Sunday, January 20, 2019

Top 10 Comedies of the 1950s

Who doesn't love to laugh? I know I do. I grew up during in a great time, when the television was filled daily with Three Stooges and Laurel & Hardy shorts, and there was always a Marx Brothers or W.C. Fields film playing somewhere. And let's not forget Abbott & Costello, Martin & Lewis, Ma & Pa Kettle and, of course, Francis The Talking Mule. Comedy was king. As a youth, I started collecting silent comedies on Super 8mm and discovered the comic trinity of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd.

The biggest problem with making a list of comedies is deciding what actually is a comedy. How many laughs are needed to turn a drama into a comedy? What about funny musicals? Or funny horror films? It calls for some very subjective judgments.

I am not going to handcuff myself with as many self-imposed restrictions as I did when I made my lists of horror films. My decision concerning what is a comedy will be decided on the basis of the individual film. However, I will try to restrain myself from flooding a decade with the work of a single comic visionary. For example, I am not going to put six Marx Brothers films on my Top 10 Comedies of the 1930s list. I will only pick one of their films as representative of their work during the period.

Also, I am going to try to rate the films in the context of their times. Therefore, expect to see some films on the lists which would be considered politically incorrect today. I will, however, discuss the controversy concerning some of those films when it seems appropriate.

So here we are in the 1950s. Let me just say that this was a dismal decade for comedy. I suppose the general middle class striving for conformity during the Eisenhower years, coupled with the underlying tensions of the Cold War, didn't inspire general hilarity. I nearly combined this decade with the 1940s in order to find ten true comedy classics. However, I felt that would be a disservice to that decade. The 1940s weren't a ground-breaking decade for comedy, particularly during our involvement in World War II, but they had a better array of comedies than the 1950s.

With apologies, here's the list:

10. MY FAVORITE SPY, 1951
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
Screenplay by Edmund L. Hartman and Jack Sher
Additional dialogue by Hal Kanter
Story and Adaptation by Edmund Beloin and Lou Breslow

Bob Hope plays a comic who is recruited to impersonate a spy and gets mixed up with Hedy Lamarr.

I mainly remember the aged Bob Hope of his late television specials, telling one-liners holding a golf club while leering suggestively at the buxom young starlet of the moment.  Once upon a time, however, he was a movie star and he made some pretty good movies, both on his own and teamed with Bing Crosby. Hope's comic film persona was interesting because he usually played a coward, which was unique at the time. Woody Allen claims his on screen persona was based on Hope's.

I liked his movies of the 1940s and 1950s. They were mostly solid -- his movie work in the 1960s was a different story. I'm not saying My Favorite Spy was the best of the lot. I essentially drew this title out of a hat. To me, they were all pretty much the same.



Directed by Walter Lang
Screenplay by Lamar Trotti

Based on the life of the true Frank B. Gilbreth, Sr., (Clifton Webb), a pioneering efficiency expert, who puts his theories to work raising his large family often to humorous or embarrassing results.

The arch sense of superiority personified in Clifton Webb will no doubt alarm today's Patriarchy Police, but fear not, wife Myrna Loy, is no push-over, and perfectly capable of taking over the large brood on her own. However, there are times when it looks like she'd happily slip into her Nora Charles persona and have a nice stiff martini. A fine, sentimental family film set in 1920. Sort of a poor man's Life With Father.

Remade in 2003 with Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt in the leads.


8. HOLLYWOOD OR BUST, 1956
Directed by Frank Tashlin
Screenplay by Erna Lazarus

A broke singer, Dean Martin, teams up with a star-struck goofball, Jerry Lewis, and his Great Dane, on a cross-country trip to Hollywood.

Martin & Lewis were the cutting edge of comedy in the 1950s, whether in the movies, on television or in the nightclubs. I liked them quite a bit when I was younger, but they do not hold the same appeal to me now. Generally, I like the Martin & Lewis films better than the solo Lewis efforts. I think Dean Martin gave the films a solid grounding. Plus, he's Dean Martin. You'd have to step up to Frank Sinatra to find someone cooler at the time.



Directed by Vincente Minnelli
Screenplay by Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett
Novel by Albert Streeter

Spencer Tracy must deal with the emotional difficulties and organizational challenges of giving away his beloved daughter, Elizabeth Taylor, in marriage.

