Steak

Jerry Lewis in ARTISTS AND MODELS.

Gerard Philipe is on the phone to Edinburgh

There will be no Forgotten today, what with something called the Cannes Film Festival keeping them busy over at something called The Daily Notebook, formerly The Auteurs’ Notebook, at Mubi, formerly The Auteurs.

So you have to wait a week to read about this movie, I’m afraid.

He really IS on the phone to Edinburgh, or so he says. He claims he’s talking to Valerie Hobson. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Anybody know the film?

Here’s another great Gerard movie UK readers can buy for cheap:
La Ronde [1950] [DVD]

Strangely Beautiful

From A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA. Harpo waits for his big scene to begin. While, in the background, shadows from a gizmo known as a kookaloris (or cucaloris, cookaloris, cookalorus) suggest a vaguely North African mileu. And the outsize urns add something important too.

A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA is good fun, obviously not great like A NIGHT AT THE OPERA or God knows DUCK SOUP, but very agreeable. It’s also the movie that had Warner Bros threatening to sue over the use of the word “Casablanca,” leading Groucho to threaten a countersuit over Warners’ use of the word “brothers.” There are some good verbal gags, some by gagman Frank Tashlin, so there’s a particularly cartoony feel to Harpo’s schtick, and some good verbal gags:

Groucho: “I’m crazy about her: I’ve completely lost my head!”

Chico: “Well, put your hat on your neck and get out!”

Also Sig Rumann, progressively deprived of hair, beard and moustache. The beard ends up on Groucho, transforming him into  a dead ringer for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, although the cigar also recalls Castro.