Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?

Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?
June 19, 1968
MGM
Comedy
VHS
B-

Yes, this is another of those '60s movies with long, unwieldy titles that are nonetheless sung, in this case by the Lettermen.  That, the occasional funny line, and good performances by the four leads make this movie, which Day considered her worst, entertaining to me, despite an admittedly tasteless premise.  The title refers to the New York blackout of '65, although the movie is partially based on an older French play.  There's a hippie character who gives Doris a lift on his motorcycle and, with his peace symbol necklace and some of his slang, he feels more '68 than '65, but I suppose the makers of this film didn't think we'd mind.

It's the French-farce side of the movie that's tasteless, not the blackout.  Day is a Broadway actress starring in The Constant Virgin, but she wants to quit show biz and start a family.  Day's husband Patrick O'Neal almost cheats on her, but she comes home early because of the blackout.  She flees to their Connecticut house, where a sleeping tonic knocks out not only her but a visiting embezzler played by Robert Morse, apparently having found other ways to succeed in business without really trying.  They literally sleep together, and O'Neal thinks they, you know, slept together.  Her supposedly Hungarian producer Terry-Thomas manipulates the situation so Day will leave her husband rather than show biz.  In the end, someone else runs off with the $2 million, and O'Neal finds out that Day is faithful, although he doesn't tell her, even when she gives birth "nine months to the day" of the blackout.  And, yes, this is all playing off of Day's usual onscreen image, the constant virgin.

We can see how much and how little things have changed over the course of the '60s, comparing this to Please Don't Eat the Daisies.  (Which now that I think of it is sort of a sentence-long title.)  There, Day's husband didn't get any closer to adultery than a few drinks and dinners with a brassy blonde.  But of course, Day herself has to stay pure.  Terry-Thomas has a great line about admiring chastity, as he kisses her on the neck!  But my favorite line of his is where he asks his psychologist if hating both men and women makes him bisexual.  My favorite Robert Morse moment is when he points out that he and T-T both have gap teeth.

Besides the main characters, there are some other folks to keep an eye out for.  This time Jim Backus is a car salesman.  Earl Wilson as always plays himself.  Pat Paulsen, Steve Allen, and Lola Albright also have supporting roles.  (Morgan Freeman, then about 30, apparently shows up as a commuter.)

Larry J. Blake was in Sunset Blvd. and The Swinger.  Ben Frommer was in Plan Nine from Outer Space.  Harry Hickox was the cook in Speedway and is a detective captain here.  Angelique Pettyjohn was in Clambake and would be in The Love God?  Robert Emhardt, who plays Otis J. Hendershot, Sr., would be the banker in Change of Habit.  

Beach Blanket Bingo

Beach Blanket Bingo
April 14, 1965
AIP
Comedy, Musical, Fantasy
DVD
B-

This is a lot of people's favorite Beach Party movie and it's easy to see why.   The script is again by director William Asher and Leo Townsend, so the formula was fully worked out but not yet stale.  The guest stars are recognizable, especially in retrospect Linda Evans as Sugar Kane.  (Yes, the same spelling as Marilyn's character in Some Like It Hot.)  Frankie & Dee Dee get another nice duet, this one more uptempo and in a round.  (Annette's hair by the way finally looks its natural black, no visible red highlights.)  The title song is the catchiest in the series, and the first half of the movie is pretty solid.  The Bonehead (McCrea, no longer Deadhead, but close enough) & mermaid (Marta Kristen) romance is actually sweet and funny.  And, yes, my fave Mike Nader, now named Butch, gets a bunch of lines (including saying the word "groovy" at least three times, as in "Let's dig this groovy chick"), some stuntwork, and a bit of a romance himself.  (With either Patti Chandler as Patti or newbie Donna Michelle as the latest Animal, I think the latter.  Patti Chandler seems to be one of the end-credits dancers.)  Don Rickles, now Big Drop, gets a seemingly improvised scene where he insults Frankie and friends like he's in Vegas, while Paul Lynde goes through the entire movie powered by deserved snark.  (His sidekick is Earl Wilson as himself, not having aged much in the eighteen years since Copacabana.)

