Comedy – The Magnificent 60s

Hotel Paradiso (1966) ****

Few stars made such a deft job of switching their screen persona. If, in the 1960s (or later) you associated Alec Guinness with dramas such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) or Doctor Zhivago (1965) and were very familiar with that droll drawl of a voice, you would be astonished the discover that he could wear a comedy hat – minus the droll drawl – to similar effect. My first surprise here was that this Alec Guinness was vocally unrecognizable. Not only was he charming but had a romantic streak.

Then you’ve got Gina Lollobrigida who could also mix drama (Woman of Straw, 1964) with comedy (Come September, 1961) but who could also hold back her screen persona, limiting the zest and eliminating the coquettishness.

And for good measure, what’s director Peter Glenville doing here? Seven out of the eight movies he helmed were dramas and heavyweight ones at that in the vein of Becket (1964) and The Comedians (1967), top-heavy with stars of the caliber of Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. You wouldn’t have him down for a comedy, let alone a French farce. But Glenville had translated the 1894 Georges Feydeau farce for the London West End stage in 1956 – it also reached Broadway – and the production he directed starred Guinness (Bert Lahr on Broadway).

I’m generally immune to farce. Either the characters are idiots or the action is idiotic. Here the two main characters, Marcele (Gina Lollobrigida) and Benedict (Alec Guinness), in the same predicament, attract audience sympathy. Both are married to domineering partners and would just like a bit of fun, so ;plan to spend time in the titular hotel where rooms are rented by the hour. But they are equals, it’s not like Benedict is a fawning numbskull being run rings round by a haughty Marcele.

In the hands of a master farceur like Feydeau the plot, such as it is, works like a dream. The plot of course is to get a number of people into the same building and find reasons for them to want to avoid each other. Usually, such avoidance is triggered by sexual malfeasance.

So the last people the tentative lovers expect to run into (and have to avoid) is Marcele’s husband Henri (Robert Morley) – there on business, he’s a drain specialist – or Benedict’s friend Martin (Douglas Byng) with four daughters in tow, or, for that matter, Marcele’s forward maid Victoire (Ann Beach) there for an assignation with Henri’s nephew Maxime (Derek Fowlds), who, of course, equally fear discovery.

Adding to the ensuring chaos are an incompetent bellboy and an unwelcome police inspector (Leonard Rossiter). One of the joys of this piece is the polish of the plotting. It’s not dependent so much on the obvious avoidance techniques, but on other more tangible elements such as hot water bottles, chairs, tea, hats, and ghosts (the hotel is believed to be haunted). Many of the best laffs are based purely on character. Henri is so arrogant that, ending up in the wrong room, he assumes it’s the result of a thief that his usual items have gone missing and that the thief is so dumb that he’s left his hair on a hairbrush. There’s an in-joke in just watching the usually immoveable object that constitutes Robert Morley being forced to run at a pace.

There’s even a contemporary element – someone present commenting on proceedings – who turns out to be Georges Feydeau himself whose observations of the human frailties on show provide him with the makings of a hit play.

Stepping outside their usual screen personas, Guinness and Lollobrigida spark so well off each other it’s a surprise no one thought to team them again. Robert Morley (Topkapi, 1964) is, as always, pure comedy gold.

It’s a wonder, too, that Peter Glenville didn’t follow up with another movie comedy. There’s more inventiveness and visual dexterity here than in anything else he directed. You always had the impression in his dramas that he was desperate to “make a point” while here, relieved of such a necessity, he can indulge in frivolity. Jean-Claude Carriere (La Piscine/ The Swimming Pool, 1969) lent a hand to the screenplay.

An unexpected delight.

The World of Henry Orient (1964) ***

This is what happens when you have a Hayley Mills comedy without Hayley Mills – where she’s stuck between the mischievousness of a child and on the cusp of growing up – and a Peter Sellers comedy which doesn’t contain much Peter Sellers. And while what’s left is on the whole endearing in that innocent fashion you could still easily achieve in this Hollywood era, it still comes over, to a contemporary audience, as though there’s something missing and the usual Sellers antics are not sufficient to fill in the gaps.

For the record, Henry Orient (Peter Sellers) is a pompous self-absorbed concert pianist carrying on an affair with married woman Stella (Paula Prentiss), who’s so new to the adultery business it makes her skittish, only meeting up with her lover in Central Park in case, perchance, a suspicious husband is scoping out Orient’s apartment.