This is a solid, likable traditional comedy. It is well-written and well-played and currently serves as an insightful look into social and matrimonial mores of the time. Still, if you look at my lists of the upcoming decades, this is exactly the type of Hollywood product I have been excluding in favor of edgier comedies. Unfortunately, there weren't many edgy comedies in the 1950s. So this film stays.


PILLOW TALK, 1959
Directed by Michael Gordon
Screenplay by Stanley Shapiro and Maurice Richlin
Story by Russell Rouse and Clarence Green

Composer/Womanizer Rock Hudson and Interior Designer/Prude Doris Day find themselves sharing a party line and take an instant dislike to each other. As a practical joke, Hudson pretends to be a Texas millionaire to seduce her, but, you guessed it, true love ultimately ensues.

This film is typical of the mid-brow Hollywood naughty sex farces popular at the time, which featured very little naughtiness and no sex. This film was huge success and resulted in a number of pairings of Rock Hudson and Doris Day in similarly themed films. Hudson and Day reportedly got along very well and exhibited a likable onscreen chemistry. (Of course, one watches their films today with a bemused cynicism now that we know Hudson's preferences lay elsewhere.) The two are ably assisted by Tony Randall and Thelma Ritter. An enjoyable film boosted up a few extra notches on the list because the director, Michael Gordon, was born in my native Baltimore, Maryland!


5. MISTER ROBERTS, 1955
Directed by John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy
Screenplay by Frank S. Nugent and Joshua Logan
Based on the play by Thomas Heggen and Joshua Logan
Based on the novel by Thomas Heggen

As the war in the Pacific winds down, LT J.G. Douglas Roberts (Henry Fonda) longs to be transferred from his cargo ship to a war ship, but the Captain (James Cagney) refuses to let him go.

I debated quite a bit about whether this film truly fit in the comedy genre. In a stronger decade, I would have left it off the list, especially after listening to the DVD commentary track by Jack Lemmon. According to Lemmon, this film was a true passion project for Henry Fonda, who originated the role on Broadway, and he resented and resisted the comedy director John Ford was adding. That said, the film was very funny. It's hard to resist a film where William Powell, Mr. Nick Charles himself, creates a bottle of scotch from simple ingredients on the ship. (This was Powell's last film. He was one of my favorite actors of the period and I was glad to see him go out in style!) Still, the film is probably more of a drama than a comedy.

BTW, John Ford fell ill during the production and Mervyn LeRoy was forced to take the helm. Joshua Logan also apparently directed some scenes.


4. ROMAN HOLIDAY, 1953
Directed by William Wyler
Screenplay by Ian McLellan Hunter and John Dighton
Originally Uncredited: Story and Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo

A romance blossoms between a bored princess, Audrey Hepburn, and an American newspaperman, Gregory Peck, in Rome.

Like Mister Roberts, I only reluctantly place this film on this list. It's a great movie, don't get me wrong, but I always considered it more of a romance than a comedy. Audrey Hepburn, essentially an unknown in America at the time, gives an Academy Award winning performance that made her a star. Gregory Peck knew she was good during the shoot, and insisted that the studio put her name above the title. The film is also enhanced by the Italian locations.

The writing credits are a little sketchy. Dalton Trumbo, one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten, wasn't credited for the story or the script initially. Ian Hunter was apparently acting as his front, but I don't know whether Hunter or Dighton actually contributed to the final screenplay.


Directed by Jack Arnold
Screenplay by Roger MacDougall & Stanley Mann
Based on the novel by Leonard Wibberley

An impoverished postage-stamp-sized European country declares war on the United States with the hope of getting Marshall Plan-style assistance after their defeat. However, their inept military commander inadvertently wins the war when he captures an American scientist and his super weapon.

What's up with Jack Arnold? Not many directors can shift effortlessly from sci-fi classics like Creature From The Black Lagoon and The Incredible Shrinking Man to a smart satirical comedy like this, and later transition to low brow television fare like Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch. Amazing. Well, one way or another, he hit a home run with this satirical film. Of course, it didn't hurt to have Peter Sellers playing three different roles (a feat he would soon repeat in the mighty Dr. Strangelove.)  This is a great little film that keeps the comedy up front and the message in the background.


