THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 50

 

BROKEN LULLABY (1932): Paul Renard, a French veteran of World War I, is haunted by killing German soldier Walter Holderlin during combat. In an attempt to ease his guilt, Renard he visits the victim's bereaved family -- and Walter's former fiancée Elsa -- intending to admit he was responsible. Unable to bring himself to tell the truth, Paul tells them instead that he and Walter were friends in pre-war Paris. Herr Holderlin's hatred toward France gradually melts, while his wife finally finds joy in life once and more. And as Paul is accepted as part of the family -- and falls in love with Elsa -- he finds himself more tortured than ever by withholding his secret.

A 180-degree change from the usual frothy comedies directed by Ernst Lubitsch, Broken Lullaby is an anti-war drama forcing the audience to understand the pain suffered by both sides of war. (One shot of a veteran's parade has the camera placed under the amputated leg of a soldier -- one of the most startling moments in a 1930s picture.) And as Herr Holderin (Lionel Barrymore in a sterling performance) gradually recognizes his generation's responsibility for sending its sons to their deaths, his own guilt-ridden outburst to his French-hating friends could have been written today. No doubt Broken Lullaby was one of the more mature, insightful dramas of 1932, with a message that still resonates over time.

Unfortunately, the movie is nearly derailed by Phillips Holmes as the tortured Paul Renard. Haunted -- perhaps going mad -- by killing the German soldier, Holmes' performance is out of a 1910 silent melodrama, when over-emoting was considered high drama. Contemporary audiences who might otherwise take to Broken Lullaby's message likely will find Holmes off-putting at best, laughable at worst. Why Ernst Lubitsch -- an expert at subtlety and sophistication -- encouraged Holmes' scenery-chewing is a mystery. Nevertheless, just for its unusual story (and poignant finale), Broken Lullaby is deserving of one go-round. Just try not to be distracted by Phillips Holmes' histrionics -- or occasional resemblance to Timothee Chalamet.

BONUS POINTS: The flashback to the scene in a foxhole where Renard finishes signing Walter's final letter home by holding the dead soldier's bloody hand. Unforgettable, tragic, and gruesome all at once.

THE WOMEN IN HIS LIFE (1933): Otto Kruger does his best Warren
William/Ricardo Cortez mash-up as the brilliant, womanizing, day-drinking lawyer Kent Berringer, who's never seen a criminal he didn't defend or a dame he couldn't deflower. His debauchery hits a wall when pure-at-heart Doris Worthing tries hiring him to defend her father for murdering her stepmother -- who happens to be Kent's ex-wife. The shock sends him on an alcoholic spree leading to his disbarment. Kent makes it his mission to find Tony Perez, the malefactor he believes really offed his ex.

The Women in His Life has everything one wants in a pre-code picture: a fast-pace; racy dialogue; pre-marital sex; and a general disdain for morality. There's also plenty for the eye, like beautiful art deco sets, and Kruger's fabulous tailored suits, provided by MGM's wardrobe department. I've seen plenty of these lush early '30s movies, and nobody looks as good as Kruger does here. I would kill for this stuff. And he'd defend me in court!

But Kruger is just one actor that makes The Women in His Life so entertaining for early talkie fanatics. From the very beginning, when the camera tracks down a row of busy telephone operators to the usual friends, lovers and suspects, there are faces more welcome than those of your own family. You know instantly upon seeing their names in the credits the characters they're going to play and how they're going to do it. In addition to Otto Kruger (far left), there's Roscoe Karnes as Kent's wisecracking assistant Lester (far right), C. Henry Gordon as oily criminal Tony Perez (in the chair), and Una Merkel as Kent's smartass secretary Simmy Simmons (not seen in the still). In a world spinning out of control, The Women in His Life makes for a comforting respite.

BONUS POINTS: In what appears to be a real copy of Variety, the front-page headline reads NUDIES EYE STAGE COIN. This could mean strippers wanting better pay, or low-budget, adult-only independent movies hoping to charge Broadway ticket prices. Feel free to come up with your own translation.

PILGRIMAGE (1933): Or, A Mother's Love Gone Off the Rails. In 1917, small-town widow Hannah Jessop prevents her son Jimmy from marrying his knocked-up girlfriend by arranging for her son to be drafted in hopes of him being killed in World War I. And she succeeds!  A decade later, Hannah reluctantly joins other gold star mothers to attend a memorial ceremony in Paris, where she meets a young man in the same position as Jimmy was. Finally realizing what a bitch she's been, Hannah urges the young man's mother to allow him to marry his sweetheart. Hannah returns to the farm a changed person, begging forgiveness from Mary. As if that's going to bring back the old crone's son.