He believes a pair of pubescent teenage girls, the more outgoing Val (Tippy Walker), old enough to be seeing a psychiatrist on a daily basis, and the more reticent Gil (Merrie Spaeth), are spying on him because, well, they are, or at least they did, once, by chance when they were galloping around Central Park. So when they turn up in the audience at one of his concerts and bump into him, literally, in the street, paranoia gets the better of him.

While it’s true that Val has developed a crush on the pianist, the real extent of the girls’ growing up involves little more than romantic fantasies majoring on unlikely adventure and conversations about shaving their legs. We’re not talking about slapping on the make-up and wearing daring attire. Primarily, Orient appears as the adjunct to the lives of a pair of girls who have parental issues, Gil minus a divorced father (her fantasies mostly revolve around her dad coming back) and Val minus both parents, who though still married, have abandoned her while they travel around the world.

Most of the time we’re with the girls being kids, leaping over rocks and fire hydrants and the occasional small child on a tricycle, or duping grown-ups into thinking they have taken desperately ill in the street.

Unfortunately, all that drives the story is over-plotting. Orient and Val’s mum Isabel (Angela Lansbury), also of the adulterous persuasion, fall for each other only for the girls to uncover the affair, sending Orient fleeing the country, and triggering various kinds of parental-child reconciliation, before the girls get on with the proper business of growing up and boys and fashion.

Peter Sellers does his best, but this isn’t Pink Panther territory and he’s forgotten the rule about working with animals and children and there’s little any comedian has in his locker that can compete with cuteness. Tippy Walker made only two more movies though one was the lead in counter-culture drama Jennifer (1971). Merrie Spaeth dumped Hollywood and went into politics. Neither of the girls was a particularly good actress and the movie just relies on their personalities. You might be more inclined to wonder why Paula Prentiss (Man’s Favorite Sport, 1964) and Angela Lansbury (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) were wasted in small parts.

Possibly the most interesting name here is director George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969) making his movie debut. Written by Nunnally Johnson (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) and his daughter Nora, based on her novel.

An oddity, and harmless enough, but not one you’re going to be demanding needs reassessment.

The Ravishing Idiot / Agent 38-22-36 (1964) ****

Hadn’t been aware that Brigitte Bardot (Viva Maria!, 1966) had made a spy picture. The original English title doesn’t indicate that. Given co-star Anthony Perkins (Psycho, 1960) had previously shown no predilection for comedy and that this was shaping up to be an espionage spoof, my heart sank.

Except for Jacques Tati – and he was only welcome in the arthouse – French comedies of this period did not translate, the antics of a Bourvil or Louis De Funes limited in their attraction. Spy spoofs suffered from over-playing or gormless characters.

So it is with some astonishment that I can report this French-made English-set number is an utter delight, full of terrific sight gags, buckets of charm and a storyline so daft it turns out to be seamless. There’s not one but two ravishing idiots – if you accept how the female gaze might look upon Anthony Perkins – and several other idiots who might not fall into the ravishing department.

Harry Compton (Anthony Perkins) is so smitten with seamstress-cum-model Penelope Lightfeather (Brigitte Bardot) that he over-runs his lunch break to catch a glimpse of her in a restaurant. Consequently, he is sacked from his job at a bank. Penelope is demoted to seamstress for being too truthful when modelling a dress for wealthy client Lady Barbara Dumfrey (Denise Provence).

Meanwhile, Barbara’s husband, Sir Reginald (Andre Luguet), a first-class upper-class dolt, is being set up as bait to catch the head of the Russian spy network in London. He has been entrusted with a fake report which MI5 hopes will lead them to the top Russian spy whose code name could be Aunt Fanny.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Harry turns out to be a Russian spy. He is given the job of stealing the fake plans. After Penelope reveals she is a member of the Communist Party, he enrols her in his scheming. Unfortunately, she will have to be denounced afterwards. Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile, Barbara, believing the plans are some kind of birthday gift, has opened the safe to all her friends to show where they are hidden, not imagining that her household may contain a traitor. Indiscreet that she is, she’s even told Penelope the code to the safe.

It only remains for all the incompetents to express their idiocy in the widest possible manner. Naturally, misconceptions abound. An assassin is drugged by his elderly victim because she thinks he’s crazy. Penelope accuses the assassin, a cop, of being as useless a cop as Harry is of being a spy.

The visual gags are inspired, beginning with a credit sequence of bowler hats. The meet cute is under a table. Chaos ensues when a dog steals Penelope’s shoes. Getting a table in a restaurant is a version of musical chairs. When the door to the secret safe swings open Harry shuts it. A hovercraft version of a vacuum cleaner goes haywire. Bowties fall in ice buckets, dresses to the floor. Duffer Dumfrey leaves the spies alone in the room with the safe.

