Old Dark Capsules: THE GHOUL, CAT AND THE CANARY, THE MONSTER WALKS, THE OLD DARK HOUSE, THE BLACK RAVEN

Secret panels, stormy nights, dying heirs, hairy hands, Karloff, candles, lawyers; priceless mcguffins stolen from a dead man's watch pocket; maybe a coroner, woken up at this ungodly hour of the night; guys in ape suits for the medium shots, stock footage of a monkey for the close-ups; Bela Lugosi stuck playing a butler with barely any lines because the producers are worried about his morphine addiction; shrieking maids; bats; black cats; skulls on desks; conniving trophy wives everyone wants dead. What could be more Halloween-ish? It's the Old Dark House genre, basically forgotten today because there are no more old dark houses. Now they're either 'haunted' or long-since converted to apartments.

But if you've ever spent a weekend at a rich friend's mansion then you know how weird it can get: a late night trip to the bathroom after everyone else has gone to bed can be a terrifying, surreal nocturnal journey ala THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER river trip. The walls are so thick that if someone were screaming for help downstairs in the study you'd never even hear them, or be able to find them.

And no longer can eccentric millionaire uncles just caper down to Egypt and help themselves to whatever cursed, ancient artifacts they care to dig for. The colonialist yard sale is closed! But the films, thank Ra, remain open! Here's five I know like the back of m'hand, and the catacombs of m'mind: 

 THE GHOUL

(1933) Dir. T. Hayes Hunter
***

British studio Gaumont's attempt to make a 1930s Universal horror reveals just how great Universal horrors were by contrast, especially when made with Karl Freund and James Whale nearby. At any rate, GHOUL used to exist only in fuzzy dupes (in this country at least) so it's nice there are finally coherent transfers/prints around, for the film is lovely and foggy and cozy as a cup of Earl Grey at a midnight foggy moor picnic which, as a few of the other entries here make clear, is not as easy to pull off as it seems. The all-star cast includes Ralph Richardson as a noisy parson (there must be a running joke in English dog-and-pony circles about nosy local vicars cycling from house to house to mooch drinks). Karloff stars and gets almost no lines as an eccentric, dying Egyptologist who spends 75,000 pounds on an emerald he thinks will bring him back from the dead. He's soon entombed to the strains of Wagner's immortal "Sigfried's Funeral March" but naturally the gem winds up bounced around the rest of the skulking cast, starting with Ernest Thesiger (Dr. Pretorious!) as a worried Christian butler, and Cedrick Hardwicke as a grumpy Dickensian lawyer who employs rather elaborate strings of words like "I intend to grant myself the pleasure of calling on her this evening." They're all either looking for the emerald, stealing it from someone else, writing notes, stealing said notes in the fog, making peace with angry cousins, being strangled by Karloff (back from the dead and in search of his expensive emerald) or having sadomasochistic fantasies (how very British!)

The grand guignol moment is when Boris carves a bloody ankh symbol on his bony chest, cut from many prints, and skulks around nearly harming the ladies (he's really just after the gem and immortality) and the comic relief comes in the form of Katherine Harrison as the daft best friend of plucky heroine (Dorothy Hyson). Believe it or not, Anthony Bushell and Harold Huth steal the show as a bemused Arab and a square-jawed nephew, respectively, THE GHOUL would make a fine, weird double bill with the original MUMMY (1932), and possibly even stole its props. Alas, like so many British-Egyptian Museum horrors of the era all the supernatural elements must be conveniently explained away by film's end. One mustn't leave the queen's subjects thinking such things are true, you know... a gullible lot they are, I'm afraid, sir. That's not to say this jewel still isn't a little loose in its setting, sir! Pure 30s horror mood it is, with enough Worcester fog to carry it through if you lose track of who has the jewel, or where it's hid, or where everyone else is relative to everyone else on the grounds.

