Last night, yet another Streamliner from Hal Roach, the King of Zaniness. Can you deal with a talking dog? Okay, then I've got the movie for you. In "The Fabulous Joe"(1947), mild mannered businessman "Milo Terkel" (Walter Abel) finds himself in court, being divorced by his socialite wife "Emily" (Margot Grahame). He's on the stand telling his side of the story, going on a tangent, when the judge reminds him to stick to the time frame in question. After that, he freezes up. "I just can't talk about it," he explains, referring to the incident that resulted in divorce papers. "What do you mean?" asks the judge. Milo throws up his hands: "I just can't, your honor. I'm sorry." At this point, his lawyer (Donald Meek), exasperated, pulls Milo off the stand, asking the judge for a recess. In chambers, Meek pleads with Milo to explain what's going on. "You're going to lose your wife and any settlement you might be awarded, if you don't at least say something up there."
"But I can't", he repeats. "They'll think I'm crazy".
"Just tell it to me, at least", says Meek. "Let me decide what they'll think."
Now we switch to flashback mode, as Milo recounts to Meek the day on which he inherited "Joseph P. McMasters" (Corky), Joe for short, a dog that Milo swears can talk. Meek, a family friend as well as Milo's attorney, was himself involved in the transaction. "Remember the day you came into the office with that mutt?" Meek had come in to tell him of a will he'd just arbitrated, for the family of a rich old man. The family members got nothing because the old man hated them. Joe the dog got it all, and with no one to take care of him, Meek gave him to Milo. "And ever since I took that dog in, my life has fallen apart!" Joe inherited 10,000 dollars, but that's neither here nor there because Milo has money. I guess in Hal Roach's world it doesn't matter because we're soon gonna forget all these details anyway.
In the flashback, Donald Meek leaves Milo's office, after explaining the will, and Joe's inheritance. He leaves the dog with Milo, and Milo takes Joe home. The real story starts now, when Joe sees how Milo lives. A man's home is supposed to be his castle, yet it's anything but for Milo. This night is his anniversary, and he wants to schpoil his wife with a diamond necklace. It's mega-expensive, but he buys it, and when he gets home, with Joe in tow, Emily isn't there. She's forgotten about the anniversary, too busy with her "philanthropic" activities (a bird club). Emily the wife is a phony-baloney highbrow with a fake English accent, and to make matters worse, her king-sized brother "George" (Howard Petrie), has lived with her and Milo as a fifth wheel for ten years running. George, a former Yale footballer, is an overbearing buffoon who sides with his sister against Milo anytime the going gets rough.
When Milo gets home, with the necklace and Joe the dog, the only party happening is the raucous blowout his daughter "Debbie" is throwing. Debbie (the tragic but beautuful Barbara Bates) is a credit card charge-a-holic who only sees Daddy as an endless source of money. When he complains about her spending it's "oh, Daddy!"
Now, Joe the dog sees all of this. He takes it all in and it irks him. As Milo leaves the house that night, with his wife gone and his daughter having taken over the joint, he and Joe go to a bar, where Milo gets hammered on a concoction called a Mysterious Orchid. He drinks two of them, to forget his troubles, and while doing so, a curvaceous young woman passes by. "Say, you look like you could use some company," she observes. "Whatcha got in that box?" It's the necklace of course; Milo lets her try it on, only to be rebuffed by a Moblike goon named "Louie" (Sheldon Leonard), who's sitting in a nearby booth. The bombshell's name is "Gorgeous Gilmore" (Marie Wilson), and Louie is her hoodlum boyfriend.
Well, this is where the Hal Roach insanity starts, because while Milo is out of his mind on the Mysterious Orchids, Joe the dog gets an idea to make Milo's wife jealous. He's seen the way Milo is treated at home, and he's ready to put his paw down. Outside the bar he starts talking to Milo, in Milo's drunken state, and when Gorgeous Gilmore returns, at a nearby a park after a fight with Louie, Joe trips her up near a stream so she'll fall in and get soaked. Can anyone say wet t-shirt night? Wet dress is more accurate, but the effect on Gorgeous is the same. Joe the dog does this on purpose, so that Milo will have to offer Gorgeous the use of his dryer. Naturally, a shower is included in the deal. They go back to Milo's house, and while Gorgeous is in the bathroom, Joe steals her dress and drops it out the windum. She can't find it, and hasn't anything else to wear (for now she's in a towel). The only thing Milo can do is offer her to sleep in his wife's bed. After all, Emily is gone with her bird watching club. He just has to make sure Gorgeous is gone in the morning.
But Gorgeous is never gone after that. She's in the house for the rest of the movie, and Milo has to hide her, in various states of undress, while Joe the talking dog dishes out marital advice and tries to "expose" more of Gorgeous Gilmore.