But there’s no wink to the audience. Nobody is playing it for laughs and therefore they come easily. Two twists at the end make sense of the title.

Brigitte Bardot displays a fine knack for comedy. Anthony Perkins makes the jump from awkward maladroit to charming.

Directed by Edourd Molinari (La Cage aux Folles, 1978) with a screenplay by Francois Billetdoux (La Gamberge, 1962) and Andre and Georges Tabet (Don’t Look Now..We’re Being Shot At, 1966) from the novel by Charles Exbrayat.

An effortless confection.

How to Save a Marriage…And Ruin Your Life (1968) ****

Eight years before Michelle Triola struck a legal blow for women’s rights in her ground-breaking “palimony” case against Lee Marvin, this highly under-rated comedy – with none of the highbrow or earnest pontificating usually associated with issue movies – points the world in that direction. This was high concept before the word was invented. Would have made a perfect bittersweet Doris Day-Rock Hudson concoction especially as mistaken identity is at the heart of the matter. And the final half-hour where feminist revenge kicks in achieves more in the male-comeuppance-game than either the meretricious Three in the Attic (1968) or the more high falutin’ Carnal Knowledge (1971).

On top of that it’s hilarious. It’s packed with one-liners, zingers and brilliant repartee and the second section where revenge unwinds is an absolute hoot. Given, star Dean Martin (5 Card Stud, 1968) could have worked a tad harder on his comic timing, While he leans away from the tough guy of his recent spate of westerns maybe he leans too far into his Rat Pack-style persona. But Eli Wallach (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) and Stella Stevens (Sol Madrid/ The Heroin Gang, 1968), scarcely known for their comedic chops, more than make up, with Stevens especially good at channelling her interior Doris Day when that star screwed up her eyes and started given the male what-for.

There’s a brilliant sub-plot revolving around a grave that is a delight all on its own. Screenwriter Stanley Shapiro was the genius behind Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961) and That Touch of Mink (1962) and he knew when to play it subtle, embrace slapstick or go straight for the jugular.

Call it “mistress-alimony” or “mistress pension” or just the unfairness of the male gaze when it decides that the recipient of its gaze now lacks the physical attributes which attracted the gaze in the first place. Swollen ankles, a thickening of the waist – and a decade of service as a mistress is over and the lady in question, a decade older, physical attributes diminished, comes away from the relationship with virtually nothing, certainly nothing like security or the alimony to which a divorced wife would be entitled.

How we get to this point is mistaken identity. Playboy commitment-phobe David Sloane (Dean Martin) tries to help resolve the marital problems of buddy Harry Hunter (Eli Wallach) by taking out of temptation’s way Harry’s mistress. Unfortunately he mixes up Harry’s real mistress Muriel Laszlo (Anne Jackson) with one of Harry’s very attractive employees Carol Corman (Stella Stevens), a woman of principle who refuses promotion when it means sleeping with her supervisor.

Unfortunately, Carol falls in love with David, especially after he spins her a line that he can’t marry again for fear of betraying his wife Edna, who died the day after they married. Equally unfortunately, Harry decides to make up with wife Mary (Katharine Bard) and take her on a second honeymoon. To ensure no backsliding, David helps Harry draft a nasty legal letter telling Muriel to quit the apartment.

Just about at the same time as David realizes he’s made a mistake over the mistress, Carol discovers that “Edna” is not David’s wife. Egged on by a disconsolate Muriel, who is being turfed out after years of adoring service, Carol takes revenge in hilarious fashion. She pretends to be the easily-seduced woman that David has convinced Harry she is, resulting in her pretending to sleep with David’s business partner and two of his chums, resulting in David, taking physical offence at such perceived betrayal, being jailed and locked up in a sanatorium. Then she launches a one-woman picket line outside his office, standing up for deserted mistresses everywhere.

Meanwhile, Harry’s second honeymoon lasts only a few hours and he tries to get Muriel back, whereupon the women are inspired to force him to sign a mistresses’ charter whereby they are compensated for loss of mistress-hood and heavily rewarded for remaining in the relationship.

The stars have a great time. Director Fielder Cook (Prudence and the Pill, 1968) can’t believe his luck in landing such a sassy script, co-written by Nate Monaster (That Touch of Mink).

Too funny to be tabbed a message picture but it certainly makes its points in style.

Wake Me When It’s Over (1960) ***

You could scarcely find a better example of the pleasant undemanding fare that constituted Hollywood’s bread-and-butter than this mild comedy. It takes 20 minutes to even get to first base, setting our hero on his journey to a distant land, and another 20 minutes before the narrative sets out a purpose, from which various romantic and dramatic complications can arise. It doesn’t boast any stars.