THE CAT AND THE CANARY

(1939) Dir. Elliot Nugent
 ****

My favorite Bob Hope movie! I've seen it 1,000 times! Dragging my canoe behind me! I taped it off 'Spotlight' in 1980 and, in some ways, I'm still watching it. It only came onto DVD recently, was never on VHS and hasn't been on TV ever, so if you don't remember it, there's a reason. The silent version is in public domain but who needs it when this one has Bob Hope in the perfect mix of romantic hero and scared goofball quipper as Wally Campbell. It was his first big role and his comedic timing is so sharp he actually heightens the suspense with his whistling in the dark style asides, double takes, and feints back and forth between courageous pose and truthful reveal of (understandable) fear; he puts all the other variations of this character to shame (and I mean you, Wallace Ford). He's also drawn a great leading lady in Paulette Godard, though it's clear that in the original she's a bit more frail and old-school kindness-of-strangers-dependent. Goddard seems way too modern to faint or drop a gun, and way too sane to believably be even remotely as out of her mind as her greedy relatives would like to believe. That's because the she's the sole heiress to her eccentric Uncle Cyrus Norman's bayou mansion, where an escaped maniac who calls himself 'The Cat' is prowling for victims, and where the disparate relatives are gathered for the midnight will reading, a cliche which really got its start with the play version of this, which underwrites not just this film but the entirety of the genre.

So much that could go so very wrong goes just as right instead in the hands of director Elliot Nugent. He keeps the shadows alive and makes sure a creepy wind sound accompanies the fine Enrst Toch score (which never gets cutesy, just creepy). The outdoors around the house is a big swampy fog-bound soundstage rather than drab outdoor footage, which earns it a high mark; the secret panel-to-the-small-garden-hut climax conjures the expressionist shadows of Cabinet of Caligari, replete with the maniac's dramatic posturing - very high mark. What a cast! George Zucco reads the will and is the first to get murdered; Gale Sondergaard is the Creole housekeeper in tune with the mysterious chimes and 'murmurs' of the old house; and nobody sings or titters like an imbecile, not even cousin Cecily and she has to hold her finger under her nose to keep from screaming. Top marks. It was such a perfect lightning bolt synergy of style, substance, and cast chemistry that Hope reunited with Sondergaard and Zucco when they played his Nazi pursuers three years later in My Favorite Blonde and he reunited one year later with Goddard in The Ghost Breakers which has more supernatural elements than Cat and is generally considered the better film, but man, I'll take them both. It's still early in his career enough that Hope doesn't know yet just how great he is, but Nugent does, and the atmosphere is electric. Dragging my canoe behind me!

THE MONSTER WALKS
(1932) Dir. Frank Strayer
 **

This creaky Frank Strayer riff seems recorded on the kind of early sound equipment that was outmoded by 1930. The air is thick with burbling hiss like everyone is underwater (which I like). It's got most of the boxes filled:  big old dark house with a rich dead patriarch? Check.  The will read and an absentee girl heir (the compact Vera Reynolds) breezes in to collect the millions? Check. Ape in a cage in the basement? Check. Willie Best as a frightened chauffeur? Check. But we also get Mischa Auer as the illegitimate son of the old creep in the wheelchair and the maid, angry he's denied any of the family fortune after all the hours he's slaved for that old man. Not even hairy hands coming out of the wall can remedy the social injustice and animal cruelty (the ape, named Yogi, is a real ape instead of a guy in gorilla suit) that lingers in the air while the typical Cat and Canary will-reading resentment simmers and the camera keeps its static distance.

I know the Leonard Maltin review by heart: "Willie bests Mischa for laughs, but it's a close race." Lenny, you're my wheelchair-bound true father who taught me to write like a subliminal weisenheimer. Despite the unpleasant angles, the unconvincing stormy night-rattling-sheet metal makes it nice to fall asleep to as the sun comes up on another frosty November 1st, your blood levels of alcohol, ecstasy, nicotine, and sugar now dwindled to an early morning frost on the window shudder no amount of hot coffee can allay. Take it from me. "I have a premonition something's going to happen! Something horrible!" Vera says while the painting behind her slowly turns crooked so someone can spy on her. Her dumb boyfriend doctor (Rex Lease) tells her she needs something for her nerves, but then just kisses her. Dude! You should have got the tranquilizer! Then the old creep in the wheelchair tells her she should take one, too. And then the doctor goes to get her one after the ape hand incident and she still won't take it ("perhaps I won't need it"). Ugh.

Still in a movie this slow and strange it's the little things. "Nobody's going to steal their money," snarls bitter Mischa after his mom tells him to bolt the doors and windows. "It's not here." Best gets the last laugh: when he's on the floor panicking because the mouth on the polar bear rug has caught his slipper (he thinks it's "Mr. Yogurt") he seems about as afraid and engaged as if he's reading the script to himself while falling asleep. Vera is such an idiot she won't believe who the killer is, even when he's openly trying to kill her.

