I think we can guess who the beauty is

Red Skelton was TCM's Star of the Month back in 2025, and I recorded several of his movies. I don't think I got around to watching all of them before they expired, but since he worked at MGM his movies show up often enough on TCM. One such film is the star-making turn for Esther Williams: Bathing Beauty.

Bathing Beauty was made when Red Skelton was still the bigger star, so we get him first in the credits and the story is more about his character. Skelton plays Steve Elliot, a Los Angeles-based songwriter about to get married to college swimming instructor Caroline Brooks (that's Esther Williams, as if you couldn't tell). Steve talks to Caroline about starting a new life after getting married and finishing up his current job of writing a musical for producer George Adams (Basil Rathbone). George is none too happy about this, so he comes up with a way to scupper the marriage by claiming that Steve is already married to somebody else and producing that fake wife. With that, Caroline leaves him and goes back to her college back on the other coast.

Unsurprisingly, Steve wants to put things right, and follows her back to the college in New Jersey where she teaches, accompanied by singer Carlos Ramirez, who is clearly only in the script because the movie was made in early 1944 during the "Good Neighbor" policy with Latin America. However, the two men are blocked from entering campus because Caroline teaches at an all-girls' school. But this is a comedy, so we have to have a way for Steve and Caroline to end up in close proximity under odd circumstances. That happens when Steve meets one of the trustees and learns that the charter hasn't officially delared the college an all-girls' school. So Steve tries to enroll and, since the trustees can't legally stop him, come up with a way to admit him but with a plan to get him expelled for demerits.

Much of the rest of the movie deals with Steve's attempts to get back to Caroline, who is also being pursued by a botany professor Willis (Bill Goodwin), along with the comic predicaments the only male student at an all-girls' school is bound to get himself into. One such involves Steve's having to do ballet, in a skit that Skelton would reuse in the movie The Clown. There's also a whole bunch of musical numbers, including Harry James and his orchestra, along with Xavier Cugat and his orchestra. Oh, there's that Good Neighbor policy again. As you might guess with a movie like this, the film climaxes with an aquacade, along with Steve and Caroline winding up together at the end of the movie.

Bathing Beauty is one of those movies that was made in part as a morale-booster; indeed, the movie ends with a card mentioning that movies like this were also being sent overseas to entertain the troops who were off fighting the war against Germany and Japan. As such, the plot doesn't particularly matter here. Don't try to pay too close attention to the plot because that's not the point. Instead, the movie is more about the musical numbers along with the final big swimming number, along with Skelton's comic antics. The Technicolor is vibrant here, especially for that final aquacade. It's easy to see watching Bathing Beauty why it was a box office hit and the sort of movie that would get sent abroad to cheer up the troops.

If you're interested in Hollywood history, Bathing Beauty is a good entry into the phenomenon that was Esther Williams.

Not the champ

Tomorrow's lineup in 31 Days of Oscar is movies set in Mexico. Among the movies being shown is the 1931 version of The Champ at 10:30 AM, which I blogged about back in 2010. There was a remake of The Champ in 1979, which will be airing at 3:45 AM on March 11 as part of a prime-time lineup (starting on the evening of March 10) of movies with people who have drinking problems. In between those two there was another version which isn't being shown because it didn't get any Oscar nominations. That movie is titled The Clown.

Red Skelton plays the titular clown, a man named Dodo Delwyn. He used to be big, but as you can guess he has a drinking problem and can no longer get good jobs as a result. He's reduced to a job on Coney Island as a clown making the guests getting off amusement park rides part of his act. He ticks off one such person to the point that man fights back, and Dodo's boss not only blames Dodo, but gives Dodo reason to believe he's accusing Dodo of having gone back to the drink. There goes your job.

Dodo, meanwhile, has a son who admires him in the form of Dink (Tim Considine) and basically takes care of Dodo every time Dodo goes on another drunk, which is about to happen soon now that Dodo is once again out of a job. Now, in a lot of movies this single dad with a son relationship would be down to Mom having died, thank you Production Code. That's also the lie Dodo has been telling Dink. But here, the reality is that Dodo's wife Paula (Jane Greer) couldn't handle her husband's alcoholism and more or less abandoned his fate, divorcing him and marrying another man and having a daughter by that man. How she didn't get custody of Dink is never well explained.