If top-billed Ernie Kovacs (North to Alaska, 1960), in his third movie (and first as the headline act) had any marquee attraction it was to a television audience following his output in various comedy shows, but those would carry no weight abroad. The second-billed Dick Shawn (A Very Special Favor, 1965) carried even less appeal. He was best known as a guest star liable to pop up on television shows. Both comics were an acquired taste, belonging to the avant-garde, so their styles were not guaranteed to necessarily go down well. Not like, for example, more established comedians such as Bob Hope or Jerry Lewis.

The public was even less familiar with female lead Margo Moore (The George Raft Story, 1961). She only made three movies in total, this being the middle one.

This probably was greenlit thanks to director Mervyn Leroy who had helmed two very successful service comedies, Mister Roberts (1955), replacing John Ford, and No Time for Sergeants (1958), both based on hit Broadway plays.

Through a bureaucratic error, unassuming Gus Brubaker (Dick Shawn) is re-drafted into the U.S. military and dispatched to a remote island near Japan where, this being in the aftermath of the Korean War, there is nothing for the soldiers to do except laze around. Capt Stark (Ernie Kovacs), the unit commander, is as intent on doing nothing as anyone else.

Brubaker hits on the idea of utilizing the natural hot springs of the area to build a hotel using materials acquired very cheaply in order to capitalize on this wonder, offering hot spa treatments to visitors and recuperating soldiers.

The soldiers, including resident medic Capt Farrington (Jack Warden), sign on, seeing it as a business opportunity, involvement in which, somehow, does not run contrary to military regulations. Just when you’re waiting for the picture to develop some snap – it’s not going to be romance between Brubaker and Ume (Nobu McCarthy), daughter of the local mayor, because he’s already happily married to Marge (Noreen Nash) – up pops Lt Nora McKay (Margo Moore), bringing a female sensibility to the project and in charge of hiring the 40 local women to staff Hotel Shima.

With Brubaker off limits, it’s up to Stark and McKay to make romantic hay, though that ultimately encounters complication. Building the hotel would be the modern equivalent of a corporate team building operation because the solders soon revert to proper military ways and bond.

But word misleadingly gets out that far from being known for its healing properties, the hotel is actually a front for sexual encounters and Brubaker is court-martialed, leading to all sorts of shenanigans. After being found guilty, he is let off the hook due to the original bureaucratic error that led him to be re-drafted in the first place.

Once it gets going – and that’s quite a long time – it turns into harmless enjoyment and the two stars have ample opportunity to show they are not run-of-the-mill comedians. There are some good visual jokes, The cans of beer Brubaker has dropped in a pool to cool explode to demonstrate the water is actually a hot spring, the MacGuffin of the piece. On finding himself on the island, Brubaker plans to immediately submit a request to leave. The filing cabinet for a simple request is half-full, the one seeking a transfer full and the one demanding he be viewed as a special case overflowing.

Charming in its own way. Didn’t turn anyone into a star but proved that Hollywood could make this kind of small picture – what we’d call a “sleeper” – with enough going on to maintain interest.

Three in the Attic (1968) *

Wish I’d never watched Two Gentlemen Sharing on Amazon Prime if this is the kind of “recommendation” its algorithms throw up. It would be easy enough to dismiss it as the kind of rubbish that American International was famed for – it turned into their biggest hit in a decade – except I’ve a sneaky feeling that it’s the kind of rubbish that could get greenlit these days and sold as a feminist revenge drama.

The fact that it is just so badly made doesn’t help even with a leavening of decent middle-range stars like Christopher Jones (Privilege, 1967) and Yvette Mimieux (Dark of the Sun / The Mercenaries, 1968). It is full of montages, jump cuts, voice overs, slow-mo and any other technical experimentation that might liven up the dross rather than going to the effort of writing scenes that explore character.

The stars might well have carried it except the plot defies belief. College lothario Paxton Quigley (Christopher Jones) has three girls on the leash – middle class Tobey (Yvette Mimieux), teacher Eulice (Judy Pace) who yearns to be a chic biker chick, and way out artist Janet (Maggie Thrett). Paxton has sex with each of them twice a week on rotation and spends his spare time boasting to his pal Jake (John Beck).

The girls find out about his triple dealing and decide to take their revenge. How? By throwing all his clothes out into the street? Smashing up his Yamaha? Mixing him up a concoction that’s going to put him in bed for a week? Taking a sledgehammer to his private parts?