I give credit to director John Ford for making Hannah thoroughly detestable for most of Pilgrimage. She admits to Jimmy that she'd rather see him dead than wed Mary (or any woman), barely sheds a tear when getting word of his death, and refuses to acknowledge her bastard grandson. Actress Henrietta Crosman (born in 1861!) overshadows the other actors in the picture to the point where there's no need to mention them, yet she's never for a moment hammy. You just hate her, and continue doing so until the last reel when she finally admits to herself -- and eventually Mary -- what a terrible person she's been all these years. Frankly, I wouldn't have forgiven her, but I hold a grudge like you wouldn't believe.

There's some humor in the Paris scenes, such as Hannah and another farmer/mother successfully taking aim at every target in a shooting gallery. But that's enough fun and games; after the ceremony, she tells the other mothers that unlike their sons, hers was "no good" -- meaning he wanted to leave the farm and get married. There are precious few moments where Hannah's haranguing isn't heard, making Pilgrimage difficult but definitely fascinating to watch. I just kind of wish she fell off the ship returning home.

BONUS POINTS: During the scene when the grandson is teased by his classmates for being illegitimate, I recognized Marilyn Harris, best known as the little girl tossed in the pond in Frankenstein. Norman Foster, who played Jimmy, later became a director; his output includes a bunch of Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan pictures, the Orson Welles-produced Journey into Fear, and the noir classic Kiss the Blood Off My Hands. Glad he wasn't really sent to his death by his mother.

IF YOU COULD ONLY COOK (1935): Gentle, post-Code screwball comedy? A merry mix-up based on deception? Another one of those Depression era millionaire-goes-slumming farces? Sorta, kinda, and for sure. 

Auto magnate Jim Buchanan, unhappily engaged to a woman he doesn't love and fed up with his board of directors, walks out of his job and into Central Park, where he makes friends with the unemployed Joan Hawthorne. Mistaking Jim for one of her own kind, she finds them positions as cook and butler for former bootlegger Mike Rossini. Over the course of a week, Jim and Mike fall for Joan; Joan gets arrested for robbery for showing Jim's sketches for a new car to one of his business rivals; Jim is talked into returning to work and his fiancée; and Mike rounds up his hoodlum pals to eventually set things right for everybody. And if any of this comes as a surprise, you haven't seen a movie made before 1960.

If You Could Only Cook was Columbia's rare attempts at sophisticated comedy. The classy Brit Herbert Marshall (The Letter) is nicely self-effacing as Jim, who willingly loses a few stripes off his captain of industry position. It's easy to understand why he goes for Joan (Jean Arthur, who always sounded like a pack-a-day-smoking Minnie Mouse). She's a jumble of contradictions: smart yet naive, sexy but innocent, cynical but romantic. In other words, they're the kind of people ticket-buyers meet only in the movies.

And so are Marshall and Arthur's costars. Leo Carillo gives Mike Rossini the kind of Italian accent you'd hear in comedies like this. Another familiar voice belongs to the sandpaper-throated Lionel Stander (Soak the Rich) as Mike's sidekick Flash, who's suspicious of the new help from the get-go. Many cineastes tend to describe If You Could Only Cook as "unfairly underrated". To me, it's cute and charming but becomes laugh out loud funny only in its zany final 15 minutes, which is what you remember best after the closing credits.

BONUS POINTS: In the UK, Columbia Pictures falsely promoted If You Could Only Cook as a Frank Capra production. By way of apology, Columbia boss Harry Cohn gave Capra cut of movie's profits. 

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 48

 Add three Bs with one A, and what have you got? Need I explain?

THE MYSTERIOUS MR. WONG (1935): Come with me to the Chinatown area of
Monogram Pictures, where cinema cliches long-gone reside. Actors of every ethnic persuasion except Chinese. The wisecracking reporter. The wisecracking dame he's got the hots for. The dimwitted Irish flatfoot. And holding court, the criminal kingpin with the thin droopy moustache, flat-brimmed hat, and evil intentions. But the only thing mysterious about him is: why does the Chinese guy have a Hungarian accent? Ah so! He's Bela Lugosi!