THE OLD DARK HOUSE

(1932) Dir. James Whale
****

The great 'lost' Universal horror of 1932. I longed to see it ever since I was a kid reading about it in my Creature Features guide, but it was all but lost thanks to the habit of destroying older versions when remakes came out (not that the remake resembled the original in anything but name/s). Then Kino came to the rescue via a restored, lone surviving print (discovered through the perseverance of Curtis Harrington), and co-star Gloria Stuart even did an audio commentary for the laserdisc.

I never had a laserdisc player, but James Cameron did, loved the commentary, and that's how she came to narrate Titanic! True story!

Not an old dark house movie, Old Dark House is not even really a horror movie or a comedy, but a James Whale movie. As such, it's a combination of many atmospheric, very British elements that don't come together until numerous viewings over decades help the various medicines buried in its flavor tapestry kick in. Getting older, we come to understand the 'that's fine stuff' rant by Rebecca Femm (Eva Moore) to Gloria Stuart, and how it leads to her reflection like that of a skull in the mirror; or the resemblance Rebecca has to a photo of Queen Victoria by her mirror; the general nicety and British crust of Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger) who "likes gin" (and would still be drinking it a few years later in Whale's Bride of Frankenstein), the way the alcohol passed around by the roaring hearth gives you a feel of being there and feeling the warmth of the cinematic image like that same fire; the honest romance between lost generation lad Melvyn Dougas and Bill's (Charles Laughton) traveling companion Perkins (Lillian Bond); their arrival like a daft breath of fresh working class air in the middle of a stiff dinner, lightening the rich yobbo dryness against which the merry Melvyn Douglas hurls himself like a kid fighting waves on the beach. Karloff as the mute butler portrays the end point of madness and the beginning point of savagery; Laughton becomes the backbone of Britain; the late inning introduction of Roderick Femm--played by the elderly real life old lady of the stage Elspeth Dudgeon --provides a welcome bit of contextualization, change of scene and foreshadowing. And then, in a rage Morgan releases Saul (Brember Willis- the hermit from Bride) who is hopelessly, violently insane... See it 30 times, 300, it's still not enough... my friend.

 THE BLACK RAVEN 

(1943) Dir. Sam Newfield
****

When I'm having a travel-induced panic attack, THE BLACK RAVEN is my go-to source of solace. I really respond to the cozy fireplaces, howling wind, torrential rain, muffled dialogue, and the sense of conspiratorial cool amongst the more criminal guests (they all sign the register as 'John Smith'). It all takes place--like the best old dark house films--over one 'dark and stormy' night, beginning as guests learn the bridge is washed out in their rain slashed cars and ending when the rain stops at dawn. Padding around the waterlogged cardboard sets in his robe and slippers, Zucco's great as the enigmatic retired criminal who now runs a small inn (named the Black Raven) just this side of the Canadian border. No actual ravens or border-crossings appear in this film--too rainy--but Glenn Strange is the idiot manservant and the wondrously dour Charles "Ming" Middleton is the clueless sheriff. A suitcase of embezzled cash results in murder; a corrupt politico tries to break up his daughter's newlywed marriage; and an escaped crook is out to settle an old score with Zucco. An eloping young couple try and stay out of the way. Make sure to get the best available edition as there's lots of crappy public domain editions wherein everything is too dark and muffled. (Roan Group's 'Black and Blue' set that includes Ulmer's Bluebeard and Bela's great, incoherent Black Dragons is the best so far, and highly recommended). Your mileage may vary, but for my dark and stormy night PRC 40s money, it's Black Raven all the way.

Special shout-out to Verdoux! - it seems to contain the same eerie alchemical magick as celluloid itself!

Leperello sells Spotto (or The Sailor's Farewell): ROAD TO SINGAPORE (1940)

I just watched THE ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN (1948) starring the great Errol Flynn--perfect casting of course considering his reputation--and it managed to be thrilling despite its winkiness. I'm a fan of the Mozart opera, DON GIOVANI (which is to say I can tolerate more than most operas) so I was sad to see the Flynn version skips the "Hell" ending (see pic below) and fails to delve into the complexity of Juan/Giovanni's manservant, ultimate wingman and perennial drinking buddy Leporello, who waits outside with the horses for a quick escape beneath m'lday's boudoir window, then hears, no doubt, all Don's inevitable boasting. There's not been near enough characters like him: the Juan and Leporello pair bond is a fundamental archetypal bond which today survives only in the form of the sidekick or else falls into disrepair via the "Bromantic Comedy."