Nope. They reckon the best revenge is to “give him a taste of his own medicine.” Which is to lock him up in an attic and force on him non-stop sex?

So, setting aside the element of kidnapping, coercion and female rape, wearing a guy out by subjecting him to what he loves doing seems bizarre in the extreme. This could only be the kind of notion dreamed up by a guy (step forward screenwriter Stephen Yafa, whose screenplay had won a competition). It’s like one of those old-fashioned parental discipline notions where your old man makes you smoke a cigar till you’re sick after he’s caught you taking a puff of a cigarette as a teenager.

It’s just too coarse for words. Sure, Paxton initially has commitment issues, Tobey trying to hustle him too quickly into an apartment-share.

Honestly, I’ve no idea how anybody got talked into making this. Directed by Richard Wilson (Invitation to a Gunfighter, 1964). There’s a Tarantino connection if you’re interested.

Hellish.

How To Murder Your Wife (1965) ***

Men had a hell of a time in the 1960s to judge from this riff on marital strife that starts off like Walter Mitty meets The Odd Couple. It’s one of those daft comedies that only work on their own terms – and for the most part this works very well.

Dedicated bachelor Stanley Ford (Jack Lemmon), enjoying a host of one-night stands, ensconced in almost a bromance with butler and kindred spirit, the very English Charles (Terry-Thomas), makes the mistake of getting hammered at a drunken party and ends up married to a beauty queen (Virna Lisi). Although she is gorgeous and very loving – most scenes end on a fade as she devours him in kisses – and a good cook (though a bit lax by the high housekeeping standards of Charles), Stanley resents being burdened with a wife, especially when it costs him the services of his butler.

The biggest casualty is his self-image. He has fashioned his persona after his Bash Brannigan comic strip, syndicated to hundreds of newspapers, that permitted him the fantasy of being secret agent/adventurer/detective, fighting off bad guys and rescuing damsels in distress. Marriage inflicts a devastating change in his mental state, and he transforms from hero into hen-pecked booby.

In a bid to restore his self-esteem, and provide a fictional glimpse of freedom, he plans to murder his wife, if only in the comic strip. It has been Stanley’s working practice to act out and have photographed all the elements of his stories so Charles records the whole episode, from getting advice on how to drug Mrs Ford to (using a dummy) incarcerating her in cement. Unfortunately, Mrs Ford, outraged on discovering the illustrations for this particular comic strip episode, vanishes, leaving no explanation for her disappearance, except that various people witnessed him carrying out the supposed murder. He is arrested and put on trial.

You couldn’t make this up, but strangely enough, it is all very believable. The opening section where Stanley enacts the part of his action man Bash Brannigan in “The Case of the Faberge Navel” is just a delight. When the future Mrs Ford comes to explain exactly why she came to be jumping out of a birthday cake in a bikini, it is as daft as everything else.

However, the picture’s overall theme, the war between men and women, where men feel controlled, is somewhat dated. You might expect such a war to go nuclear when Mrs Ford dares to infringe on the sanctuary of a men-only enclave. The trial scene is particularly laborious in trying to determine that men are victims of controlling women. Despite that, there are some very funny lines that hit the nail on the head – men “are always guilty about something” declares Mrs Ford’s confidante Edna (Claire Trevor) whose strategy is always to keep men off-balance.

Jack Lemmon (The Apartment, 1960) has ploughed this path before, conspirator to the illicit, although generally to be found in the loser camp rather than, as, effectively here, despite his complaints to the contrary, in the winner’s circle with an enviable lifestyle and willing girlfriends to hand. There’s a gleefulness in his performance, the little boy getting away with everything, that turns into a small boy’s sullenness when it is all apparently taken away.

Italian star Virna Lisi (Assault on a Queen, 1966), in her Hollywood debut, is a delight. Her frothy sexuality goes down a treat but she is far from a dumb blonde, learning English from television, excellent cook, and wise enough not to go down Edna’s route of dealing with men. Terry-Thomas (Bang! Bang! You’re Dead!, 1966) delivers just as interesting a confection, a touch of ruthlessness to the stiff upper lip, high chieftain of the Male Protection League, reveling in the prospect of ridding the world of insidious influences like Mrs Ford. And there’s a welcome role for Claire Trevor (Stagecoach, 1939), especially when, in a party scene, she really lets go.

The other males, ranging from dumb and dumber to dumbest, totally lacking in Jack Lemmon’s charm, perfectly illustrate the need for a woman’s firm hand, among them Eddie Mayehoff (Luv, 1967), Sidney Blackmer (A Covenant with Death, 1967) and Harold Wendell (My Blood Runs Cold, 1965).