It doesn't take much to guess that Paula is about to meet Dodo again. That happens when Dink goes to one of Dodo's old agents from the talent agencies who gets Dodo a temporary job that Dodo considers do degrading that he doesn't want Dink to see the act. Among the people in the audience is Paula, who wants to see Dink again. She knows that she and her second husband can offer Dink so much more than Dodo can, and tell Dink they'd be more than happy to bring him into their new family, although for obvious reasons Dink is none too happy about this because he still loves his father and considers Dad his hero.

It's going to take a lot for for Dad to hit bottom, which even includes smacking poor Dink. But just as Dodo hits bottom, his old agent realizes there's a new technology out there: television! This would be a great chance to show Dodo to a new audience and possibly get Dodo a stable job if only Dodo can remain sober. The worst that could happen, one supposes, is that the show flops on its opening episode and gets treated as a one-off special rather than a series. But Dodo seizes the lifeline. If you've seen either version of The Champ, however, you know how this movie is going to end....

The most surprising thing about The Clown is the opportunity it offered Red Skelton to do straight drama, since he was mostly known for his physical comedy. Of course, as a clown, that also provides lots of chances to put that physical comedy into the movie in a way that integrates seamlessly into the plot. Skelton shows that he really did have the acting chops necessary to do at least melodrama; I don't know if anybody would have ever taken him seriously if MGM had put him in a straight drama like The Bad and the Beautiful the year before, or Executive Suite a year later. But in The Clown Skelton is by far the highlight in what feels like another of those movies MGM was churning out while trying to fund the Freed Unit musicals.

Ship Ahoy

Red Skelton was TCM's Star of the Month in April 2025, which means I'm getting to the point where the movies TCM ran as part of that salute are about to start expiring from the DVR. So to get around to finally watching them before they expire, I watched Ship Ahoy.

Ship Ahoy was made early enough in Skelton's career that he's not quite the star here, although he's technically the male lead. The star is tap-dancer Eleanor Powell. She plays Tallulah WInters, who is a dancer with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra (Dorsey and most of the rest of the orchestra play themselves). After a performance in New York, Dorsey reminds his troupe that they have to be on time for the ship that's about to set sail for San Juan, Puerto Rico, where they're booked for a series of performances. Meanwhile, showing up backstage is Skip Owens (Bert Lahr), who has the hots for Tallulah's friend and singer Fran Evans (Virginia O'Brien), although she doesn't show any interest in Skip. Not that Virginia O'Brien ever showed any interest with her face.

Before Tallulah can leave the theater, she's waylaid by a couple of agents, who take her to an office where they tell her they have a national security job for her. Apparently the government has developed a magnetic mine which they need to get to Puerto Rico. But they can't use any of their regular agents to deliver the mine since there's that war on and enemy agents are sure to be following the regular agents. So could Tallulah hide it somewhere in her luggage and transport it?

Unfortunately, what Tallulah doesn't know is that these aren't US government agents transporting the mine, but agents working for the Axis powers. This is revealed almost as soon as Tallulah leaves, so it's not as if I'm revealing much here. The agents got the idea for this from a comic book written by Merton Kibble (that's Red Skelton). So the scene immediately cuts to Merton's apartment, where we learn that Skip Owens is also Merton's personal assistant. Merton is an inveterate hypochondriac, and asks Skip to call his doctor because Merton is afraid he's about to panic or something from having to try to write three comics at the same time. Skip uses this call as an excuse to tell a little white lie, or a fairly big one: Merton should take some rest, which means a sea cruise (even though Merton gets seasick). This is really a ruse for Skip to show up on the same boat as Fran.

Now, if you've seen any movie like this, the rest of the bare bones of the plot shouldn't be too hard to figure out. Merton and Tallulah run into each other, and fall in love, although they're going to fall back out of love before all the misunderstandings are resolved in the final reel. Merton is also going to be instrumental in foiling that fiendish enemy plot, albeit not without facing down some personal danger. That foiling the plot is going to involve a fair bit of comedy. And with the presence of Eleanor Powell and Tommy Dorsey, there's going to be dancing and singing involved too. Frank Sinatra was still with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra at the time, so he gets to perform a musical number very early in his career.

Ship Ahoy is the sort of movie that Hollywood was putting out during World War II: patriotic, but also fairly light-hearted to help the audiences on the home front escape from what was going on out in the real world. Skelton is funny enough here while people who aren't his biggest fans will find he's not overused since he's in a supporting role. Powell shows she was an excellent tap dancer, including a notable scene where she tap dances out a message in Morse code. As for the story? Well, once again, don't pay too much attention to it.