The true measure of a man when you're trying to hook up with a woman is whether said man be a wingman or cockblocker. Oft times they are one in the same. Once the class divide is erased then the issue of the rich kid footing the bill for his poor but hilarious confidente is mussed up and endangered. Such a Leporello-Juan relationship is nowhere better expressed than in ROAD TO SINGAPORE, with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. 

Most all the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby "road" movies are sublime. The third, ROAD TO MOROCCO is commonly considered the most hilarious and inventive, but I'll take ROAD TO SINGAPORE (1940), which gives us the boy's full back story and thus a better idea of class demarcations (Hope is the poor sailor friend to rich kid Crosby). Paramount knew comedy, and it seems the studio was most permissive regarding improvisational canoodling and futzing around in what Manny Farber would call 'termite art.'

Bob and Bing have a relationship that mixes constant fraternal antagonism (and backstabbing) with a post-modern detachment that never quite falls into the abyss of narrative disruption, which is a PBS fancy-pants way of saying you still get absorbed in the plot, even as the boys constantly eat the script. They dance on the lip of complete chaos but never fall in; they are classic "bad influence" friends of the sort weary sets of parents meet over drinks to figure out how to separate. Their worst enemies as far as getting girlfriends are always each other as they try to outmaneuver and betray one another every chance they get, but all while being perfect pals, both madly in love with the sweet and demure and ever-so-vaguely 'ethnic other,' Dorothy Lamour (left).

Bing always gets the girl, because he can sing. I generally hate when some guy starts crooning onscreen, but der Bingle brings such a smooth tone to his tunes no feather can stay ruffled. Even if you leave to go get popcorn during his romantic numbers, he forgives you. All I have to do is remember Mel Blanc's (?) impression of him and Sinatra as dueling roosters in Swooner Crooner, a cartoon I saw countless times through childhood, and I too swoon.

Usually we see only the evil versions of bad influence buddy friends onscreen, as in the girls of HEAVENLY CREATURES or DON'T DELIVER US FROM EVIL or the lads of BUTCHER BOY. But Hope and Crosby are the other end of the moral spectrum: they're knights of Camelot in vagabond clothing and mouths washed of poesy talk. Even if their gallant behavior is solely to placate the era's sharp-eared censors and strict codes, their de-sexualized lust strategies are calming, endearing examples of what Lao Tzu might call "the pursuit of emptiness." Neither one is going to "do" anything if they win Dorothy Lamour. They can't stay separate long enough, like comedic magnets, to get beyond (or even to) first base. 

It's possibly due in part to Hope's baby face and Bing's glassy-eyed ease in his own skin. What's Dorothy Lamour without Hope around, and vice versa? They're all 'mates,' Bob and Bing, married to each other the way young straight guys or a pair of outcast young male lions can sometimes be, freely wandering the savannah together, growling in good-natured antagonism, vowing 'no women' even as they fight over each flash of legs through the sarong of Lamour, who refuses to pick one over the other for more than a few minutes at at time. Even if they think they're winning, that in turn prompts them to remind each other where that train of lustful thinking leads: children and nagging! Round and round they go!

While eternally free, Bob and Bing's path is one of flight; reacting against the terror of returning 'too soon' from the idyll of boyhood. In the beginning of the film, Bing's dad (Charles Coburn) admonishes his son to settle down: "Your galavanting is over, young man!" But we've not seen any of this previous galavanting - there is no past when you live in the moment! Bing's barely begun the picture; he's not about to settle down so soon after the opening credits. The boys would seldom be back in the states after this first outing. I don't think Bing ever saw his dad again. They just kept running!

Their rapport is always the same: Bing is the leader in the end by virtue of his sharp wisdom, calm demeanor and his singing; Hope's always been excellent at mirroring and playing off his fellow actors, using his natural heterosexual nervousness around hot babes as electricity that juices him into flurries of action and barking. Bing meanwhile seems much more calm around the ladies, playful and relaxed, waiting for the meat to drop so he can grab it, and Bob uses this space to become a great meat dropper. The tension Hope works with centers around babes, or food, or money. His need for whatever's lacking is unending; he's 'fear and desire,' and Bing is more the calm, cool, Zen center.

