mr. Wilder! They abducted my Sweet Thing!” Webb studies a less-than-flattering photo of Pristene: “I didn’t think even Mars needed women that bad. Pristene Suggs was unvoluptuous.” (I’m pretty sure the photo of Pristene, listed in the credits as “Herself,” is in fact a guy in drag, but you can never be sure in this unpredictable world!) Webb enlists space buff Homer Greenspan (Jimmy Daniels) to help him unravel this caper: “Homer had ‘science fair’ written all over him.” Once Hiwayne blabs on the tiny town’s party line that a UFO might be setting up light housekeeping in Wakefield, Webb and Homer find themselves wading through a sea of reporters, deception, and trailer trash as the abduction stories and media frenzy get even wilder than Webb’s last name.

Stop! In the name of Webb!

By the time it ended, we’d formed our own little Webb Wilder mini-cult around this loopy, compact little gem. We were especially impressed to see co-writer Robert Field (a.k.a. R.S. Field) and Webb himself (formerly John Webb McMurray) composed and performed the film’s hard-rockin’ soundtrack. When A&E rebroadcast The Saucer’s Reign, Vinnie and I recorded it strictly for our own amusement, and showed it to any pals we could rope into being a captive audience, turning them into Webb Wilder fans in the process. If I recall correctly, it also turned up on The USA Network’s Night Flight.

We thought that was the last we’d ever hear of our beloved Webb Wilder until my 29^th birthday in 1992. We were celebrating with friends at the Manhattan branch of the popular Chicago restaurant Ed Debevic’s (anyone know if the NYC restaurant still exists?), including our pal Michael Gingold of Fangoria fame (there’s my name-drop for the day :-)). Our longtime pals Elayne and Steve showed us a then-recent issue of Psychotronic Video featuring a review of an album by Webb Wilder—the band! Apparently, while The Saucer’s Reign had been making the rounds of various TV anthology shows, Webb, R.S., and the rest of the band had formed a rockabilly group—or roots rock, as it’s called nowadays. In fact, they had just released their second album on the Zoo/Praxis label. However, John Webb McMurray had long since begun billing himself exclusively as Webb Wilder. Fine by me; after all, that’s how movie stars Gig Young and Anne Shirley got their stage names!

Before we went home that night, Vinnie and I popped into the Tower Records in Greenwich Village, and I left with two more birthday gifts: the Webb Wilder CDs Hybrid Vigor (1989) and DooDad (1991). Both were (and still are), the awesome, as we say at Team Bartilucci H.Q. We’re no music critics, but we know when a band can rock! Hybrid Vigor includes “Hittin’ Where it Hurts” and Team Bartilucci’s favorite, “Human Cannonball.” Even better, at the time the band had just put out DooDad, which included plenty of songs from their then-new movie, Horror Hayride (HH), whose many kick-butt tracks included “Tough it Out,” “Sittin’ Pretty,” and amazing cover versions of “Baby Please Don’t Go” and “I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night.” Meanwhile, Zoo/Praxis’ video arm released Webb Wilder’s Corn Flicks on VHS (c’mon, you remember VHS!), giving us beaucoup bellylaughs for the buck with three short films, all set in the “swampadelic” South and directed by Steve Mims. Each story was framed by tongue-in-cheek advice to fans by either Webb or Ted Roddy, of Ted Roddy and the Backwoods Hipsters, as Special Agent Travis Byrd, renowned for being “the knuckle end of the long arm of the law” and “cool as an October breeze.” Need I say Vinnie and I caught up on the Webb Wilder CDs we’d missed? (During the summer, “Poolside” from WW’s album It Came From Nashville is in heavy rotation!)

Corn Flicks gives us the delicious feeling that our man Webb is in the middle of a series of his hillbilly noir adventures. My favorite among these great shorts is Horror Hayride, written by Field and Steve Mims. It’s set in Nashville—“Nash Vegas, if you will,” as Webb says in his inimitable voice-over. Mims and Field’s characters and the screenplay’s sly, slightly surreal wit won us over immediately. The film opens with an intriguingly foreboding farm scene that morphs into little Webb finding himself in a close encounter of the spaceman kind. No sooner is Webb startled awake from what turns out to be one of his recurring nightmares about flying saucers than the Governor of Tennessee (Dirk Van Allen) stops Webb’s "Economy with Dignity" tour bus, asking our hero to do him a solid. Seems the Governor’s lovely young daughter Kirsten (Cristina Cassin) has finally graduated from Peabody College, having taken eight years to earn a four-year degree (“Who’s counting?” Webb replies gallantly). Her first job out of school is supervising the state’s new Driver Ed film, also titled Horror Hayride. The Guv wants to make sure the film will be “more relevant to modern rural teens. You know, the muscle-car, street-sign-shootin’ set.” Seems that Webb, “the only man who commands the respect of both reckless teens and the highway patrol,” helped put a rubber stamp truck-driving school out of business, and the Governor owes Webb one. Now he’ll owe Webb two as he agrees to help the Governor and Kirsten. After all, as Webb voiceovers in his pleasantly twangy tones, “The Guv was okay, for an authority figure.”

