According to producer Jack Rose, The Country Girl is all wrong. "No nice Jewish wife would allow her husband to go on drinking like that! She'd make him leave show business and get a nice steady job as a riveter instead!"
"That's right!" I agreed. "The problem is that the movie itself would then peter out!"
"That's easy!" replied Jack. "Remember that scene in Yankee Doodle Dandy where Jimmy Cagney is all retired on his farm and these teeny-boppers sling off at him because they've never heard of him. So the Cagney character sees the light and makes a comeback! The End!"
Alas, for all Jack's insights, The Five Pennies is an incredibly tedious, overly domesticated musical, a chore even for Danny Kaye's most rabid fans – although they might find his self-indulgent singing and mugging, corny lyrics and overblown verbal idiocies less embarrassing than the rest of us. In fact, everything is so weighted in Kaye's favor, he is hardly ever off-screen. Aside from Barbara Bel Geddes, who has a more than her fair share of domestic bickering, the rest of this movie's players are given extremely short shrift. Talented Bob Crosby, for instance, is mercilessly ridiculed by the egocentric Nichols, whilst Ray Anthony is reduced to little more than an extra.
To add insult to injury, the blink-and-you'll-miss-him guest appearance by Bob Hope has been removed from the TV print, even though Kaye still has his line, "Even Bob Hope is leaving!"
Tuesday Weld, making her entrance when the movie is virtually over, gamely struggles through her thankless role. But fortunately, nothing can put down the fabulous Louis Armstrong – not even the cornball new lyrics for "The Saints Are Marching In". And Mr. Nicholas still plays a mean cornet! Otherwise, the film is a drag, thanks to its tedious script, over-the-top "acting" by Kaye and – to a lesser extent – Barbara Bel Geddes plus Melville Shavelson's indifferent direction. The editing is snail-paced and – aside from Fapp's pleasing color photography – production values limited. And would you believe, all the musical orchestrations are modern. Here is a movie with no sense of period whatever!
"That's right!" I agreed. "The problem is that the movie itself would then peter out!"
"That's easy!" replied Jack. "Remember that scene in Yankee Doodle Dandy where Jimmy Cagney is all retired on his farm and these teeny-boppers sling off at him because they've never heard of him. So the Cagney character sees the light and makes a comeback! The End!"
Alas, for all Jack's insights, The Five Pennies is an incredibly tedious, overly domesticated musical, a chore even for Danny Kaye's most rabid fans – although they might find his self-indulgent singing and mugging, corny lyrics and overblown verbal idiocies less embarrassing than the rest of us. In fact, everything is so weighted in Kaye's favor, he is hardly ever off-screen. Aside from Barbara Bel Geddes, who has a more than her fair share of domestic bickering, the rest of this movie's players are given extremely short shrift. Talented Bob Crosby, for instance, is mercilessly ridiculed by the egocentric Nichols, whilst Ray Anthony is reduced to little more than an extra.
To add insult to injury, the blink-and-you'll-miss-him guest appearance by Bob Hope has been removed from the TV print, even though Kaye still has his line, "Even Bob Hope is leaving!"
Tuesday Weld, making her entrance when the movie is virtually over, gamely struggles through her thankless role. But fortunately, nothing can put down the fabulous Louis Armstrong – not even the cornball new lyrics for "The Saints Are Marching In". And Mr. Nicholas still plays a mean cornet! Otherwise, the film is a drag, thanks to its tedious script, over-the-top "acting" by Kaye and – to a lesser extent – Barbara Bel Geddes plus Melville Shavelson's indifferent direction. The editing is snail-paced and – aside from Fapp's pleasing color photography – production values limited. And would you believe, all the musical orchestrations are modern. Here is a movie with no sense of period whatever!