Perennial Preston Sturges stooge Julius Tannen, celebrated in a short piece over at The Chiseler, based — closely! — on a conversation with regular Shadowplayer Randy Cook.
Another Vincent Price limerick, co-authored with Hilary Barta.
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This entry was posted on February 17, 2012 at 9:17 am and is filed under FILM with tags Hilary Barta, Julius Tannen, Limerwrecks, Randall William Cook, The Chiseler, The Great Moment, Vincent Price. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed
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February 17, 2012 at 6:58 pm
Despite the credit as “O’Brien”, Tannen’s character responds to Sir Alfred’s query “You are Mr. Sweeny, I presume” with “Me? Why not O’Brien?” in acknowledgement of the fact that he doesn’t exactly look Irish.
February 17, 2012 at 8:22 pm
I’m pretty sure his name is Tannenbaum in the film. You can see the name on the tailor shop door as Harrison passes it.
February 17, 2012 at 8:52 pm
Then why Rafferty??? Unless it’s Ra Fer Ti and he’s really Egyptian.
February 17, 2012 at 10:24 pm
I am so glad people are commenting! After the silence attending the last post and, until this evening, the current one, I thought there was something about odd-looking old men that scared people off. Whereas Martine Carol in strategically deployed black lace seemed to turn us into positive chatterboxes.
February 17, 2012 at 10:57 pm
Why Rafferty? There’s probably SOME reason. Sturges seemed to enjoy making private little jokes when naming his characters. PALM BEACH STORY alone has Tom & Gerry, the Wienie KING is named ARTHUR, and two Ale and Quail Clubmen are named Hotchkiss and Hitchcock (surnames which figure in a celebrated and mildly smutty joke).
“Rafferty”, the internet tells me, is a Gaelic name meaning “prosperity wielder” and that’s kind of what he does in MIRACLE. Kind of. Probably Sturges had a reason for naming this character Rafferty, but damned if I can guess what the reason was.
February 18, 2012 at 12:24 am
Heh.
Now, if the picture was set in South America, like the start of The Great McGinty… according to Peter Lorre in Beat the Devil, South America is full of Germans with Irish names…
February 18, 2012 at 2:41 am
Or, according to the upcoming IRON SKY, there are a lot of Germans with Irish names on the Moon…
February 18, 2012 at 12:59 pm
I wonder what that’ll be like? A relief to find a high concept movie with an actual high concept, that’s for sure.