Richard Quine (The World of Suzie Wong, 1960) directed from an original screenplay by George Axelrod (The Secret Life of an American Wife, 1968).

The Best House in London (1969) *

One of the worst – and certainly among the most repellent – films ever made. A hymn to misogyny under the guise of the not very difficult task of exposing Victorian hypocrisy, it labors under the bizarre thesis that all women want to be prostitutes. Screenwriter Denis Norden’s befuddled sense of history is awash with the same kind of contempt for audiences. Elizabeth Barrett (of Wimpole St fame) rubs shoulders with Lord Alfred Douglas (Oscar Wilde’s illicit lover) even though they lived half a century apart, the Chinese Opium Wars and The Indian Mutiny feature despite being separated by 15 years.

Sex workers had proved the basis for many good (and occasionally excellent) pictures in the 1960s ranging from Butterfield 8, Never on Sunday, Irma la Douce and Go Naked in the World at the start of the decade to Midnight Cowboy at its end, but these all featured well-rounded characters facing understandable dilemmas. But here the cynical and demeaning plot – more Carry On Up the Brothel than political satire – makes you wonder how this concept was perceived as either plausible or an acceptable subject for comedy

*The monocle joke*. *Dany Robin sports the manacles her idiotic girls were supposed to wear rather the monocles they did wear.*

Feminist philanthropist Josephine Pacefoot (Joanna Pettet) – a character based on the real-life campaigner Josephine Butler – has set up the Social Purity League to rescue fallen women. Walter Leybourne (David Hemmings) is hired as a publicist to bring the issues raised to a wider audience. When Josephine inherits the fortune of Uncle Francis (George Sanders) the pair come up against the nefarious Benjamin Oakes (also played by Hemmings), her cousin and his half-brother, who has purloined his uncle’s mansion in Belgravia as the premises for London’s first brothel – The Libertine Club. This venture is backed by the Home Secretary (John Bird) as a way of getting streetwalkers away from upmarket shopping streets where their presence discourages wealthy females. Josephine also has to deal with a caricatured “evil” Chinaman (Wolfe Morris) through her uncle’s investment in opium. There’s also for no particular reason apoplectic airship inventor Count Pandolfo (Warren Mitchell).

All the women rescued from the oldest profession by Josephine are soon recruited by Oakes and a good chunk of the middle section of the movie involves various excuses to give the viewers intimate glimpses of what goes on in the brothel, involving an abundance of nudity. Oakes also aims to seduce Josephine while the shy Walter struggles to entice her into romance.

Excepting Josephine and Oakes’ mistress Babette (Dany Robin), the women are uniformly stupid. The story begins with Oakes’ duping a woman in a hot air balloon into removing her clothes on the grounds that it was the only way to reduce height enough to land. And it does not get any better. Women supposedly forced onto the streets after bad experiences with men turn out to be the seducers. Walter has the devil’s own job getting any of the girls to agree they had been raped. Walter, hoping to sell a story to The Times, is no less crass: “I can get five columns for a good rape.” Flora (Carol Friday), rescued much to her displeasure, is “gagging” for it. And there’s just an awful scene where a young girl sings about her “pussy” which even in the 1960s surely raised adverse comment.

The humor is largely of the sniggering variety. The brothel girls wear monocles instead of manacles, the only game on display in the Card Room is strip poker, and naturally there is a peeping tom, lawyer Sylvester (Willie Rushton).

As if to display his erudition, but without raising the laughter quotient, Norden chucks in literary cameos by the score – Charles Dickens (Arnold Diamond), Alfred Lord Tennyson (Hugh Burden), the aforementioned Elizabeth Barrett (Suzanne Hunt) and Lord Alfred Douglas (George Reynolds), Sherlock Holmes (Peter Jeffrey) and Dr Watson (Thorley Walters), plus explorer David Livingstone (Neil Arden) and department store entrepreneurs Fortnum (Arthur Howard) and Mason (Clement Freud).

That the movie actually gets one star is thanks to a number of excellent visual jokes: one scene of Uncle Francis defying the mutineers by raising the Union Jack cuts to the blood-splattered flag decorating his coffin; Sylvester frustrated at the keyhole but still hearing the moans of seducer-in-chief Oakes is followed by the sight of the wannabe lover struggling to get out of his bonds, having been attacked by Chinamen.

