Mighty Joe Young

I see that there's a double feature on TCM tomorrow of Mighty Joe Young at 4:30 PM, followed by King Kong at 6:15 PM. (Actually, it's part of an entire afternoon of gorilla movies.) Since I had Mighty Joe Young on the DVR, I decided to watch it to do a post on here.

John Young (Regis Toomey) manages a farm somewhere in Africa, where he lives with his young daughter Jill (to be played by Terry Moore as grown-up Jill). One day, a couple of natives are walking past the farm gate with a basket, and Jill looks into the basket, finding a baby gorilla. She trades with the two men for the gorilla, which seems nuts, since how is she going to take care of a gorilla? But then we wouldn't have a movie.

Fast forward a dozen years. In New York, Max O'Hara (Robert Armstrong) is a promoter who runs a nightclub, and is always looking for new and more spectacular acts for high nightclub. Together with PR man Windy (Frank McHugh), the idea they hit upon is an African-themed club, complete with lions (behind glass) and a whole bunch of other stereotypes. Fortuitously showing up at O'Hara's office is Gregg Johnson (Ben Johnson), late of the rodeo show that was at Madison Square Garden. He thinks he's got a rodeo act to offer Max, but Max can use him roping animals in Africa.

So they all head off to the RKO backlot or studio ranch version of Africa, where they find a bunch of lions, but also spot a gorilla that probably shouldn't be there since this is the wrong part of Africa for it. They try to rope the gorilla, but he's strong enough that it's dangerous business and the gorilla puts all of them in danger purely out of self-defense. At that point, adult Jill shows up and finds these strange men on her property, attacking her gorilla. Unsurprisingly, she's pissed.

However, Max is able to clear everything up, and having seen the gorilla, named Joe, he thinks Joe would be perfect for the nightclub, in an act with Jill because she seems to be the one person who can keep Joe tame. Jill is understandably not certain at first, but she does eventually go along with the idea, heading off to Hollywood with Joe, Max, Gregg, and Windy.

The opening night is a big success, since the act is little more than Jill playing "Beautiul Dreamer", the song that has a calming effect on Joe, while he hoists her and the piano she's playing. Of course, that's not much of an act, and audiences are quickly going to grow tired of it. So eventually, Max wants Joe to do more, such as catch some sort of plates he's giving the patrons.

Joe is kept in a tiny cage below the nightclub, and that's not much of a life for a gorilla. Jill is increasingly displeased, and wants to head back to Africa with Joe. Gregg is falling in love with Jill, and he's got a lot of sympathy for Jill and Joe, and not just becuase he loves Jill. Max, on the other hand, sees a gravy train and is reluctant to let it go.

Events are going to overtake Max. A trio of nasty drunk patrons are able to get backstage and eventually down into the basement where Joe is kept. They decide to offer Joe their bottles of liquor, which Joe drinks. You'd think an 800-pound gorilla would take a fair bit of alcohol to get drunk, but on the other hand, the big guy has never had alcohol before, so he can't really hold his liquor. He gets drunk enough to break out of the cage and go on a rampage, which understandably frightens all the patrons to the point that they call the cops who plan to shoot Joe.

This all leads up to the climax of an escape and a burning orphanage which conveniently happens to be out in the middle of nowhere. Will Joe survive? Will Gregg and Jill marry and live happily ever after? You'll have to watch the movie to find that out.

Mighty Joe Young is well-paired with King Kong, because of the big ape, and that both movies were conceived by Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack. Joe is animated with stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen, in one of his first movies. Joe is an appealing character who is more fully fleshed out than Kong was 15 years earlier.

That's a good thing, because Joe papers over a lot of plot holes (like that middle-of-nowhere orphanage) and the fact that his size and weight are wildly inconsistent for all the things he's expected to do in the movie. The acting from the humans is adequate at best, but then all of them are in service of the gorilla, so you don't pay too much attention to them. The orange tinting of the orphanage fire is interesting, but ultimately intrusive as well.

Still, Mighty Joe Young should entertain the whole family if you don't think too much, ignore its shortcomings, and just sit back. The Blu-ray release claims it's 84 minutes and includes the orphanage scene; the print TCM ran was 94 minutes so I'm guessing that's just a typo on the TCM Shop page. There was also a remake which is also available on DVD.