In an earlier post I discussed my deep appreciation of the "Thanks for the Memories" number that serves as a quiet show-stopper in the otherwise ROTM film BIG BROADCAST OF 1938.  That was Hope's first big picture and how interesting it is that only two years later he slammed this home-run, ROAD TO SINGAPORE, kicking off the immensely popular road pictures and displaying that great range of cowardliness and courage, a two-fisted Romeo and conniving goofball, immature layabout and solid citizen. In the first few reels, Hope even looks kind of handsome in his black sailor sweater and cap. (The scene represented by the picture below, however, is a whole post in and of itself):

Yes sir, racist, perhaps, but would you admonish children if they're up in their bedroom wearing bedsheets and pancake mix, pretending to be native tribesmen? Jokes reflect their era and stereotypes run rampant, but it's all just for laughs... like Stanley Cavell writes about screwball comedy in his essential Comedies of Remarriage, the core of post-code 'screwball' comedy is the play-acting of children, such as 'house' and 'dress-up' and the 'paddy cake / paddy cake / baker's man" chant that comes right before the boys start punching cops (but in a fake fighting way, like brothers do). The censorship code kept everyone locked in their room, grounded in pre-sexual juvenalia, bu--like Cary Grant or Groucho Marx--Hope and Crosby seem to find a special way to use libidinal restriction to make the world edgy, alive, and full of laughs -- and sexy almost as a side benefit. Rather than all the strident leering and wolf drool of say, Frank Tashlin or 80s sex comedies (wherein the sexier it tries to be the less sexy it actually is), Hope and Crosby are sexy because they never try to get past first base.

The film begins with the lads having recently come back from an ocean voyage, watching from on deck as their sailor brethren are corralled and abused by their waiting spouses. No sooner have they badmouthed marriage than a hick shotgun wedding party tries to corral Hope because he kept a girl named 'Cherry' out "half the night" at the movies. The implied sex or pregnancy is never addressed: it all being a crazy misunderstanding - and we believe it - as the pair have the impish charm of eternal youth that makes sex seem a vulgar impossibility. One of my favorite Hope moments comes when his face lights up at the name 'Cherry' only to suddenly slowly drain into dead seriousness before looking them in the eye and slowly shaking his head no, no idea who that girl is. A couple of brawls later and they've escaped to Singapore and a life of ease. The boys may or may not be innocent but really, as long as we don't see it, did it really happen? What does happen is that someone needs to chase them to keep the party moving, and no one does that better than Anthony Quinn as the whip wielding Lothario who 'raised' Dorothy Lamour as his daughter and now, her time to be married, she has come.

The magnetic pull of Lamour is enough to drive a wedge between the our heroes, because Hope isn't Crosby's servant--this is America, buddy!---and yet neither Hope or Crosby is apparently ever sexually intimate with her. Hope and Crosby sleep together in one room and she in another. When Hope tries to go to her in the middle of the night, Crosby stops him and vice versa. They never think to share her, as she shares herself with them, and when either gets a chance to be alone with her, he can only either badmouth the other or sing a song. Thus they are like fishermen who throw whatever they catch back as they don't really like fish. Theirs is the 'boyfriend/girlfriend' of childhood wherein there's no sex or kissing and any actual contact is usually antagonistic. The relationship often exists more in conversation with your second grade buddies than in actuality. In their constant jostling for top dog position, Lamour becomes the ultimate McGuffin, but me, I like Gloria, the rich socialite Bing's engaged to and always running out on. She never seems jealous, piqued or put off. She calms down her flustered prospective father-in-law as they go gallivanting all over the Pacific in search of errant Bing. "You haven't seen me in a sarong," she tells him. "I'm quite a dish," and I believe her (for proof, see below right.) I'd marry her in a second because Lamour's character is very normal and conventional, Gloria at least has fun - even being jilted time and again she's never bitter, just bemused. She wouldn't be a harridan like say, Bulldog Drummond's or the Falcon's fiancees, ever demanding they stop doing what they love and settle down to boring staid respectability, even obstructing justice and endangering innocent people to do it in a way as to make it seem like the films are underwritten by some self-hating conservative censor ever trying to bite his own tail off. Oh yeah, we all come to see Drummond or 'Gay' Lawrence not solve crimes and just get yelled at for 90 minutes. But Judith Barrett's Gloria is about as far away from that as it's possible to come, all the way into Myrna Loy territory, if someone was smart enough to let her. She's way more fun and free than Lamour's innocent. Being poor and free looks like the same thing when you're neither of the two.