There’s not much difference, beyond hair color, between the characters essayed by David Hemmings (Alfred the Great, 1969). Both are one-dimensional, the pop-eyed virgin astonished by the goings-on at the brothel, the suave villain who might as well be twirling his moustache for all the depth he brings to the role. Thankfully, Joanna Pettet (Blue, 1968) is at least believable though even she could not act her way out of scenes where she was suspended by the Chinaman above a vat of boiling acid.

George Sanders (Sumuru, Queen of Femina aka The Girl from Rio, 1969) has a ball as the hypocrite-in-chief who knows how to monetize vice while Dany Robin (Topaz, 1969) brings some finesse to an otherwise one-dimensional part. But everyone else is a cipher which is a shame given the talent on show – John Bird (A Dandy in Aspic, 1968), John Cleese (A Fish Called Wanda, 1988), Warren Mitchell (The Assassination Bureau, 1969), Bill Fraser (Masquerade, 1965) and Maurice Denham (Some Girls Do, 1969). Among the girls, you might spot Veronica Carlsen (Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, 1968) , Margaret Nolan (Goldfinger, 1964) and Rose Alba (Thunderball, 1965).

Director Philip Saville (Oedipus the King, 1968) should have known better and certainly made amends later in his career with among other projects BBC series Boys from the Blackstuff (1982). But Denis Norden (Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell, 1968) never wrote a more misguided piece in all his life.

For sure, a film like this is not going to do down well in these times but I was surprised how vilified it was on release, critics like Roger Ebert insulted by its endless attacks on women, the public no less hostile and it died a death at the box office.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) ***

The funniest thing that happened on the way to turning this hit Broadway musical into a Hollywood movie was that composer Stephen Sondheim (Sweeney Todd, 2007), now denoted a legend, was considered such a poor marquee attraction that the producers cut half the songs of the original production, turning the result into more of a comedy with intermittent songs rather than a full-blown musical in the Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition.

Sondheim had an unusual theatrical development, starting out purely as a writer of lyrics – for West Side Story (filmed 1961) and Gypsy (filmed in 1964). He took on the dual roles of composer and lyricist for this one, which made its Broadway debut in 1962 and ran for three years.

You wouldn’t have Zero Mostel, a year before The Producers (1967), down as much of a marquee name either – he hadn’t appeared in a movie in 15 years, and then in only a bit part. But Broadway has its own method of producing stars and he had become a stage headline act and really there were few contenders for the role of a fat middle-aged Roman hustler.

Contemporary audiences will appreciate the actor breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience, but while it was highly unusual at the time, it had the effect of putting the audience on his side. You might not associate Richard Lester (Petulia, 1968) with musicals but that would only be if you excluded A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965) from his portfolio, though admittedly those would hardly be classed as traditional song-and-dance efforts.

The picture was larded with other top comedic names, Phil Silvers of Sgt Bilko TV fame and legendary silent comic Buster Keaton. It didn’t hinder the movie’s prospects that with the phalanxes of nubile young women on show it might have been considered an audition for actresses aiming no higher than the sobriquet of Bond Babe.

What’s perhaps most unusual of all is that this is a sex farce, not a medium at which Hollywood was renowned. Screwball romantic comedy, yes, farce set in a brothel, no. Luckily, it delivers on all fronts. If you want a hint of what Sondheim could bring to the party, there are seven songs to choose from. If you reckon Zero Mostel provides a distinct brand of comedy you would be proved correct. If you were here for the cheesecake it was in abundance. And if you went looking for laffs there was no shortage, pratfalls included.

The story is slight, if complicated. Slave Pseudolus (Zero Mostel) wants his freedom, young swain Hero (Michael Crawford) wants to win the heart of Philia (Annette Andre). All sorts of obstacles get in the way. Since Philia, a virgin slave, has already been sold to a great warrior Gloriosus (Leon Greene), Pseudolus must convince him that the girl has been exposed to a deadly plague and must be hidden away. He is eventually distracted by an orgy and persuaded that the girl is dead. However, when Gloriosus determines to cut out her dead heart, she is suddenly very much alive.

In the tradition of Shakespearean comedy, there are oodles of mistaken identity and the while the narrative twists itself into various contortions to accommodate the sub-plots, naturally, it all ends happily, Philia turns out to be not a slave at all, and Pseudolus walks off with his freedom and Amazonian temptress Gymnasia (Inga Neilsen) to boot.

It’s all very good-natured fun, bordering on the licentious, but steering well clear of the meretricious and anything so off-putting as nudity or sex.