Only three years after Dracula, Lugosi was already making himself familiar in the dusty streets of Poverty Row, churning out B's like The Mysterious Mr. Wong. Like Fritz Lang's mastermind Dr. Mabuse, Mr. Wong has minions doing his bidding -- or, rather, killing, as he tries to collect 12 coins once owned by Confucius that, when gathered together, will give him special powers (like sounding Chinese?). Maybe if the cops owned the things, they'd have the power to break this case instead of leaving the job to a reporter and his sidepiece: Wallace Ford (the poor man's Lee Tracy) and Arline Judge (the poor woman's Joan Blondell). 

Unfortunately, Bela Lugosi was already becoming the poor man's Bela Lugosi. Perhaps to compensate for the ridiculous dialogue in much of The Mysterious Mr. Wong, Bela overenunciates his dialogue in order to prevent audiences from falling asleep, his mouth twisting open and shut as if chewing a dozen pieces of bubble gum at once. Yet surrounded by henchmen who look and sound about as Chinese as Edgar Buchanan, Lugosi at least can almost pass for what was once called Asiatic; only the extras are the real thing. Embarrassed as they likely were, at least they got five or ten bucks, a sandwich, and the chance to hang with Bela Lugosi for a week. As with watching The Mysterious Mr. Wong, it's better than a day-old eggroll.

BONUS POINTS: A few years later, William Nigh, the director of this masterpiece, also directed Boris Karloff in three other Mr. Wong movies at Monogram. Only that Mr. Wong is a detective and has nothing to do with this Mr. Wong. I'd say something about "two Wongs don't make a right" but it's too easy, unfunny, and has been done to death, kind of like every Mr. Wong plot, criminal or detective.

MY SON IS GUILTY (1939): Ham-fisted title aside, this is actually a pretty good B, sincere and human, thanks to the leads: Harry Carey as beat cop Tim Kerry; Bruce Cabot as his mildly sociopathic ex-con son Ritzy; Jacqueline Wells as Julia Allen (the girl who inexplicably loves Ritzy), and Glenn Ford as aspiring author Barney (the nice guy who explicably loves Julia). 

Ritzy, sprung from a two-year stint in the slammer, is determined to go straight -- straight to a criminal gang run by femme felon Claire Morelli. Ritzy, having gotten a job at the police station thanks to his dad, turns off the two-way radio system to help the crooks successfully pull off a robbery. Two cops are shot -- one fatally by Ritzy -- while the one with the slug in his shoulder is you-know-who. Eventually that you-know-who is face to face with Ritzy, both of them with gun in hand. Talk about dysfunctional families!

At least half of My Son is Guilty's success is due to Harry Carey. His portrayal of good-hearted cop Tim Kerry (he buys a little roller-skating girl a new bottle of milk to replace the one she dropped after colliding with him) is real and utterly sympathetic. The script might be predictable - is predictable - but you can't help but feel bad that, through no fault of his own, he raised a son who went sideways in life. (It helps Carey looks at least 15 years older than his actual age of 60.) Bruce Cabot, 34 but appearing closer to 50, pulls off the no-good offspring trope better than you usually see in movies like this; just by the way he enters his first scene, you strongly dislike the guy. Jacqueline Wells is cute and engaging, but her character is such a poor judge of Ritzy it's kind of difficult to work up any empathy for her. As for Glenn Ford (in his second feature) --- like his male co-stars, he doesn't quite match his real age: 22 but looking 14. You can see traces of the actor he was going to become, even if he sounds like a better-educated Leo Gorcey. He likely scrubbed My Son is Guilty from his curriculum vitae and memory, but there's nothing to be ashamed of here. Between the stars and a bunch of familiar faces from Columbia Pictures' character actors file, the movie is a step or two above the usual 60-minute fare.

BONUS POINTS: A sequence featuring the legendary tap dancers the Nicholas Brothers was originally shot for, but cut from, the 1934 Columbia picture Jealousy. 

THE SPIDER WOMAN STRIKES BACK (1946): In 1943, Universal released the
Sherlock Holmes mystery The Spider Woman, with Gale Sondergaard in the title role. A year later, The Pearl of Death, another Holmes picture, featured a performance with Mr. Acromegaly himself, Rondo Hatton. It took another year for some genius at the studio put the two actors together in The Spider Woman Strikes Back, hoping to lure in suckers who thought they were getting a sequel to the "original". By the time Universal bothered to release it a year later, both Hatton and the Sherlock Holmes movie series were dead. 