Thousands Cheer

Red Skelton was TCM's Star of the Month back in April. One of his movies that I had on my DVR surprisingly enough was not shown as part of the tribute. But since the movie would be kinda-sorta appropriate for Memorial Day weekend (not that TCM is programming it), and because the movie is going to expire from my DVR relatively soon, I figure that now is a good time to blog about it. That movie is Thousands Cheer.

The opening credits of the movie announce that it's introducing José Iturbi, a Brazilian pianist/conductor who would appear in several muscially inclined movies over the next several years, and he's in the opening, leading a philharmonic concert where one of the performers is singer Kathryn Jones (Kathryn Grayson). After her musical number, she informs the audience that she's going to be taking a sabbatical from performing: her father Bill (John Boles) is a US Army colonel, and with the movie being made in 1943, it's smack-dab in the middle of World War II. Col. Jones is about to be assigned to another base, and Kathryn is going to follow him in order to provide morale for the troops stationed there about to go off to war.

One of those troops is Pvt. Eddy Marsh (Gene Kelly), who is on the same train to the base as Col. Boles. He implies to Kathryn that he loves her, not realizing that she too is going to be staying at the base, which is going to make things awkward when the two of them meet again. They do meet again on the base, and Eddy informs Kathryn that he doesn't really like the army. He was drafted, but he came from a family of circus aerialists, with the result that he feels much more comfortable up in the air than on the ground and as a result would really prefer to be transferred to the Air Corps.

Kathryn falls in love with Eddy along the way, although Eddy has a problem with the officer corps which means that by definition he also has a problem with the daughter of an officer. Additionally, Kathryn's mother Hyllary (Mary Astor) doesn't want her daughter marrying a soldier. Hyllary did so and suffered heartbreak thanks to her husband's transfers and basically being married to the military. Besides, Eddy's attitude is so bad that one wonders whether he's going to be court-martialed out of the military.

All of that occurs in the amount of running time that a movie might have if Thousands Cheer were a B movie. But it isn't, being one of MGM's big, morale-boosting films for the war effort. As such, Kathryn has to invite all her friends to help put on that big show for the soldiers about to go off to war. Mickey Rooney (playing himself) is the MC of that show, and he's brought his MGM friends (again playing themselves) to perform skits and musical numbers at the camp for the soldiers. This show-within-a-show takes the final third of the movie, with a coda at the end to resolve the main story. Quite a few of MGM's stars perform, including Skelton.

Thousands Cheer is an odd little -- or should I say big, since it runs a bit over two hours -- movie, since it's really two movies in one. Gene Kelly was fairly early in his career, but already shows his ability. However, he wasn't given a particularly interesting story in which to show that ability. It's not Kelly's fault, of course; the movie has to hit the propaganda notes of a serviceman redeeming himself by doing the right thing for his country, and it has to do that fairly briefly since we've got 45 minutes of MGM cameos to show, thank you very much.

Some of the cameos are better than others, with Frank Morgan being irritating while some of the singers do reasonably well. The aerialists might be the highlight of the camp show. That, and Mickey Rooney doing his impressions of some of his fellow MGM contract players. Not that they're notably good, but they're certainly fun. Interestingly, there's a conceit where one of the soldiers in the crowd, played by Ben Blue, goes googly-eyed over all the female singers. Except when Lena Horne shows up, but then again Horne's segment has obvious points where censors in the South could have cut so those sensitive southern moviegoers wouldn't have to see a black woman singing.

For me, Thousands Cheer comes across 80-plus years on as more of a time capsule than anything else, but it's one you may want to check out.

The Yellow Cab Man

Tonight's final night of TCM's Star of the Month salute to Red Skelton includes a pair of movies that are already on my DVR, although I'm only doing a post on one of them today. That movie is The Yellow Cab Man, which you can see at 9:45 PM.

The opening credits are done somewhat differently, with the names of the cast printed on, well, plaster casts. Those casts are worn by a character named Red Pirdy (Red Skelton) who, as you might guess, is accident-prone, to the point that insurance companies don't want to insure him. After the credits, he's trying to carry an oversized cuckoo clock down the sidewalks, when he accidentally starts crossing the street when the traffic has the right of way, not the pedestrians. This causes him to get hit by a taxicab from the Yellow Cab Co.