"We don't do retail, do we, Billy C?"

“We’re gonna have to talk to Billy C.” *POW!*

Singin' songs, fightin' crime; all in a day's work for Webb Wilder and Ted Roddy!

Webb has too much to dream (last night) after Briley slips him an LSD Mickey!

Kirsten’s honey is the enigmatic Briley Parkway (Bodie Plecas) the aspiring film director helming the Driver Ed flick, much to the disgruntlement of Mr. Fry, the apoplectic director of the Driver Ed program (Webb is a hoot as he does double duty as the unbilled Fry). Hiwayne, Parkway, Driver Ed films—Mims and Field have cars on the brain! Judging from Briley’s previous art-house opus, Slugtrail, his vision as an auteur seems to be inspired by both Jean-Luc Godard and William Castle (including a decapitated model head). Webb likes Briley’s work, even if Travis doesn’t; as Webb says, “I gave it a thumb-up. Travis only offered a finger.” But why is Briley making secret visits to porno outfit Antebellum Skin, and why is Kirsten raiding her mama’s trust fund to give Briley $5,000 each week? And how are gospel singer Carlsbad Devereaux (Shane Caldwell) and Webb’s former flame, psychiatrist Dr. Barbara Slovine (Janette Friend-Harris), mixed up in all the “swampadelic, psychotronic” goings-on? Soon Webb and Travis are up to their drawls in trouble, fighting a murderous porno ring whose opuses include The South Will Rise Again and Backstage at The Grand Old Orgy. Along the way, Webb and Travis get to sing an ode to Elvis Presley, “If You Don’t Think Elvis was Number One, You’re Full of Number Two;” as Webb sternly reminds some punks during a party scene at Carlsbad’s palatial home, “If it wasn’t for fat dead ol’ Elvis, there wouldn’t’ve been a Jimi Hendrix or a Peter and Gabriel….” True to the “noir” part of HH’s hillbilly noir, Webb also gets slugged, drugged, and loved as he rekindles his romance with the lovely “Doctor Barbara,” who tries to help Webb with those recurring flying saucer nightmares; I guess he never got over his first case!

Webb's latest opus, Scattergun, at a Webb Fest near you!

The rockin’ rhythms of Webb Wilder the Band work with the tongue-in-cheek detective plot perfectly. Co-writer/director Mims provides lots of atmosphere on a low budget (filming in Nashville helped), and the film’s black-and-white look is like Ansel Adams acting as DP for a Coen Brothers movie (except for one nifty color sequence after Webb is slipped some LSD). The characters take some pleasantly unexpected turns, with acting ranging from sublime (including Webb himself, natch) to amateurish, but that's part of the film’s charm.

The Chicago Tribune called HH “Twin Peaks with MTV thrown in the middle,” but this crazy little caper packs enough humor, plot, and action into its 36-minute running time to give David Lynch and company a run for their money. Being Southerners themselves, writers Field and Mims treat their characters with respect and affection, but they’re not afraid to poke wryly good-natured fun at themselves, as well as pretentious art movies, film noir tropes, and the country-and-Western music biz (Webb: “In Music City, even ugly girls are good-lookin’.”). The witty dialogue sings like Webb himself, and everyone gets at least one show-stealing line, like in this scene between Webb and Travis when Webb comes to after being knocked out by Antebellem Skin henchman Ike (Charles Gunning of Miller’s Crossing and Slacker, among others):

Travis: “So who adjusted your hat size?”
Webb: “Some greasy….I fell.”
Travis: “Right. Maybe next time you’ll trip on a damn .38.”
Webb: “Happens. I’m pretty clumsy.”
Travis: “Just tell me what you want on the tombstone. ‘Rock hard, sleep hard, wear glasses if you need ’em, and die stupid?’ ”

Webb & Dr. Barbara. This case is looking up—at Elvis!

