The centenary of the birth of actor Donald O'Connor was back in August, which was a perfect time for TCM to honor him in Summer Under the Stars. One of those movies is getting another showing on TCM: Francis, which you can see tomorrow, Oct. 6, at 8:00 PM, followed by two more of the movies in the series that Francis spawned.
Peter Stirling (Donald O'Connor) is a teller at a bank in that era when being a bank teller was a job with an even bigger reputation for probity than it has today. However, for some reason, there are whispers about him and customers seem to want to shun him and use a different teller for whatever reason. With that in mind, his boss calls him into the office and asks what the deal is. This leads to that most original of plot devices, the flashback. I mean, I don't think I've posted about a film that uses a flashback for at least a day.
Anyhow, Peter is serving in Burma as a lieutenant with the US Army in World War II, not far from the front lines with the Japanese. In fact, one day Peter gets separated from the rest of his platoon and the only remnant of the platoon he can find is a mule, with both of them seemingly trapped behind enemy lines. At this point, Lt. Stirling hears a voice speaking perfect English, withough a trace of a Japanese accent. That voice, shockingly enough, comes from the mule, who tells Peter that he's named Francis (Francis' voice provided by Chill Wills). Stirling gets grazed by a Japanese bullet, and Francis, who not only talks but is very snarky, carries Francis back to the American base and safety.
During the debriefing at the infirmary, Stirling tells everybody how Francis talked to him. Naturally, nobody believes him, because who would believe in a talking mule if they didn't see it themselves? And for most of the movie Francis isn't going to bother talking to anybody but Stirling. So for a while, Stirling is put in the psych ward looked after by nurse Humpert (ZaSu Pitts). Eventually, just to get out of the psych ward, Stirling admits he must have been mistaken about the mule talking to him. He's released and given a desk job in intelligence.
But the reputation of what happened to him, and his claim that the mule talked to him, precede him, so his fellow officers in intelligence play a trick on him by sending him a not allegedly from Francis. In fact, the tables get turned as Francis has been able to gather some valuable intelligence. After all, who would expect a mule to be able to transmit intelligence. Everybody knows mules can't talk. But Francis tells Stirling the location of a Japanese observation post which he helps Stirling capture, along with two POWs. Of course, Stirling has to tell his superiors how he got that information....
Meanwhile, Maureen (Patricia Gelder) is a refugee who escaped the advancing Japanese who took her father captive and presumably have him an in internment camp of the sort Claudette Colbert was in in Three Came Home. She starts getting close to Stirling, and he even tells her about Francis, although again, Francis isn't exactly talking to anybody else. But then Tokyo Rose reveals on the radio that there's an American officer (obviously Stirling) who claims he's getting intelligence from a talking mule! How could the Japanese have figured this out?
It's easy to see why Francis was the sort of box office hit that spawned a whole series of movies. It's silly fun, but fun it most definitely is. You kind of have to feel for poor Donald O'Connor being upstaged by an animal actor, but O'Connor does a good job showing how adept he was at comedy. Francis is a movie that would work well on a double bill with something like The Incredible Mr. Limpet.
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