Judith Barrett - quite a dish

Before teaming up with Bing, Hope had already shown flair for the adventure-comedy, able to hold his own agains the overplaying of Martha Raye one minute and nail a touching duet the next in BIG BROADCAST OF 1938, and setting a new high water mark for the ubiquitous old dark house quipping comic relief hero in CAT AND THE CANARY (1939) while Bing held his own against Raye in WAKIKI WEDDING (1937) and subjugated a hoiti toiti Carole Lombard castaway in WE'RE NOT DRESSING (1934, which included the Raye-ish Ethel Merman). But when they weren't busy chasing off the brass belters and orbiting around the timid torchers, Bing and Bob always seemed a bit lonesome, like no one in the room could match their insouciant wit, their ability to be 'in' the film but not 'of' the film --to be play wolf-ish one minute then touchingly honest and sweet the next (without ever becoming mawkish or smarmy --no mean feat). They were like those two brilliant kids with no one their own age or hip intelligence to play with at the beach. But when Bob and Bing were put together they both lit up with a magic instant best-friend chemistry. Every good parent knows that if you want the kid to have a good time at the beach, you have to let him bring a friend. Though if they both like the same girl, look out, brother!

Call me crazy but comedy took a one-two punch for the worse with the success of THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, and THE NUTTY PROFESSOR remake in the late 90s. They brought scatological humor out of the bathroom and onto the dinner table and comedic civilization has since crumbled into balls and scrotums. Hope and Crosby, they got class! They're peppy! Fun for the whole family, sure! Spotto! Sure they're not exactly cutting edge today, but relative to the overall Mickey Rooney squareness of the post-code / pre-WW2 era they toiled in, they were leagues ahead, and they've aged way, way better than Martin and Lewis. Hell, I'd rather hang out with Bob and Bing than the all the dick-wagging navel-gazing schmucks of today. Hope and Crosby didn't need to talk about their dicks, they just plowed the chorus and kept it on the DL, feigning a sexual naïveté that only the well-laid can feign. To make childish behavior ennobling is only ever embarrassing, like Adam Sandler doing MR. DEEDS. In order to grow down you have to first grow up, otherwise you're just stunted.

I turn to the holy Cavell when struggling to explain the timeless appeal of the Hope-Crosby ROAD films. His analyses of the era's key screwball comedies are comforting to me in the same way the ROAD movies are, like the friends who never fail to take you back into their inner circle even after you blew them off for the last three years to be with your controlling girlfriend (1). Now you're back--wrecked and sad--and they take you in like you never left. They are the cool uncle who takes the pain away with a single deadpan smile. They are the hearth; the earth father; our Iron King; our blue mood saviors. They are every moth-eaten Romeos chance to start again, with an unslain Mercutio, ten cents, and a zauberflote carved from a sweet potato. And now a word from the folks at PBS... for every ten dollars donation you get a year's supply of Spotto!

Thanks / for the Lucky Strikes

The title of this blog entry will be familiar to Jack Benny fans, as one of the "commercial song parodies" with which his Sportsmen Quartet slyly ribbed and celebrated their sponsor, Lucky Strike, that fine cigarette that 4 out of 5 doctors prefer... so round, so firm, so fully packed. So free and easy on the draw!

Bob Hope was  a frequent guest star on Benny's show and he was always hilarious, a bundle of energy and joy, sharing a deep-seated sense of ease and beyond-impeccable comic timing with fellow star vaudeville types like Benny or Bing Crosby. There's not much of that kind of rapport in BIG BROADCAST OF 1938, Hope's first big role. But he sings fairly well in the slightly trilly style of the time. He plays a radio announcer/promoter for a cross Atlantic cruise ship race, with WC Fields as his comic co-star (and Fields is not one for lightning fast banter off-the-cuff with upstarts). Fields plays a corporate spy sent to slow the boat down so the other side can win, but he lands his crazy autogyro bicycle on his own cruise line; laughs ensue. Hope meanders around introducing an abundance of weird yet strangely exhausting musical numbers, including a long Die Wulkure aria, replete with Brunhilde in helmet, braids and brandishing a spear (below).