The cast of low-key comic actors does a fine job with Mims and Field’s offbeat sense of humor, and the characters are more complex than you’d expect. Webb has an amazing knack for seeming tough and geeky at the same time (in a good way!) Over the years, we’ve had the pleasure of seeing Webb Wilder live in concert in our area for Musikfest, among other venues. Even all these years later, Webb and the guys keep rocking like nobody’s business, and Webb still has those Wilder-and-wonderful dance moves and that way-cool cavern-voiced delivery. Mims and Director of Photography Brian O’Kelley prove you don’t need a big budget to create atmosphere. HH is shot in glorious black-and-white except for Webb’s LSD hallucination, in psychedelic color with hilariously, endearingly cheesy ChromaKey F/X and color-wheel lighting, accompanied by WW's awesome cover version of The Electric Prunes' "I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)." If you like deadpan comedy, Dragnet, Twin Peaks, and rock ‘n’ roll Southern-style, I think you’re gonna love Horror Hayride!

Aunt Hallie vs. "old nasty disease."

After HH comes the popular festival favorite Aunt Hallie (AH). Written by Mims and Christopher Hammond, made in 1989 and getting acclaim at film festivals since 1991, AH is a comedy for today’s disease-paranoid world. Roger Brinegar of The Saucer’s Reign narrates this loopy spoof of brave disease-sufferers. The titular Aunt Hallie (Mary Gandy) finds a used condom on her lawn one day (*tsk!* Don’t people have any respect for others’ property?) Convinced that touching the condom has infected her with “Old Nasty Disease,” Aunt Hallie stoically and with dignity tries to keep from infecting her long-suffering kin by going to such daft lengths as never touching things if she can possibly avoid them (wait’ll you see what she does just to get up out of a rocking chair), and burning silverware and china cups and dishes identified as hers with Dyno labels; is that recycling, the genteel Southern way? The expressions on Aunt Hallie’s long-suffering relatives’ faces throughout the films are priceless. AH is one of the funniest stories of a self-styled martyr ever told, and well worth getting the DVD for, even if you’re not already a die-hard Webb Wilder fan!

Happily, all of these shorts and more of Steve Mims’ short films are now available on the DVD Webb Wilder’s Amazing B Picture Shorts. WW’s latest film, Scattergun, has been shown at Webb Wilder events; we live for the day it’ll be available on DVD, too. It also includes footage from Webb Fest 2006! Webb Wilder-mania starts here; won’t you help?

Heed the words of Mr. Fry, kids: "Dismemberment is not cute!"

For concert dates, DVDs, and other Webb Wilder-ness, check out the Webb site!
http://www.webbwilder.com

Vinnie Spins a Webb of his own

I have two aphorisms hanging up in my cubicle at work, Doc Savage’s Code and the Webb Wilder Credo (see above). This offers far too much insight into my mindset and philosophy.

As The Wife has said already, Horror Hayride gives you the impression that you’ve been dropped into the middle of a series of adventures, and you either pick it up as you go, or get left behind. It shares that feeling with a film about which I could (and have) go on about for hours, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension. Both films share a vibe of effortless cool, a bevy of mad characters, and a hero who can rock it with the best of them. No wonder that we tried for the longest time to write a fanfic crossover between the two.

The Saucer’s Reign is a solid laugh-fest with an amateurish air, but Horror Hayride shows what a couple years can do for a director and his actors. They had time to flesh out Webb’s history and character as well. In both stories, the cases that Webb takes on are right in line with the Nash-Vegas (if you will) mindset; Webb might be out of his league fighting Russian mobsters, but he’s right at home taking down a blue movie ring. Often, as The Three Amigos learned, it’s when you stray from the formula that things gang aft aglay.

Webb doesn’t come up North too often, but he visited our humble burg two years in a row recently, both at our big local summer event Musikfest, and at the re-opening of a local public pool and park for July Fourth. He’s still the aforementioned Electrifying Artist, and well worth your time in either live, recorded, or cinematic form. Pick up on it.

THE PRODUCERS Meet…THE PRODUCERS!

My smart, funny hubby Vinnie and I have our Team Bartilucci caps on for this week’s double dose of The Producers. We adore writer/director Mel Brooks’ madcap satire in all its forms: the original Oscar-winning 1968 movie; the Tony-winning 2001 Broadway musical; and the movie version of the musical! How’s that for blanketing the field?

Dorian: “Money is honey…He who hesitates is poor!”