Now, Red is an honest, and inconceivably stupid man, so he's open about the accident being entirely his fault. Ellen Goodrich (Gloria De Haven) works for the cab company's insurer, an she tries to get Red to sign a waiver. Also showing up is a lawyer, Martin Creavy (Edward Arnold), who seems to have a way of committing insurance fraud and realizes he can use Red to make a ton of money, or so he thinks. Well, he will have that chance, but in a completely different way.

As part of Red's seeing Ellen and Creavy, Red reveals that not only is he one of those tinkering inventors who nowadays would be the target of those scammy commercials about getting a patent for your invention. But because of Red's stupidity, he also mentions that he's invented, but not yet patented, something called Elastiglass, which I suppose isn't that much of an invention since things like Plexiglas/Perspex and Lucite had been invented a good decade before the movie was released. Elastiglass is, like those other acrylics, shatter-proof and therefore much safer than traditional glass.

Ellen, and the executives at Yellow Cab, think that installing safer glass would be a good thing for the cab company's insurance bills, and hiring Red wouldn't be a bad PR move either. Martin, for his part, sees dollar signs if he can get the formula out of Red's mind. To that end, Martin hires a quack psychiatrist named Dokstedder (Walter Slezak) who uses drugs and hypnosis to try to obtain the formula. Murder is also involved, leading to a madcap climax.

I'm guessing that The Yellow Cab Man was conceived as a way for MGM to use Red Skelton's brand of physical comedy and sight gags. There's certainly a lot of that in the movie. Unfortunately, they didn't bother to come up with an intelligent enough script. Red is just way too stupid, to the point that you wonder how he's been able to live independently as an adult, never mind the concussions. The bad guys are cartoonishly bad, although I suppose that befits the cartoonish nature of the whole film. But to me it often came across more as grating than as working well.

Lady Be Good

Red Skelton is TCM's Star of the Month for April, and as I mentioned last week, I've got a couple of his movies on my DVR that are showing up as part of the salute to him. First up is a movie that has Skelton in a supporting role: Lady Be Good, early tomorrow (April 15) at 5:00 AM.

Eleanor Powell gets top billing here, although that was a ruse by MGM to get audiences into the theater. In fact, the female lead is Ann Sothern, whom MGM was trying to turn into a musical star. She plays Dixie Donegan, and as the movie opens, she's in divorce court, trying to obtain a divorce from her husband Eddie Crane (Robert Young). This introductory scene is a pretense to go to a flashback, as Donegan tells Judge Murdock (Lionel Barrymore) how the two met and why she wants a divorce. Before the marriage, Crane was a composer, and his girlfriend Dixie sees him and his lyricist have difficulty collaborating. Somehow, Dixie is able to come up with lyrics for Eddie's latest music, and the song they release together becomes a big hit, leading them to get married as well.

Eleanor Powell plays Marilyn Marsh, who is a friend of Dixie's and to a lesser extent Eddie's. She's also a star on Broadway who dances to the sort of music written by people like Eddie. She's happy to see the two married, but distressed by the fact that after they get married, Eddie lets success go to his head, where Dixie just wants to go on writing music for another Broadway show. This is what leads to the Dixie deciding she needs a divorce, even if we all know the two of them are still friends. They just can't work together as husband and wife, at least not until Eddie learns how to combine the two.

After the divorce, Dixie tries to find other composers, while Eddie seems unable to create new music. Eventually he calls Dixie and she thinks he's looking once again for a lyricist. Except that he wants someone to clean up his apartment, as if he thinks this way she'll come back to him. She's already got a new boyfriend, but once again we know this drip isn't right for her. Mutual friends like Marilyn, or Red Willet (that's Red Skelton) who plugs Eddie's and Dixie's songs, try to bring Dixie and Eddie back together. They're even seemingly successful, except that their second marriage hits a snag for the same exact reasons the first marriage did. Still, we know that Dixie and Eddie are going to wind up together in the final reel, so the question is how are they going to resolve their problems.

The on-again, off-again romance story in Lady Be Good is serviceable, and Young and Sothern are able to handle this light drama material well. Red Skelton was on his way up here, and was I think brought in for comic relief which he is unsurprisingly good at providing with his brand of physical comedy. But Lady Be Good is really to be watched for the music and dancing. Arthur Freed, who was of course a lyricist before he become a producer at MGM and made those big post-war Technicolor musicals, provides the song "Your Words and My Music", while some famous composers have old songs of theirs borrowed, with a couple of songs by the Gershwins (including the title number), and "The Last Time I Saw Paris" having been done by Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern. Eleanor Powell has a very good dance number she does with a dog, but most critics mention a different Powell number as the highlight of the film, one danced to "Fascinating Rhythm".