Jean Kingsley takes a job as paid companion to Zenobia Dollard, a blind woman beloved by everyone in the village of Domingo -- beloved because nobody knows Dollard is faking her blindness, and has been murdering every young woman who has worked for her by draining their blood in order to feed her poisonous flowers. These flowers are given to the farmers' cattle to eat by her mute flunky Mario, in order to force the farmers to leave town, allowing Zenobia to buy their property. Hal Wentley, a local yokel who loves Jean, figures out something is rotten in Domingo (or at least in Zenobia's greenhouse), and sets things to right. That is, Zenobia and Mario are burned to a crisp when their abode goes up in flames. As for what the spiders have to do with it -- well, I remember seeing some spiders, but I'm not sure what their purpose was. And besides, Poisonous Flower Woman doesn't have the same ring. You want a detailed analysis of "film", go read the collected works of Pauline Kael.)

You gotta feel a little bad for the classy Gale Sondergaard. Here she was, the first winner of the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award, now slumming in nuttiness like the 59-minute The Spider Woman Strikes Back. It's a credit to her talent that she plays it as if it was worthy of her. For Brenda Joyce (as Jean), it's difficult to figure out if it was a step up or down from playing Jane in RKO's Tarzan B-pictures. Unsurprisingly, Rondo Hatton steals the show as Mario the Monster (as his character is billed). Unlike most of his movies, Rondo has plenty of screentime here. Even better, he's not lit or dressed to make him look frightening. Often wearing a suit (or at least tie and clean shirt), there are times he looks startingly like Ed Sullivan. But as usual, his looks apparently prevent his character from speaking, while his sign language resembles someone doing hand shadow animals. In other words, outside of Sondergaard, Rondo gives the most believable performance in the picture. 

BONUS POINTS: Future TV legends Kirby Grant (Sky King) and Milburn Stone (Doc Adams in Gunsmoke) co-star respectively as Hal Wentley and a scientist). 

GIDEON'S DAY  (A/K/A GIDEON OF SCOTLAND YARD) (1959): It's a rare event finding a comedy/drama done right, especially one featuring not one, not two, but three murders (one involving the rape of a teenage girl), along with various other crimes that don't usually raise a chuckle (unless you get a kick out of an old man getting his skull bashed with a hammer). But damn if Gideon's Day isn't one of the breeziest movies I've seen in some time. And it's directed by John Ford! What's he doing on this blog?

Pipe-smoking Scotland Yard Inspector George Gideon starts the workday getting a traffic ticket from an eager-beaver young bobby. From there, it's all downhill, as he bounces from one case to another, starting with a colleague accepting bribes from a heroin dealer. From then on are the aforementioned violent crimes, along with a bank robbery, and probably a couple others I'm forgetting. There's also a school concert featuring his 18 year-old daughter he wants to attend; showing up in court to make a statement regarding an earlier case; and a fish in his filing cabinet (don't ask). And astonishingly, most of these disparate events wind up being linked in the most unexpected ways.

Gideon's Day (retitled Gideon of Scotland Yard for its American release) doesn't resemble a John Ford production. In fact, with its occasional fast, overlapping dialogue, it could pass for a Howard Hawks movie. Filmed in London with British talent, it lacks the director's usual familiar actors he usually worked with. (Jack Hawkins, as Gideon, is the only actor here I was even vaguely recognized.) Columbia Pictures, had so little faith in the project that they released stateside with a shorter runtime and in black & white. Nice way to treat the only director to win four Academy Awards (six if you include two documentaries). Fortunately, Gideon's Day is available now in its original length and vivid three-strip Technicolor (although with the American credits). No matter the title, it deserves mention along with John Ford's more famous productions. 

BONUS POINTS: Dialogue you'd never hear in an American movie, such as this exchange between Gideon and a thief pointing a gun at him: 

GIDEON: If you were fool enough to fire that gun --                              CRIMINAL: I don't see why you should speak in the subjunctive. I am going to fire this gun!

Even the criminals are classier in the UK.

THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 28

 This Early Show entry is something of a cheat, since I caught two of the movies at the Museum of Modern Art's recent film restoration festival (a special thank you to my wife for MOMA membership on Christmas!). These two movies may appear on TCM soon, by why take the chance by waiting? 