I know more people who can quote lines from The Producers than lines from Shakespeare’s works; make of that what you will! J People seem to either absolutely adore or utterly despise The Producers. But most folks I know agree with Vin and me that this nutzoid farce has "Love Power," to quote the late, great Dick Shawn as the ever-groovy, scene-stealing LSD, a.k.a. Lorenzo St. DuBois. Outrageously impudent yet surprisingly tender at times, it’s no surprise that writer/director Mel Brooks' zany tale of schemers trying to produce “the worst play ever written” and profit from it won Brooks his Best Original Screenplay Oscar and became a comedy classic. Need I say it’s also one of our family’s longtime favorites?

All singing! All dancing! All outrageous!

Two coffees, black, hold the bullets!

Meet our rascally protagonist Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel), who’s had an epic string of bad luck in recent years: “You know who I used to be? Max Bialystock, King of Broadway, six shows running at once! Lunch at Delmonico’s. $200 suits. (Max gestures at his stick pin.) You see this? This once held a pearl as big as your eye. Look at me now. Look at me now! I’m wearing a cardboard belt!” Even Max’s comb-over has seen better days. It’s been years since Max has produced a hit Broadway show, and he’s been reduced to using his powers of persuasion — and wheedling, and bellowing, and conning — to “launch… (himself) into Little Old Lady Land” to seduce money out of his rich elderly female backers, giving them “one last thrill on their way to the cemetery.” Afterwards, he collects checks made out to “Cash” (“That’s a funny name for a play.”) from the unsuspecting old dears. The most aggressively horny of them all is Estelle Winwood as “Hold Me Touch Me,” who loves to play games where she both insults and sexes up Max as her chauffeur, naughty stableboy, etc. I used to wonder if Winwood was born old, God bless her; I’ve never seen her as a young woman in any of her many films! She lived to the truly ripe old age of 101, stealing the show in all of her movies that I’ve seen, including this one.

Enter one Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), a meek young accountant sent to do the books for Max’s most recent Broadway flop. It innocently occurs to the studious, honest Leo that “under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than he could with a hit” by raising $1 million, putting on a $60,000 Broadway flop, and keeping the rest when the play theoretically closes on opening night. Of course, if the play was a hit instead, the producer would go to the hoosegow, since there’s no way he could pay back all the backers. A light bulb goes on over Max’s head. After Max badgers, er, persuades Leo to be his partner, the book-cooking begins, the hunt for a surefire flop play commences, and the wacky shenanigans escalate! Max and Leo find their worst play candidate, Springtime for Hitler, written by addlepated Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind, played by the recently departed Kenneth Mars, a longtime Team Bartilucci fave. Thrilled, Franz waxes rhapsodic about his beloved Fuhrer: “Hitler, there was a painter. He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon! Two coats!”  But that’s only the beginning of our heroes’ audacious, hilarious odyssey, as they hire flamboyantly gay transvestite director Roger De Bris (Christopher Hewett, best known as TV’s Mr. Belvedere when I was a youngster), the aforementioned LSD, Swedish-speaking sexpot secretary Ulla (Lee Meredith), and one of the craziest chorus lines in movie history. No wonder this screamingly funny, no-holds-barred comedy helped to put former Your Show of Shows writer Brooks on the map as a filmmaker.

The great Zero Mostel steals every scene in his uproarious, larger-than-life portrayal of Max. I’ve heard that Mostel could be a handful to work with, but it sure pays off in all his stage and screen performances. The Producers is no exception. Alas, Mostel wasn’t nominated for an Oscar, but Gene Wilder was nominated for Best Supporting Actor; his perfect balance of hysteria and sweetness played off blustery, wily Mostel beautifully. In particular, I’ve always liked the father-and-son vibe Mostel and Wilder develop over the course of the movie—including antic father-and-son-style arguments. Anyone trying to make a comedy depending on controversy and questionable taste for its laughs should watch The Producers  first and see how a master does it! In fact, before the Broadway musical version of The Producers revitalized Mel Brooks’s career, I was thinking that maybe Brooks and Wilder should take the time to watch it again themselves. At that point in their careers, they seemed to need a refresher course in how to be funny after the duds they’d begun churning out. At their peak as writers and comedic actors, Wilder always seemed to be able to temper Brooks' mania for poo-poo humor, and Brooks always seemed able to help Wilder to better balance out his trademark hysteria/sweetness. In her 1968 New York Times review, film critic Renata Adler wrote that Wilder “played (Leo) as though he were Dustin Hoffman being played by Danny Kaye.” Her assessment is both on-target and ironic, considering Dustin Hoffman was originally cast as Liebkind, until he was offered the role of Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate. Brooks gave Hoffman his blessing, Mars moved into position, and movie history was made all around!