Despite the story which feels like a retread, fans of MGM musicals and dancing will, I think, love Lady Be Good.

Yet another musical biopic

Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby are songwriters who aren't as well remembered by name today as some other writers, in part because they didn't write any well-known Broadway musicals, or as much in the way of songs that have stood the test of time. A few have, such as Connie Francis' recording of "Who's Sorry Now", or "I Want to Be Loved By You". But they still had enough of a legacy when MGM started doing a series of biopics of songwriters that they too were the subject of one: Three Little Words.

The movie opens up in 1918. Bert Kalmar (Fred Astaire) is part of a vaudeville double act with his long-suffering girlfriend, Jessie Brown (Vera-Ellen). Bert wants to marry Jessie, and she'd be willing to, but she wants him to settle down, or at least stick to just vaudeville. Bert wants to try all sorts of other things in entertainment, such as music, screenplays, and even magic acts. Jack of all trades, master of none is an idea that makes Jessie nervous.

So Bert has to try his other work in secret. When he goes to a place out by Coney Island to do his magic show as "Kendall the Great", playing the piano is Harry Ruby (Red Skelton). Harry isn't just a piano player; he'd like to write his own songs and seems to have some talent for it. But the producer doesn't need new songs. He needs a magician's assistant for Kendall, or at least one who can be the man behind that curtain you're not supposed to pay attention to. It's not an auspicious beginning, however, as Harry screws up the act.

Some time later, Bert is back on stage with Jessie in a successful show, at least until he injures his knee in a backstage accident. Jessie thinks this is a perfect time for Bert to take up songwriting, as that's something that could help make ends meet once the two of them are married. But Bert thought of that as a bit of a hobby compared to "serious" playwriting. So they go their separate ways for a while, although they do eventually get married.

Bert writes one moderately successful tune, but only the one. When he's with a music publisher, the two of them hear one of the pluggers in the front office playing a tune over and over. That someone is Harry Ruby, and the two agree it's a catchy enough tune. So the publisher brings Harry in for the two of thm to try to match words and music. Eventually, Bert realizes who Harry Ruby is from his past, and they have a breakup of their own.

Except that the one song they worked on together becomes a big hit. And Harry takes out an ad calling Kalmar and Ruby a hot new songwriting team. So they have to start working together, and obviously the pairing pays off since we wouldn't have a movie if the pairing didn't. Eventually, however, old differences come back up and derail not only the professional partnership, but also their friendship. It's going to take some doing to bring the two men back together.

Three Little Words is a competent and pleasant enough movie, but I think it's going to appeal more to people who are fans of that era of music than a more general public. That's because a lot of the songs don't hold up all that well apart from "Who's Sorry Now" (sung by Gloria De Haven) and "I Want to Be Loved By You" (sung by a young Debbie Reynolds with Carleton Carpenter). Red Skelton is quite good in a role that provides a bit of comedy, but is nowhere near as zany as in most of his movies. Fred Astaire, unsurprisingly does a good job in both the acting and the dancing parts of the movie.

There are a lot of other music-related biopics I'd recommend first, but Three Little Words is certainly worth catching the next time it shows up on TCM.

Neptune's Daughter

Once again, I've hit a period where there are multiple movies on my DVR that I haven't blogged about before but that are coming up soon on TCM, so you're going to get a bunch of such posts in quick succession. First up is Neptune's Daughter, which concludes a night of Ricardo Montalbán movies early tomorrow (October 15) morning at 4:00 AM.

Montalbán is the male lead here, although the star of the movie is Esther Williams. She plays Eve Barrett, a swimmer who wins a bunch of trophies in the days when you couldn't make money from a competitive sport like swimming since the International Olympic Committee highly frowned on that. So, needing to make money, Eve went into business designing swimsuits with Joe Backett (Keenan Wynn). Joe has a thing for Eve, but for her there's a business partnership and just a friendship.

Eve has a kid sister, Betty (Betty Garrett). Betty is man-hungry, so when news comes that a South American polo team is going to be visiting, Betty gets excited. Joe is excited by the idea of putting on an aquacade for the team and all the audience that will show up for the matches to make some money and serve as advertising for the swimwear company. Eve, however, is not excited, because she knows that poor Betty will go after the guys and possibly get herself in troube for it.