MAN, WOMAN AND SIN (1927): Newspaper reporter Al Whitcomb, a young man
with a humble background who lives with his mother, falls crazy in love with society editor Vera Worth, not realizing she's the sidepiece of his boss, Mr. Bancroft. Vera strings Al along for her own amusement, to the point where he's buying expensive gifts with money set aside for mom. When Bancroft catches Al at Vera's apartment, a fight breaks out between the two men; in defending himself from a fatal blow, Al accidentally kills his boss. Vera lies under oath as to the truth behind the incident, leading to the death penalty for Al. Will Mom's pleas to Vera to recant her testimony save her beloved son? Go on, guess.

 Man, Woman and Sin is an example of "It's the singer, not the song" -- even if it is a silent movie. And the "singer" is John Gilbert. Usually playing the sophisticated or caddish type, Gilbert here is totally believable as the shy young man who grew up in poverty, and is too naive to realize that Vera is way out of his league. Whether gazing at her with awe, throttling a colleague who warns him about her, or sitting helplessly in the courtroom, Gilbert sells his role without ever overacting. An extraordinary scene comes when he's hiding in an abandoned, allegedly haunted house after killing Bancroft. As he sits on the floor gripping his handkerchief for comfort, a large shadow of a hand comes into view, causing him to cower and scream in terror before realizing it's only his mother -- a heartbreakingly convincing moment that no other leading man of his time could have equaled or had the cojones to attempt. (The more I see of John Gilbert, the more I believe he's one of the most underrated movie actors ever.)

At the time of its release, Man, Woman and Sin received extra interest for co-starring stage actress Jeanne Eagles, star of the previously-discussed The Letter. As with Gilbert, Eagles, at 37, is a little old for her role. Yet you can still get why a guy like Al would steal money and even threaten his mother for speaking ill about her. It's a shame that the recently restored print of Man, Woman and Sin is available only at New York's Museum of Modern Art, where I recently caught its first official screening in almost a century. It's a wonderful example of a done-to-death story becoming something exceptional with the right actor (and a live piano accompaniment).

BONUS POINTS: Twelve year-old Phillip Anderson, who plays Al Whitcomb as a child in the early scenes, went on to a 30 year-career editing movies including Ocean's Eleven, Sayonara, and The FBI Story -- proof that there's a life for child actors when they grow up.

ARROWSMITH (1931): The second MOMA screening. Former small-town doctor Martin Arrowsmith has spent two years trying to find a one-size-fits-all cure for every disease when he's assigned to the West Indies to see if it works on ending the bubonic plague. He's ordered to inject only half the population with the serum, and the other half with a placebo to see if the real thing actually works. As Arrowsmith loses himself in work, his wife Leora is killed by the plague herself. No longer caring about the rules of science, he drunkenly orders all the islanders to get the serum. While their lives are saved, Arrowsmith, filled with self-contempt, returns to the US, vowing to get back to real science rather than headline-grabbing news his lab prefers, like saving the lives of an entire nation. What the...?

If you wanted someone to play a distinguished hero in 1931, you went straight to Ronald Colman -- even if, as Martin Arrowsmith, he's roughly 15 years older than his character. Audiences of the time didn't care, since he was epitome of class, And if you wanted self-sacrifice, you went with Helen Hayes as his wife. Poor Leora gives up her nursing career to nurse her husband, who not only becomes the accidental cause of her death (you'll never smoke a cigarette without making sure a germy lab vial didn't drip on it first) but may have had a brief affair with rich bitch Joyce Lanyon (Myrna Loy, made-up to look almost Oriental, her typical role at the time). Their affair, if there was one, is presented so subtly that it's likely because producer Sam Goldwyn wanted the audience to sympathize with Arrowsmith that much more when Leora dies.

Speaking of Sam Goldwyn, his once-a-year movies were always big-budget, glossy productions that made MGM pictures look like Monogram B's, and Arrowsmith is no different. This was probably the best-looking movie of 1931, with huge sets filled with enough props to fill a warehouse. Director John Ford must have worked closely with the cinematographer and lighting crew, too; he seems to have been influenced by German cinema's expressionism movement at the time. Restored to its original 101-minute running time, Arrowsmith is a little slow, with scenes that drag the momentum on occasion. Still, it's a fascinating movie that, if nothing else, is beautiful to look at, and proves once and for all that saving lives is secondary to scientific principles. 