Much as my family and I also loved the Broadway and film editions of the musical version co-written by Brooks and Thomas Meehan, and starring the incomparable Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick (even though I felt that Broderick wasn't quite as good as Leo Bloom as Lane was as Max Bialystock. That said, together they have great buddy chemistry), the original is still the champ!

Vinnie: “Broadway!  Oh joy of joys! Oh dream of dreams!”

Upon first rumors of a Broadway adaptation of The Producers, the eyes of The Wife and I filled with a mania usually only seen in children approaching Christmas.  We riffed madly on what the show might contain: We guessed right on songs called “Where Did We Go Right?” and “Little Old Lady Land” (okay, the song was titled “Along Came Bialy,” but it was absolutely about Little Old Lady Land) and “Where Did We Go Right?”, while my guess of “Everything Goes Better with Dancing” was wrong. Nathan Lane as Max Bialystock was our only guess/choice, and when Mel Brooks showed up on Letterman with a contract for Nathan, we breathed a sigh of relief. Soon afterwards, we were strolling along NYC’s Theater Row during a picturesque Manhattan winter with our friend Jason, who casually remarked that tickets had gone on sale for the show, a moment we’d been watching for carefully. Suddenly time seemed to stretch and slow, and the snowflakes hung frozen in the air as Jason tried to recall which theater it was.  We dragged him through Times Square like we were Regina Lampert and Peter Joshua (et al) at the Paris Stamp Market in Charade, screaming, “Think, Jean-Louis, THINK!”  He eventually remembered the theater (The St. James) and we grabbed two seats for the first show they had, which was for the fourth night after opening.  Oh how we laughed.

Ulla -- Ulllll-la-la!

Four hundred years later (or so it seemed) we were in our seats in the mezzanine, and the air was filled with a shared joviality. The show had already been declared a hit, but these first few shows were filled with Mel Brooks fans who had, like ourselves, bought our ticket sight unseen, based purely on our love for the man, the film and his entire catalog.  A party of people across the aisle from us were decked out in tuxedos and Viking helmets, like the ones seen on the boys in the cut (and presumed lost) scene where they take the Siegfried Oath in the original film. The show went through a few changes. With the musical now set in the 1950s instead of the late ’60s, Lorenzo St. DuBois and his classic protest ballad “Love Power” was gone entirely, and Franz Liebkind’s part grew in kind when it’s he who is originally cast as the Fuhrer with the classic line, “That’s our Hitler!”  Pretty much everybody’s part got bigger – Ulla graduated to full female lead, complete with romantic subplot. Roger DeBris and Carmen Giya got a big bump up, with Roger eventually having to play Hitler, with riotous results.  Lots of new songs, all written by Mel on the only musical instrument he knows – the tape recorder.  He made the songs up and sang them into a waiting microphone, and the musical staff transcribed and arranged them. Thomas Meehan clearly took the Gene Wilder role and kept Mel from going too crazy – there’s clearly a lot more “Later Mel”-isms in the show (“I can assure you, even though we’re sitting down, we’re giving you a standing ovation”), but it’s kept well in check.  Plus, the boys (and Ulla) get a traditional Broadway Happy Ending, crammed in at the end after the rehearsal of “Prisoners of Love”, with the show opening on Broadway and Max and his new partner taking their place as Kings of the Great White Way. While Lane and Broderick are the best-known actors in the parts of Max and Leo for the musical, there are a few folks who have taken the roles who I would have killed to see.  A limited performance in L.A. featured Jason Alexander and Martin Short – indeed, Short was Mel’s first choice for the role of Leo.  In Britain, Lee Evans played Leo with Lane as Max again. Lane and Evans teamed in Gore Verbinski’s first major live-action film, Mouse Hunt, and while his career in the U.S. was limited, Evans is a national treasure in England.  Reece Shearsmith of The League of Gentlemen played Leo later in the run as well.  And in a run in Manchester, U.K. standup comic Peter Kay played Roger DeBris.