2. SOME LIKE IT HOT, 1959
Directed by Billy Wilder
Screenplay by Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond
Suggested by a story by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan

Two desperate musicians, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, pretend to be women in order to join an All Girl Band to escape from Chicago after witnessing a gangland murder. Complications arise when Curtis falls for the singer, played by Marilyn Monroe.

Billy Wilder is one of the true geniuses of American cinema, but, sadly, he doesn't get the same recognition as John Ford or Alfred Hitchcock or Howard Hawks or even Cecile B. DeMille. I think it might be because of his wide range of styles and subject matters, united only by sharp writing, crisp direction and knowing cynicism. This film is perhaps Wilder at his most light-hearted, and most daring. I am surprised they managed to get away with Joe E. Brown's famous last line of the film.

Wilder was aided by an excellent cast. I think this is easily Tony Curtis' best performance. Jack Lemmon, a rare actor who could play comedy and drama equally well, was at top form here. However, Marilyn Monroe provides the heart of the film. Wilder famously found dealing with her extremely frustrating, but he got her best performance out of her. She achieved maximum Monroe in this film.

Yes, I like it hot!


Directed by Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
Written by Betty Comden & Adolph Green

A conceited movie star, Gene Kelly, half of a romantic duo with Jean Hagan, falls in love with a budding actress Debbie Reynolds, as they make the transition from silent films to talkies.

This is arguably the greatest film ever made. It is definitely the best musical, and the comedy is equally strong. It is funny and joyful and always a pleasure to watch. The songs are great. The script is fantastic. The performances are all wonderful, especially newcomer Debbie Reynolds who manages to hold her own with old pros Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor. This is the film I recommend to people who tell me that they don't like musicals.

Interestingly, no one involved thought much of this film. Gene Kelly had just come off An American in Paris, which, in the opinion of everyone, was the truly important film. That's where Kelly, and MGM, thought the musical genre was headed. They hemmed in the Broadway Melody dream sequence into this film to give it some of that An American in Paris gravitas. That sequence, though tolerable, was the only wrong tonal note in this entire film.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that the screenwriting team, Betty Comden & Adolph Green, were nominated over their career for two Academy Awards.  What is surprising is that they weren't nominated for this film! (They were nominated for their scripts for The Band Wagon and It's Always Fair Weather.) Fortunately, the Writers Guild of America gave them an award for the script.  Writers know.

This is a must-see!


Honorable Mention:

LIMELIGHT, 1952. This is one of my favorite Chaplin features, but it's a drama not a comedy.  Chaplin's 1957 film A KING IN NEW YORK didn't make the list because it was more bitter than funny (not that Chaplin wasn't entitled to a little bitterness!)  SABRINA, 1954. A romantic comedy starring Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn told through the cynical eyes of Billy Wilder. PAT AND MIKE, 1952,  Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn starred in a series of battle of the sexes style comedies during the decade, but, sociological benefits notwithstanding, I don't think they are funny enough anymore to make the list. ABBOTT AND COSTELLO GO TO MARS, 1953. Abbott and Costello were the top comics of the 1940s, but were pretty much a spent force by the 1950s. HAVE ROCKET -- WILL TRAVEL, 1959. I really love that The Three Stooges managed to score a second career in features after their shorts started playing on television. But their late features are all strictly kid stuff. MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO TOWN, 1950. I enjoyed Ma and Pa Kettle back in the day, but they don't rise to the classic level. Ditto FRANCIS, 1950, and the other films about that Talking Mule. Speaking of talking animals, I always had a soft spot for the 1950 Jimmy Stewart film HARVEY, where he has an invisible six-foot rabbit as a best friend. Keeping the animal trend alive, there's 1951's BEDTIME FOR BONZO. This film, about a professor raising a chimp like a child, was viewed as the nadir of Ronald Reagan's acting career. When he was first running for President, the Democrats showed it before their convention hoping to humiliate Reagan only to discover it wasn't that bad. But it's not good enough for this list either!  Speaking of apes, there's MONKEY BUSINESS, 1952, featuring Cary Grant as a scientist whose chimpanzee discovers the fountain of youth. With direction by Howard Hawks and a script by Ben Hecht, it is one of the last of the original screwball comedies, and, as a bonus, it also features Marilyn Monroe. Perhaps I should have put this in the Top 10, but it's no Bringing Up Baby.

Other Lists:



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1 comment:

  1. Absolutely agree with your number one pick. "Singin' in the Rain" is one of my all-time favorite movies.

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