BONUS POINTS: Dr. Oliver Marchand, the West Indian doctor played by Clarence Brooks, is portrayed as Arrowsmith's professional equal, a chance rarely given to black movie characters or actors at the time.

NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH (1940): Days before the UK and Germany go to war, British spy Gus Bennett goes undercover in Berlin as a Nazi official in order to rescue the kidnapped Czech scientist Axel Bomasch and his adult daughter Anna, while making sure a real Nazi official Karl Marsen never catches on to the ruse. Bennett pulls it off, until being recognized on the titular train by an old school chum. Marsen turns the tables on Bennett, only to learn that the Brits are far more clever than he realizes.

As with the previously-discussed Q Planes, the British production Night Train to Munich takes on the Nazis with a mixture of drama, suspense, upscale British wit, and romance. While Margaret Lockwood is top-billed in the credits, it's 32 year-old Rex Harrison who steals the show here. Not only does he deliver lines with exquisite charm and style, he gets to sing a couple of songs when disguised as a music hall entertainer. While the Nazi threat is definitely taken seriously, the movie itself is often quite the lark, with a dandy climax taking place on a tram from Germany to neutral Switzerland, and everybody's pistols seemingly containing a couple of dozen bullets. You won't believe a second of it, but it's still exciting (and utterly unique).

Three of Night Train to Munich's co-stars are worth mentioning. Paul von Henried gives Karl Marsen a convincing mixture of good guy (as when he's undercover as a prisoner in a German concentration camp with Anna) and bad (remember, he's really a Nazi!). When von Henried moved to Hollywood, he dropped the "von" from his name and became of Warner Brothers' most popular wartime leading men -- you know him as the anti-Nazi activist Victor Laszlo in Casablanca. Serious movie buffs will recognize character actors Basil Radford and Nauton Wayne repeating their lighthearted roles of the slightly befuddled friends Charters and Caldicott from the 1938 Alfred Hitchcock classic The Lady Vanishes (which also starred Margaret Lockwood). It's Caldicott who blows Bennett's cover on the train, while Charters figures out a way to warn the spy that Marsen is on to him. While dealing with a deadly serious subject, the multi-genre Night Train to Munich is great fun all the way around. I just hope I'm never caught up in a similar shootout on the tram from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island.

BONUS POINTS: The miniatures standing in for real sets. Yes, it's obvious, but it's so much more charming than greenscreen or CGI.

THE STEVE ALLEN SHOW (January 19, 1958): Before Fidel Castro and his merry
band of comunistas came marching into Havana, Fulgencio Batista was running the show. Well, him and the Mafia, back when the island was a haven for American tourists ready to drop a wad at the casinos. So, the Havana Riviera Hotel was delighted to play host to Steve Allen and his gang one winter evening.  And if nothing else, it sure makes an historically interesting change from his usual New York headquarters.

After Gene Rayburn does his announcer's shtick in Spanish, Steve walks to the Riviera's main room, where he quickly (and kind of shockingly) opens with, "Well here we are in Havana, the home of the pineapple and Meyer Lansky." Not that it was any secret that Lansky was the owner of the Riviera, and who was doubtlessly happy to get a free, one-hour commercial for his business. And boy, do we see a lot of the Riviera, whether in the casino area (where Steve Lawrence lip-syncs "Begin the Beguine"), poolside (where Mamie van Doren lip-syncs "Sand in my Shoes" and the dance team of Augie and Margo do the mambo). But what really stands out is how well-dressed the gamblers and audience are, completely different from the dumpy t-shirt & shorts crowd you find in any casino today. Say what you want about the Mob, but at least they enforced a dress code.

Otherwise, it's pretty much just another Steve Allen episode, with guest Edgar Bergen and the Man in the Street interviews (Tom Poston, Louis Nye, Don Knotts, and dummy Mortimer Snerd). Steve saves special guest Lou Costello (a semi-regular on the Allen show) for the last 15 minutes, where the comedian recreates an old gambling skit he originated with Bud Abbott, from whom he split less than a year earlier. Tom Poston slips easily into the part of the wiseguy who unexpectedly gets swindled by the allegedly naive Costello. Meyer Lansky probably got a good laugh out of it. Although had it happened to one of his soldiers, both guys would been whacked on the spot.

BONUS POINTS: Familiar comedic character actor Cliff Norton does the commercials for the Johnson's Wax, Jubilee, Glade, Glo-Coat, and other products your mother used for cleaning the house when she had no other options in life.

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