Anyway, back in America…

At the premiere party of the musical, which went on to win a well-deserved 12 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Harvey Weinstein said to Mel, “We gotta make a movie of this!”  Mel replied, “We MADE a movie of it; it was called ‘The Producers’!” So there was little doubt there would be a film of the musical…of the film. Lane and Broderick were back, as were Gary Beach and Roger Bart as DeBris and Carmen.  Nathan Lane was perfection as usual, using his magnificent mix of equal parts Zero Mostel and Lou Costello.  But Matthew Broderick’s performance, both in the musical and the film, always fell a bit flat for me.  He never reached the level of panic that Wilder did (which I imagine Lee Evans and Martin Short did in their turns), and comes off more uncomfortable than hysterical.  Uma Thurman hung her performance on a passable accent, but ultimately, she seems better cast for action roles than comedy. Will Ferrell has yet to give a poor performance, and his manic Liebkind is no exception. Cameos from Andrea Martin as one of the little old ladies and one of the Queer Eye boys, Jai Rodriguez, as one of DeBris’ in-house staff (Jai graduated to playing Carmen later in the Broadway run) are a nice treat as well.  Don’t blink or you’ll miss Brad Oscar, Broadway’s Franz, as a cab driver. Speaking of Oscars, check out the newspaper the usherettes read in the first number; the Funny Boy review byline is “Addison DeWitt,” the role for which George Sanders won his All About Eve Oscar.

Susan Stroman directed the Broadway production and was chosen to direct the film, but as has happened many times with adaptations of musicals, it felt very much like a filmed stage show, not really taking advantage of the larger stage.  Somehow, the scenes that DID venture outside, the performances of “We Can Do It” and “Along Came Bialy,” still felt flat and staged. Like so many before, the film is merely a good approximation of the stage musical.

A little bit of trivia is revealed by Stroman on the DVD commentary: at the close of the film as the camera pulls back to reveal the many marquees of Broadway, we see a bit of the Lunt-Fontanne theater’s marquee on the left; specifically, the letters “ANNE”. That’s a tribute to Mel’s wife Anne Bancroft, who had died shortly after the opening of the musical, last appearing in the Producers-centric episode of Curb your Enthusiasm.

To her dying day, The Wife’s Mom swore she had seen The Producers “in its first run on Broadway.” We tried endlessly to tell her it had started as a film, and she was patently mistaken, but no number of IMDb listings would change her mind. (We suspect that she’d innocently mistaken it for one of Mostel’s other Broadway hits.) It’s nice to know that we got to see it — I can only hope it was as good as the production she remembered. 

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY: Beautiful Dreamers and Thurberesque Schemers

This post is being republished as part of the "For the Boys" Blogathon hosted by The Scarlett Olive from November 19th to November 20th, 2011.

Some of the otherwise knowledgeable younger classic film fans I know have barely heard of the great entertainer Danny Kaye (1913--1987). I’m here to help change all that! Director Norman Z. McLeod and screenwriters Ken Englund, Everett Freeman, and an uncredited Philip Rapp transformed one of my favorite stories by one of my favorite authors, James Thurber, into one of my favorite movies, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (TSLoWM — patience, you might find an ad before the trailer). Samuel Goldwyn transformed Thurber's classic short story into a delightful and surprisingly soulful 1947 musical comedy-thriller. This was the very first Danny Kaye movie I ever saw when I was a child growing up in the Bronx, watching it on TV on WPIX. My mom had turned me on to the film, being a fan of both Kaye and pretty clothes. I think she enjoyed watching little me ooh and aah at Irene Sharaff’s gorgeous fashions (especially the hats; Mom could rock a chapeau like nobody’s business!) as much as we both enjoyed Kaye’s zany slapstick and wordplay. Frankly, Kaye became my first celebrity crush, thanks to the miracle of movies on TV. It’s still my favorite Kaye film, as well as one of my favorite movies of all time. Such Kaye classics as Wonder Man and The Court Jester might be more consistently wacky, but TSLoWM especially appeals to me because it brings out Kaye’s vulnerable side. 

If Walter marries Gertrude, they'll have to change the title to The Dreary Life of "Walty Mittens!"