The star of the polo team is José O'Rourke (that's Montalbán, of course). He, being a performance athlete, gets a lot of the aches and pains that high-level athletes do, and needs a masseur. He gets on in Jack Spratt (Red Skelton), and gives Jack some advice on Latin lovers and that the reason Anglo women go for them is that apparently they find Spanish irresistible. José leaves, Betty walks in, and since Jack is practicing his Spanish, Betty immediately assumes this is José. As if Red Skelton could look even remotely Latin.

The real José shows up at Joe and Eve's factory, which gives Eve the chance to speak her piece to José, telling him to stop seeing Betty, even though he never has met Betty. So instead, José takes this as an opportunity to start putting the moves on Eve, who does after all look good in a swimsuit. Eve tries to rebuff José at first, but you know she's going to fall for him despite the mistaken identities that will need to be resolved.

And then out of nowhere the plot takes a ridiculous turn. Mac (Mike Mazurki) is a professional gambler who has a wager on the outcome of the big polo match, and figures the best way to hedge his bets is to try to waylay José, by less than legal means if necessary. This has an affect on both the José and Eve relationship, as well as on Jack, since of course with Red Skelton in the film you're going to get some of his physical comedy.

The plot of Neptune's Daughter is wafer-thin, but that's not the reason to watch the movie. The real reason is that all of the main leads are so appealing here in spite of the plot. Betty Garrett and Red Skelton get the better musical numbers, including one with Xavier Cugat. Among the songs is one that's now become a Christmas standard, "Baby It's Cold Outside", although Neptune's Daughter has nothing to do with Christmas. The song is also done twice, once with Esther Williams not able to stay and Montalbán telling her it's cold -- and a second time with the sex roles reversed, and Red Skelton feigning wanting to leave with Betty Garrett trying to convince him to stay. Also, all four of the characters have their eyes fully open about what they're doing. So this Christmas if anybody tries to claim that "Baby It's Cold Outside" is "problematic", tell them to go fuck themselves.

Rant aside, Neptune's Daughter is a decidedly entertaining movie, if one that's fairly mindless.

Merton of the Movies

A lot of the movies I've been watching off of TCM lately have been those that are available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive. Another of those is Merton of the Movies.

Red Skelton plays Merton Gill, an usher in a small-town movie theater in the early silent era of the 1910s somewhere in what we'd call flyover country now. Merton has dreams of becoming an actor, having taken a correspondence course; in fact, he gets so into the movies that he doesn't really do his ushering job which could well get him fired. Until one day, that is, when his overacting foils a robbery. He mentions Hollywood star Lawrence Ruprecht (Leon Ames), and that gets Merton out to Hollywood.

Merton is too naïve to realize that Ruprecht's agent only wants to use Merton as a PR stunt, having Merton take a bunch of pictures with Ruprecht, who will claim that Merton is his protégé. Merton actually believes this nonsense, hanging around Hollywood expecting to get a call at one or another of the studios.

Like many struggling actors, he takes on a variety of odd jobs until one day he sneaks in to one of the studios where a nighttime scene starring big actress Beulah Baxter (Gloria Grahame) is going to be filmed. Publicity would have you believe, and certainly has Merton believing, that Beulah does all her own stunts, with the stunt this time involving diving off a ship's high mast. Of course, she's got a stunt double Phyllis (Virginia O'Brien), and when Merton jumps in the studio tank to rescue Beulah, he actually rescues Phyllis.

Phyllis and Merton are both able to get parts, although Merton's is only an extra in a Civil War drama. He's not very good at it, constantly flubbing his lines and cues, and either hitting other characters are falling down and otherwise having trouble with the props. Now, if this were a comedy, that might be OK, but not a drama.

However, it gives Phyllis an idea. She's gotten a role in what is supposed to be Ruprecht's comeback role, and realizes that Merton would be perfect for slapstick, especially if it's a parody of Ruprecht, who has become enough of a drunk that the studio is concerned he won't be able to complete the project. Of course, Merton has dreams of being a serious actor, not a slapstick comedian, and boy will he be pissed if he should ever find out the studio used his clips as comedy.

Merton of the Movies is based on a George S. Kaufman play, having been made already once in the silent movie (now presumed lost), and again as Make Me a Star back in the early 1930s. The material was redone here to play to Skelton's comedic strength, and mostly works as long as you like Skelton. If you don't particularly like Skelton's antics, you'll probably grow tired of the movie even though it doesn't run all that long. Graham and Ames both do a fine job with the comedic material.

There's nothing really new here, both because the movie is a remake and because it's a Red Skelton material. But it's certainly worth a watch.