All that said, I find the movie in the middle range of the series, about equivalent to the first entry.  Part of the problem is that Donna Loren gets only one song, while Linda Evans gets two.  (And Linda's are dubbed!)  More seriously, the movie has two plot threads that just don't work.  One is the kidnapping of Sugar by Von Zipper and his Rat Pack, which leads to her rekidnapping by South Dakota Slim, again played by Timothy Carey.  The other is the Bonnie & Steve jealousy subplot.  The two skydiving instructors who work for Big Drop are played by then spouses Deborah Walley and John Ashley.  Now, I don't have a problem with Ashley playing someone outside the Beach Party crowd (especially since it means an expanded role for Mike Nader), and I find Walley a welcome addition to the AIP family.  They have good chemistry together, as do she and Frankie.  But this is my least favorite of her AIP roles because Bonnie not only tries to make Steve jealous with Frankie, she rips her blouse and tries to convince everyone that Frankie attacked her!  The only good thing to come out of this plotline is Annette's line "Don't you 'I love you' me!"

Returning members of the Beach Party crowd are Frank Alesia, Duane Ament, Ray Atkinson, Linda Benson,  Linda Opie Bent, Pam Colbert, Ronnie Dayton, Mickey Dora, Johnny Fain, Ed Garner, Guy Hemric, Luree Holmes, Mary Hughes, Darlene Lucht, Laura Nicholson, Salli Sachse, and Ned Wynn.  There's also newcomer Stephanie Nader, but I don't know if she's related to Mike.

Dark-haired, frowning Myrna Ross replaces auburn-haired, smiling Linda Rogers in the Rat Pack, and Von Zipper refers to her and Alberta as Puss 'n' Boots.  (Alberta is Puss, I guess because she has seniority.)  Jerry Brutsche (still Jeromey, and continuing the Duck Soup sidecar rip-off), Allen Fife, Bob Harvey, John Macchia, and of course Andy "J.D." Romano (still reading the newspaper to Von Zipper) are all back.  Buster Keaton is now playing "Buster" and dressing like he did in the silent days, while Bobbi Shaw, as "Bobbi," is still Swedish and spends the entire movie in the gold & mink bikini she bought at Aunt Wendy's dress shop.

The Hondells would do some other teen flicks I own, but they're not very memorable here or elsewhere.  Jackie Ward, who dubs Sugar's singing voice, would also sing in Charlotte's Web.  Paul Lynde would rock the house in that movie, as Templeton the rat, and in the meantime he would get a TV gig as Uncle Arthur on Asher's Bewitched.

"Into groups of two"?  Math isn't their strong point.

Copacabana

Copacabana
May 30, 1947
United Artists
Comedy, Musical
VHS
B-

This is Groucho's most entertaining movie in a dozen years, although he's not the funniest person in it.  No, it's not Carmen Miranda, although she has her moments.  No, the one who made me laugh the hardest was "Andy Russell, the voice of romance."  Like many people in the movie, he's playing a version of himself, but he's so damn goofy that I don't see how he could ever have been taken seriously as a crooner.  Both Groucho and Carmen have dual roles, she as "Carmen" and the nonexistent "Mademoiselle Fifi."  (When he says there's no woman in the world like Fifi, I thought of Capt. Tuttle on M*A*S*H.)  Groucho mostly plays Lionel Q. Deveraux (the Q stands for his father's love of pool), but he also shows up in the old greasepaint and frock coat, as a rising young talent, to sing "Go West, Young Man," a Kalmar & Ruby ditty that I assume was written for Go West and left out for some reason.  The Medved brothers picked Groucho & Carmen as one of the worst screen couples ever, but I think they're sort of cute together, even if she smooches three or four other guys rather than him, and he spends a lot of time hitting on other women, all of whom sass him.  One of them, the cigarette girl, was played by Kay Gorcey, who was then married to Groucho.  (She was Leo Gorcey's ex.)

There's also a subplot that Groucho remarks is about either the boss in love with the secretary or the secretary in love with the boss.  It seems to be the latter, with Gloria Jean as the secretary, six years after she played W. C. Fields's niece "Gloria Jean" in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break.  She, on Andy's advice, tries to serenade her boss, but like George in It's a Wonderful Life when Mary tries to sing to him, he thinks she's not feeling well.  It turns out that he's crazy about "a little chick who likes Andy."  All the confusion, including the "murder of Fifi," is untangled in the end, and the Hollywood agent thinks it would make a great picture, so we end with a mini-film within a film.  Well, maybe not a great picture, but give it a chance.

William H. O'Brien was in A Night at the Opera.  Bert Stevens was in Citizen Kane.  Dick Elliott, who plays the hotel manager, was the man on the porch in It's a Wonderful Life, the one who says, "Youth is wasted on the wrong people."  Cy Schindell was a bouncer in Wonderful Life as well as this movie.  Kenner G. Kemp and Dee Turnell would go on to Singin' in the Rain, Mari Blanchard to Abbott and Costello Go to Mars.  Columnist Earl Wilson would also play himself in two of my '60s movies, Beach Blanket Bingo and Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?