But then, like an oasis of beauty and quiet in a big shrill sporadically funny mess, comes this lovely scene between Bob and his unhappily divorced wife, Shirley Ross. A kind of female Walter Burns in HIS GIRL FRIDAY, Ross has Hope arrested so she can bail him out of jail before the boat sails, and generally employs all the screwball tricks to keep this baggy pants slickster around where she can see him.  It's an old familiar, no-win situation, but what ensues in their "Thanks for the Memories" number, their delicate but cool, unforced and sensitive shy/sly duet, strikes a note of transcendent grace.

An ode to good times that later went bad and the way savvy lovers catch themselves rose-tinting the whole affair when they know full well that there were an awful lot of good reasons why they left each other, this song and they dynamics both actors bring to it will be familiar to anyone who ever still loved--and was friends with--an ex. Hope--later content to be kind of a genial quick-witted leering buffoon--got his start this kind of sensitive smart guy, the sort who could actually wrestle with his fears, face the villain, woo the girl successfully and admirably, and still get off great wisecracks. In films like the following year's CAT AND THE CANARY and THE GHOST BUSTERS (both my favorites as well) for example, he cracks cowardly yet acts continually courageous - a whistling in the dark approach that never backs down from danger ("I'm so scared," he warns a sinister man on the boat to Cuba in GHOST BUSTERS, "if I see a ghost, I'm liable to take a shot at it, silly isn't it?") 

"Thanks for the Memory" captures this same mix of courage and avoidance as the better part of valor, and proves Hope is already a master of working off the energy of his fellow player. He falls completely in-step with the deep pangs of longing coursing through the blithe fatigue of Shirley Ross. Like a good jazz bassist might in a trio, he finds her off-beats and adds shadow and accent to her highlights.

Written by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger, the song itself stands way, way out from the rest of the songs in the film; it's almost Shakespearean in the way its surface percolates with sophisticated drollery, the "Hurrah for the next who dies!" modernist kind of stiff upper lip emotional denial, the trick we use over drinks to convince ourselves we're better off calling it quits, while just under the skin there's all this  tenderness, longing, regret and--most beautiful all--a genuine love and interest in the other person even if they don't get back together, even if they know it's for the best they don't. Also, the song acknowledges the weird way guilt and regret will fuel the rose-tinting process, the way everything is suddenly perfect just when you're about to finally part. So you stay to try and make it work, and it falls instantly to shit.

Love thrives on absence, and never is love stronger than when you separate ships sail off into separate sunsets. If that strength makes you jump overboard and swim to their ship, the love starts to weaken before you're even dry. Ross and Hope's singing, and the way the drama and push-pull dynamic is only heightened by the words and melody, making this one of my all-time favorite musical moments. Particularly I love the sudden stops into speaking - "That's life I guess / I love... / your dress," he sings/says, the word 'love' causing her to look up expectantly. When he says 'your dress' she looks down at it, her tears temporarily subsided even with the disappointment:

"Do you?"

"It's pretty," Hope says. Before singing some more. That "it's pretty" gets me every time; from the giddy hope of "I love..." to "it's pretty" represents a whole downward facing spiral of relationship dynamics. Ross wont get the words she wants to hear (I love you) but she will get the words she needs to hear (it's pretty).

By the end of the song, Ross is in tears and Hope has re-set the rules by resuming his role as the "distancer" in their codependent pair bond --even if he's weakened by the experience. Things seem already back where they were. So what, then, is love but the contract by which one is humbled into accepting the lesser of two evils? It's like being addicted to war: the pre-WW2 era was all about looking askance at marriage and the conventions of the old social system, flappers and fun, not marriage and kids. Funny how lately the winds of time have so shifted so that we willingly have given up nearly every freedom we won in the years between 1945 and 1979. Soon we will not even be allowed to smoke a Lucky Strike... at all... even outside! Ah, when I first moved to Manhattan in 1992, you could drink outdoors, as long as they were in brown paper bags, and there was dancing in every bar, pimps in fancy cars, drunks and punks and whiteboy funk and junkies with guitars... how lovely it was....