Sounds like fun, eh? It's pretty risque for 1947. There is the usual Hal Roach ten minute mega-wind-up scene, which he uses for his Grand Finales. In this case, Emily finally remembers the anniversary and comes home, but Gorgeous is still at the house, wearing less clothes than ever. Milo can't get rid of her, and Louie her boyfriend has discovered his address. He's on his way over to kill Milo, so Joe the dog does the only thing a loyal talking dog can do; he sets the living room on fire. With the house burning down, Gorgeous is trapped in the bedroom. Milo has no choice but to rescue her, as everyone including his wife converges at the front door. Thus, he is discovered with the half-naked Gorgeous, and that's how he ends up in divorce court. The flashback is over, and now he's back on the stand as the movie ends. If only he could get Joe to talk again, he'd prove his case and win. But now, Joe has clammed up. He won't say a word in front of the judge. Milo is declared mentally incompetent for saying he's got a talking dog, but as it turns out, once again, Joe has had his best interests at heart. You'll see why. Man, does this movie ever get Two Big Thumbs! I mean, c'mon: a talking dog flick! Good grief, Charlie Brown, and the picture is razor sharp. ////
The previous night we watched a classic on dvd: "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"(1967), the film that broke the barrier on interracial marriage, at a time when racial tension was at a high point, yet it was also the year of the Summer of Love, when young people were trying to create a more harmonious world with the idea that we could all live as one. The movie tackles both aspects. I'd never seen it, and while I've been slowly trying to catch up on my 1960s classics (it was the last great decade of the studio system), my reason for checking it out from the Libe was altogether different. I recently watched Jordan Peele's "Get Out" (I also saw his "Nope" at the theater in July), and while I don't want to get into a Jordan Peele discussion right now (too fraught a subject), I got "Guess Who's" from the library because the opening scene of "Get Out" reminded me of "Guess Who's" premise. Even casual film fans know that "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" is about an interracial couple on their way to meet the girl's white parents, after which they stay for dinner and a huge discussion ensues. Well, even though I hadn't seen "Dinner" when I saw "Get Out", that movie had a similar scenario unfold in the opening sequence, where Peele's leading man wonders if meeting the parents is a bad idea.
After seeing "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner", it looked to me like Peele "borrowed" it's opening scene, lock stock and barrel, for "Get Out." Of course, some critics and fans have dubbed Peele a filmmaking genius, and he won an Oscar for his script to "Get Out. To me it was okay, like a decent M. Night Shamalan film mixed with some Roger Corman. However, I thought it also had a heaping dose of racism (Peele's own), and if you are like me and wonder what all the hype is about with Jordan Peele (for the record, I liked "Nope" better, though "Get Out" was a tighter film), I needn't tell you that "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" is a far superior film, and they aren't even in the same discussion.
You want woke? Go back to 1967, when there was actually an intelligent discourse taking place on racial issues in America, and it wasn't all about two-sided extremist politics. Boy, does "Dinner" get it right. You know who the most prejudiced person in this movie is? It's everyone and, conversely, no one. Consider the black maid "Tillie" (Isabel Sanford): She's bigoted against Sidney Poitier, whom she accuses of promoting Black Power. But her issue isn''t race as much as station and individual pride. Ditto for everyone in the film; everybody has an "ism" as John Lennon would say. Even Sidney Poitier won't stand up to his Dad until then end, when he pulls a James Dean and says "listen, man."
Then there's the young black hotrodder, just a teenager after all, who berates Spencer Tracy (who's character is liberal but won't accept the marriage) after he and Hepburn accidentally run into his custom car. He yells at them and calls them "senile" old folks (but not Whities). He says they belong in a Convalescent Home. So, yeah, in this movie everyone is prejudiced. And every angle is explored. But we're Woke now, I forgot. And nobody ever heard of these issues before 2016 or thereabouts. And it's all about black versus white, and gender identity, and division. Woke is a joke that causes more division than it ends. How about identifying not with race, politics or gender, but with being a nice person, like the Hippies did? Peace, man.
Anyway, sorry for the tirade, but I was a child of the '60s and I lived through the real thing. America was on it's way to solving racial issues then and Woke is a giant step backwards. If you want to see great acting, watch this movie. Hang on a sec, let me get the list....Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, and Sidney Poitier, all in one flick? Yep, and guess what? Tracy died 17 days after filming completed. He was in poor health during the shoot; he looks 85 but is only 67. But you'd never know he was on death's door by his performance, which was cobbled together from the days he was able to do his scenes. Katherine Hepburn was the love of his life; the tears in her eyes in the movie are really for Spencer. And if you want class, talent and style, just look up "Sidney Poitier" in the dictionary.
On top of that you get the brilliant supporting cast of Roy Glenn, Beah Richards, Isabel Sanford and Katherine Houghton. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" gets our highest rating, Two Gigantic Thumbs Up. Watch it on Netflix or get it from the Libe. Sorry about the diatribe, but I don't like modern extremist politics or the cultural derivations of same. And I promise to stick to movies (I'll try), and I didn't mean to single out Jordan Peele, but I didn't like the undercurrent of "Get Out", even though I agreed with the portrayal of phony liberals in the movie. End of story.
And that's all I know for tonight. My blogging music was Steve F. Hillage (why listen to anyone else?), I'm reading Elvis (the first book was better than this one), and my late night listening is "Siegfried" by Richard Wagner, conducted by von Karajan of course. I hope your week is going well. Hang in there in the heat. Tomorrow is the 33rd anniversary of the start of What Happened in Northridge, and I send you Tons of Love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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