Having conquered Broadway, Zero Mostel now conquers Hollywood, doubling down on his fame next year with Mel Brook’s The Producers. Unlike The Devils (1971), any sign of campness is tamped down, helped along by serious players like Michael Hordern (Where Eagles Dare, 1968) taking their roles seriously. Phil Silvers and Buster Keaton keep the show on the road. Future British television and Broadway musical star Michael Crawford (The Jokers, 1967) shows his promise. In small parts you might spot Ingrid Pitt (Countess Dracula, 1971) and Jon Pertwee, the third Doctor Who.

I didn’t go away humming any of the songs, but they were pleasurable enough and for Sondheim lovers more than enough.

Director Richard Lester proves himself adept at this kind of comedy. Written by Melvin Frank (Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell, 1968) and Michael Pertwee (Make Mine Mink, 1960) from the Broadway production by Sondheim, Burt Shevelove (The Wrong Box, 1966) and Larry Gelbart (The Notorious Landlady, 1962) which took its impetus from the work of Roman writer Plautus.

Good fun.

Make Mine Mink (1960) ****

Jaunty little picture full of gags and visual treats pivoting on amateur crooks finding life tough in professional waters. While Terry-Thomas proves once again that he can spin any movie on its head with his own brand of upper-class buffoonery and those very distinct nasal tones, it’s very much a team effort with every one of the gang making a contribution.

The down-on-their-luck lodgers of impoverished Dame Beatrice (Athene Seyler) turn to crime after successfully returning a stolen mink. In the impenetrable logic of such tales, the quartet decide that if they can with military precision carry out a robbery reversal they would be well placed to actually carry out a robbery. Anal retentive Major Rayne (Terry-Thomas) would be a one-man League of Gentlemen except he has to rely on a motley crew of females, the luckless Dame, etiquette tutor Nanette (Hattie Jacques) and generally neurotic nincompoop Pinkie (Elspeth Duxbury). Getting very much in their way is the Dame’s maid Lily (Billie Whitelaw), an ex-jailbird, who wants nothing to do with illegitimate schemes and is romancing, to boot, Scottish cop Jim (Jack Hedley).

Nanette spends all her time puncturing the major’s pomposity, Pinkie spends all her time requiring liquid courage, and the major spends all his time happily barking orders and maintaining strict military order. Most of the time the incompetent crooks get away with their crimes because their victims are equally dense.

There’s a marvellous daftness to proceedings. Dame Beatrice, whose efforts at parking her car have resulted in continuous prangs and scrapes, is only too delighted to visit the local cop shop with the proviso that she needn’t bring along her license because she hasn’t seen it in a long time. The flat-chested Pinkie’s disguise is an inflated bosom. Trying to get rid of their ill-gotten gains to a fence sends Major into uncomfortable territory where being out of his depth is an invitation to a welter of fabulous comedy.

Naturally, they are not proper crooks since their thievery is all in the aid of charity. For a time, when Lily finds out, they are forced to give up, but then opportunity beckons.

There’s no attempt at either the satire that seemed necessary to seed into comedic ventures at the time if one were to achieve any sort of critical acclaim nor the double entendres, saucy innuendo and sex jokes that appeared to more easily to attract an audience. This is good old-fashioned comedy and I found myself laughing out loud a lot, which, to my mind, is the definition of a good comedy.

Here, the characters seem to mesh so well, and the narrative scarcely troubles the imagination that virtually everything works right off the bat, including a homage to The Third Man and those gags where bombs refuse to work. The major’s misplaced confidence, Nanette’s crunching handshake and the whimpering Pinkie all burst out of the screen. Lily is luminous most of the time except when she has to tell off the gang.

Terry-Thomas is a delight. This proved something of a breakthrough role in Hollywood terms and soon he would be tangling with Tuesday Weld in Bachelor Flat (1961) and challenging Peter Sellers as the country’s best comedic export. Hattie Jacques is relieved of the stern matron roles of the Carry On films and there’s something both impish and innocent in her head girl demeanor to the extent of still wearing her school uniform. Terrific ingénue turn from Billie Whitelaw (Twisted Nerve, 1968) and a knowing veteran’s one from Athene Seyler (I Thank a Fool, 1962) purring along in Margaret Rutherford fashion. Elspeth Duxbury, in movie debut, makes the most of a peach of a role.

Directed by Robert Asher (The Intelligence Men, 1965) from a screenplay by Michael Pertwee (Mouse on the Moon, 1963) based upon the stage play Breath of Spring by Peter Coke.

Having complained about the music in The Invite (2026), I would like to point to Philip Green’s (Masquerade, 1965) music here as exactly the kind of score that helps complement the action and establish the moiod..

Hugely enjoyable eccentricity.