After having seen both "Hollywood Canteen" (1944) and "Stage Door Canteen" (1943), one is fairly certain of the things he is going to witness in "Thank Your Lucky Stars" (1943), aka. "the third one": filler, filler and even more filler. And while there certainly is filler in this one as well - for those of us who can manage without a tap dance number from Jack Carson and Alan Hale - there is one massive difference as well. This film is awesome.
"Thank Your Lucky Stars", directed by the capable comedy-great David Butler, sports possibly a better set of star cameos than the other two, but interestingly this is not what makes the film work. The cameos are either business as usual, encounters of the third kind, or simply something to be locked in a vault and never to be seen by anyone's eyes.
What makes this film work is Eddie Cantor. I have never seen this man in anything, and after this film I want to see everything he ever did. The story centers around two producers (Edward Everett Horton & S.Z. Sakall) who are putting on a show. They want Dinah Shore to sing in it, but as it happens Miss Shore is managed by the egoistical has-been Mr. Cantor, who then takes over the whole thing. Eddie's doing double duty in this one: there's the riotous self-parody and then a wannabe dramatic actor, who can't get a serious role because he greatly resembles the before-mentioned comedian.
The film builds up an enjoyable comedy of errors, that manages to keep a good pace whenever there's no singing. However there's quite a bit of that as well. The musical numbers in this film are mostly excuses for the cameos. Nearly everybody has to do at least one. The exception is Humphrey Bogart, who can thank his lucky stars for it. His brief scene is a comedy routine that manages to spoof his tough guy image by having him bossed around by the weakling Sakall.
Unfortunately not everybody was this lucky a star. Bette Davis does her once-in-a-lifetime stab at singing with a number titled "They're Either Too Young Or Too Old". She broke her ankle during filming, but manages to limp through it nevertheless. When it's all over and done with, the smile and the feeling of relief on her face is something that even an actress of her stature could not fake. And to her credit, she's nowhere near the worst of the lot.
Ann Sheridan has a tune called "Love isn't born (It's made)". Say what you will about Bette's ankle, but at least she didn't have to sing the line "love can not exist / if you constantly slap that wrist" while implying that American girls should instead of being picky just... let it happen. I know, crazy. And we are only getting to the good stuff. Errol Flynn sings as well, as an English barfly. It's called "That's what you Jolly-Well get". And her co-star of several classic swashbucklers, Olivia de Havilland, gets an even better one. Havilland, together with George Tobias and Ida Lupino performs a funky tune called "The Dreamer", with zany choreography. It's something you have to see with your own eyes to believe.
There's even an actually good musical number in here somewhere, it's the all-black wedding song, performed by the ever-brilliant Hattie McDaniel. There's way too many musical numbers in this, but I have to admit, in all their strangeness they're an exciting bunch. Some of them seemed to be bad almost on purpose, which actually links them to the comedy of the film.
The screenplay is by the team of Norman Panama and Melvin Frank - of later "Callaway Went Thataway" (1951) fame - and the humor relies strongly on puns and reactions. The puns, I think, are supposed to be bad. This is especially so in Cantor's case, who is such an "awful" comedian, that a doctor jumps at the chance of performing lobotomy on him. The reactions, on the other hand, are genuinely and purposefully funny. This combo of bad jokes and good reactions is present in many of their screenplays and whereas they aren't works of George Bernard Shaw or anything, it has made them stand the test of time. And Cantor is THE MAN to feast on them. While watching him in this I wanted to give the guy an Honorary Oscar. He actually got one too, a decade later.
All in all, Thank Your Lucky Stars is a very exciting ride, that could be a tighter movie if it lasted 90 minutes instead of 127, but even as it is, works fine and has the audience laughing.
"Thank Your Lucky Stars", directed by the capable comedy-great David Butler, sports possibly a better set of star cameos than the other two, but interestingly this is not what makes the film work. The cameos are either business as usual, encounters of the third kind, or simply something to be locked in a vault and never to be seen by anyone's eyes.
What makes this film work is Eddie Cantor. I have never seen this man in anything, and after this film I want to see everything he ever did. The story centers around two producers (Edward Everett Horton & S.Z. Sakall) who are putting on a show. They want Dinah Shore to sing in it, but as it happens Miss Shore is managed by the egoistical has-been Mr. Cantor, who then takes over the whole thing. Eddie's doing double duty in this one: there's the riotous self-parody and then a wannabe dramatic actor, who can't get a serious role because he greatly resembles the before-mentioned comedian.
The film builds up an enjoyable comedy of errors, that manages to keep a good pace whenever there's no singing. However there's quite a bit of that as well. The musical numbers in this film are mostly excuses for the cameos. Nearly everybody has to do at least one. The exception is Humphrey Bogart, who can thank his lucky stars for it. His brief scene is a comedy routine that manages to spoof his tough guy image by having him bossed around by the weakling Sakall.
Unfortunately not everybody was this lucky a star. Bette Davis does her once-in-a-lifetime stab at singing with a number titled "They're Either Too Young Or Too Old". She broke her ankle during filming, but manages to limp through it nevertheless. When it's all over and done with, the smile and the feeling of relief on her face is something that even an actress of her stature could not fake. And to her credit, she's nowhere near the worst of the lot.
Ann Sheridan has a tune called "Love isn't born (It's made)". Say what you will about Bette's ankle, but at least she didn't have to sing the line "love can not exist / if you constantly slap that wrist" while implying that American girls should instead of being picky just... let it happen. I know, crazy. And we are only getting to the good stuff. Errol Flynn sings as well, as an English barfly. It's called "That's what you Jolly-Well get". And her co-star of several classic swashbucklers, Olivia de Havilland, gets an even better one. Havilland, together with George Tobias and Ida Lupino performs a funky tune called "The Dreamer", with zany choreography. It's something you have to see with your own eyes to believe.
There's even an actually good musical number in here somewhere, it's the all-black wedding song, performed by the ever-brilliant Hattie McDaniel. There's way too many musical numbers in this, but I have to admit, in all their strangeness they're an exciting bunch. Some of them seemed to be bad almost on purpose, which actually links them to the comedy of the film.
The screenplay is by the team of Norman Panama and Melvin Frank - of later "Callaway Went Thataway" (1951) fame - and the humor relies strongly on puns and reactions. The puns, I think, are supposed to be bad. This is especially so in Cantor's case, who is such an "awful" comedian, that a doctor jumps at the chance of performing lobotomy on him. The reactions, on the other hand, are genuinely and purposefully funny. This combo of bad jokes and good reactions is present in many of their screenplays and whereas they aren't works of George Bernard Shaw or anything, it has made them stand the test of time. And Cantor is THE MAN to feast on them. While watching him in this I wanted to give the guy an Honorary Oscar. He actually got one too, a decade later.
All in all, Thank Your Lucky Stars is a very exciting ride, that could be a tighter movie if it lasted 90 minutes instead of 127, but even as it is, works fine and has the audience laughing.