It usually drives me up the wall when I see movie characters allowing themselves to be as put-upon and henpecked as Kaye's Walter Mitty is here, but I found myself able to sympathize. In this Goldwyn version, Walter is a shy young man still living with his mother (Oscar veteran Fay Bainter) in Perth Amboy, NJ. The gentle, hapless Walter is henpecked almost to the point of emotional abuse. The poor guy gets it from all sides! His well-meaning mother treats him like a child. (Am I the only one who finds it a tad creepy when an adult parent kisses an adult child on the lips, as is done here and in many other films?)  His fiancée, Gertrude Griswold (Ann Rutherford of Gone with the Wind; Two O'Clock Courage; Red Skelton's Whistling In... comedy-mystery film series), while pretty and perky, is nevertheless a stuffed skirt who’s more concerned about appearances, her yappy dog Queenie, and her domineering mother (veteran screen battle-axe Florence Bates of Rebecca; On the Town; I Remember Mama) as she bosses Walter around in her maddeningly cutesy way. Then there’s Tubby Wadsworth (Gordon Jones of McClintock!; My Sister Eileen; You Belong to Me), who keeps proposing to Gertrude—which was fine with me, because I thought those two tiny-minded twits deserved each other (hasn’t Walter suffered enough?)! 

How to Meet Cute Shy Guys, Lesson 1: Slip a little black book listing hot jewels into Shy Guy's briefcase. It's a great little ice-breaker!

Speaking of bosses and bossing, Walter has what should be a way cool job as a proofreader of pulp fiction at the Pierce Publishing Company in New York City. Too bad boss man Mr. Pierce (Thurston Hall of Lady on a Train; Theodora Goes Wild; The Great Lie) is always belittling Walter one minute and stealing his ideas the next. Under the circumstances, who can blame Walter for living in his daydreams (nice use of the song “Beautiful Dreamer”)? That’s where he leads one heroic life and musical production number after another as a fighter pilot, ship captain, Mississippi riverboat gambler, and Western gunslinger, each daydream wittily spoofing the genre stories Walter proofreads. 

Our hero is happy to hold the Mayo!

But our hero is put to the test when lovely, wholesome Rosalind van Hoorn (frequent Kaye co-star Virginia Mayo, great together in comedies like Wonder Man, as well as Mayo's dramatic performances in White Heat; Flaxy Martin; The Best Years of Our Lives;) finds herself becoming a damsel in distress. Seems that Rosalind and her Uncle Peter from Holland (free “Dutch uncle” joke, go wild) are up against bad guys led by a no-goodnik known only as “The Boot” (not to be confused with “Das Boot”), with his cohort Dr. Hugo Hollingshead (the scene-stealing Boris Karloff) and henchman Hendrick (Henry Corden, before he became the second actor to give voice to Fred Flintstone, including a brief but memorable bit in The Asphalt Jungle). These nasty jaspers want a little black book, but this book doesn’t have fair maidens’ phone numbers; it lists jewels and art treasures hidden from the Nazis. Paranoia, adventure, hilarity, and budding romance abound. Will Our Man Mitty’s dreams of heroism come true, and will his and Rosalind’s tulips meet?

There’s a sweetness about Danny Kaye in this role that’s always had me rooting for Walter instead of merely growling, “Oh, tell 'em all to go to hell already.” As a result, it's that much more satisfying when Walter finally does tell off his obnoxious so-called friends and loved ones (unlike such “comedies of cruelty” as, say, 1990’s Madhouse, where the last 10 minutes of Revenge Against The Oppressors was the only entertaining part of the film)! James Thurber reportedly tried to buy off Goldwyn to keep the film from being made, and hated the finished product. With all due respect to Thurber, I think perhaps he wasn't being quite fair. First off, books and movies have different storytelling requirements, and second, the first 10 minutes are almost straight from Thurber's story, except it's Walter and his nagging mom instead of a nagging wife. 

James Thurber by Rick Geary

It’s easy to let yourself become distracted by Goldwyn’s fabulous production values—to say nothing of the fabulous Goldwyn Girls—but look sharp and you’ll catch Thurber’s sting-in-the tail wit. As Walter's literal and figurative dream girl Rosalind, Kaye's frequent leading lady Virginia Mayo was thoroughly beguiling and never looked lovelier—and hey, the radiant Mayo was a size 12 and nobody considered her a "plus size," thank you very much! TSLoWM also contains two of my favorite Danny Kaye/Sylvia Fine musical numbers: “Anatole of Paris” and “Symphony for Unstrung Tongue;” in the latter, am I the only one who finds the line “He gets so excited that he has a solo passage” to be subtly salacious? My husband Vinnie and I like to think that Uncle Peter's grand home must be located in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where we lived for over a decade, since it reminded me of the kind of homes we used to see while strolling in the Fieldston area. Also, it didn't seem to take horrifically long for Walter and Rosalind to drive there from the Flatiron district of Manhattan; of course, that could simply be the magic of filmmaking.

Could Rosalind's Uncle Peter be Bruno Antony's neighbor?!

Incidentally, I've always thought the interior of the van Hoorn home looks a lot like the interior of evil Bruno Antony's home in Strangers on a Train; does anyone here know if these scenes might have been shot in the same house/set? I wish the few extras had included deleted scenes; there's a bit in the trailer with Karloff and Corden in a pub that I definitely don't recall seeing in the finished film. On the DVD and LaserDisc (yes, we still own the latter—good thing, too, since we can’t seem to find TSLoWM DVDs that aren’t Korean), it was nice to see the intro and outro with Virginia Mayo still alive and well at the time (and bigger than the "size 12" mentioned in the fashion show scene, but on her it was pleasant plumpness, in my opinion!), even though Mayo only had time to say one line each about her co-stars: "Ann Rutherford was delightful...Fay Bainter was a consummate actress...Boris Karloff was a true gentleman..." Anyway, if you’re not already a Danny Kaye fan, TSLoWM just might make you one!  

"That does it: from now on, I'm working from home!"

Mayo's aghast, Kaye's agape, and Karloff's a ghoul!

Blogging for Autism: Siobhan Maggie Bartilucci in One Million Words or Less

We interrupt our usual Tales of the Easily Distracted pop culture & fiction to take part in today's Moms Blogging for Autism

Siobhan* Maggie Bartilucci in One Million Words or Less

                                     (*Pronounced “shuh-VON.”)
Our daughter Siobhan, who recently celebrated her 14th birthday, is a smart, upbeat young lady who loves her family, cartoons, playing, sweets, and swimming, more or less in that order. She happens to have been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, which causes her to behave in a more introverted way. By “introverted,” we don’t mean “shy.” (In fact, Siobhan often walks up to total strangers and asks them about themselves, which we discourage only because of the dreaded “stranger danger.”) In Siobhan’s case, “introverted” means that, for example, if she’s alone in an elevator she will, if not reminded, do the kind of things most people do when they’re all alone: she’ll talk to herself, dance around entertaining herself, etc.  Siobhan has also been diagnosed with ADHD, which means she does these things at great speed.  She’s very high-functioning and can be quite gregarious and charming, but she’ll close off quickly when her bank of conversation questions is depleted.

Siobhan is severely allergic to peanuts, tree nuts, and sesame, and must carry an Epi-Pen with her at all times. Luckily, she’s also a picky eater, so she always asks what things contain, and then doesn’t eat it anyway because it’s not pizza or a hot dog.  We try to encourage her to try new foods, but we don’t make a big thing of it because that way lies eating disorders, and nobody really wants to go on Dr. Phil.

Her avowed one true love is Sonic the Hedgehog, who she plans to marry as soon as she reaches legal age.  As long as he can provide for her in the style to which we’d like her to become accustomed, and the kids are raised Catholic, we’ve chosen not to keep them apart.
Siobhan’s musical tastes tend more to trance, including the work of Cascada and Paul van Dyk, with a good bit of Webb Wilder and the theme songs from the Japanese Sentai shows, the ones they use to make Power Rangers.  We’re all cartoon fans in our house, so her TV watching tends more towards animated fare from various decades. 

She can and does sit through entire films and TV shows, but left to her own devices (said devices being the remote) will tend to pop about to her favorite scenes, re-running them endlessly, wearing a hole in the DVD and then who’s going to buy a new copy I ask you not me missy.

She has made the jump in the past year from random non-sequiturs spouted at inopportune moments to the correctly chosen cultural reference.  She’s slowly finding the way to make her eccentric affectations work to her benefit, and we enjoy watching it happen.

Siobhan is well aware of what rules are, and that they apply to her, but she sees no need not to try to get around them when not under scrutiny.  She comes from this honestly, being her father’s child.  While she’s sweet, she's not made of sugar, and can withstand reasonable discipline. Luckily, she’s basically a good kid, and far more affectionate and empathetic than most Aspies we've met. In addition, we've had a reward system in place since her kindergarten days, encouraging her to be on her best behavior. If she behaves well (e.g., getting homework and chores done, being respectful, all that good stuff), she gets a smiley-face drawn on her calendar for that day.  If she gets only three frowny-faces or less in the entire month, she gets to choose an end-of-the-month prize costing $20 or less as a reward. We’re happy to say this reward system works wonders with Siobhan; in fact, we can’t remember offhand when she last got a frowny-face! :-)