Gallardo y calavera

Round up the usual suspects. This being a Frank Sinatra comedy, there has to be a Cahn-Van Heusen song, arranged by Nelson Riddle. Dean Martin pops up in an under-rehearsed cameo and Jill St. John is Frankie's Bimbo. "It's a business like any other business," says Frank. Was he talking of manufacturing wax fruit, or cranking out cynical sex comedies?

The Baker brothers are out for fun. Alan is a thirty-nine year old playboy who, to his parents' chagrin, remains unmarried (Sinatra was in fact bewigged and fifty-one). His kid brother Buddy (Tony Bill) escapes from the stifling jewish domesticity of Yonkers and joins Alan in his Manhattan bachelor apartment. Drinks, dames and snappy clothes ensue. Because this is 1963, Frank thinks it's the height of cool to shave with an electric razor, use roll-on deodorant and furnish his kitchen in orange plastic. Impressively for 1963, he has a car phone and a remote control device to work his stereo, but were the snapbrim hat and the plaid raincoat REALLY the last word in style in the era of the Rolling Stones?

Essentially a bourgeois jewish comedy of the Neil Simon type, "Come Blow Your Horn" is a bit of froth which does not repay close analysis. There is a cute little phallic joke (the cannon in the movie playing on TV) and Frank's character almost goes somewhere with his 'oldest swinger in town' realisation, but ultimately this is a lazy, shallow little project.

Lee J. Cobb is the long-suffering jewish father, Molly Picon the depressingly stereotypical jewish mom. Hoss from TV's "Bonanza", Dan Blocker, appears briefly as the irate cuckold Eckman. Jill St. John is in simpering Marilyn Monroe mode as Peggy The Babe, not yet showing the intelligent irony on display in "Tony Rome". Tony Bill is good as Buddy, the kid brother corrupted by the philandering Alan, and Barbara Rush impresses as Connie, the good girl.

However, the film's central premise is flawed. The script does not explain (because it can't) how feckless, jobless Alan can afford swish tailoring, ski vacations in Vermont and an apartment the size of Shea Stadium. There is a lame suggestion, right at the end, that some unseen broad can be sweet-talked into donating the bachelor pad to Buddy, but it fails to convince. Rather like the film, really.

The names Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear always look good on the credits for a comedy--until you realize Lear's success was relegated strictly to the tube and Yorkin has no sense of humor. Add to the mix a script based on the play by the highly uneven Neil Simon, and you have a slick but scattershot affair. Frank Sinatra sleepwalks through role as swinging New York bachelor (now there's a stretch) who takes his gawky younger brother under his wing, much to the chagrin of their mother and father (the torturous Molly Picon and Lee J. Cobb, both giving the term 'Old World' a bad rap). Just about every one-liner falls flat, Tony Bill is hopeless in his debut as the kid brother, and Sinatra's one song (the title cut) is mediocre. Assets: Dean Martin has a cameo that's not bad, and Dan Blocker is wonderfully big and colorful as a disgruntled businessman. *1/2 from ****

"Are you married?" "No." "Then you're a bum!"

That's the famous exchange between Lee J. Cobb and Frank Sinatra in Come Blow Your Horn, a domestic comedy about moving out of the house. I'd always heard great things about this movie, but when I finally saw it, it was a bit of a letdown. I think it got talked up too much. Lee J. Cobb was a stereotypical overbearing father who shouted all of his lines. Molly Picon was extremely irritating as the long suffering mother, and her pacing was way too slow. Tony Bill's character arc wasn't sympathetic: At first he feels oppressed at home so he moves in with his playboy brother whom he idolizes. Then he turns into a playboy himself, with every flaw magnified so the audience can see it was a mistake. Jill St. John was her usual nauseating airhead persona, which left Frank Sinatra on his own to save the movie. Since his character was extremely similar to several others he'd played in the past, there wasn't much he could do with it.

Then again, if you like seeing him in semi-cad playboy roles, you might like this one. The title song is very cute, and some of the jokes are very funny. But I liked A Hole in the Head much better.

With the recent announcement that Neil Simon has died at 91, I decided to watch this-the first movie adapted from his first play. He didn't adapt it himself as he would most of his subsequent plays to film, no, Norman Lear would do that in this instance. Lear also produced with Bud Yorkin who directed. Tony Bill is the 21-year-old son of Lee J. Cobb and Molly Picon, parents who he loves but wants to now live with his older bachelor brother Frank Sinatra who's involved in three women-Jill St. John, Phyllis McGuire, and Barbara Rush. Dan Blocker, who played Hoss on the No. 1 TV show at the time "Bonanza" also appears as does a familiar singer in cameo who's a frequent co-star of Sinatra's. Besides Simon's original lines and Lear's additions, there's also a title song by James Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn-Sinatra's usual songwriters. Frank warbles it while teaching his younger brother to dress and taking him out to town in New York City. I don't know how true this was to Neil Simon's original play but I'm guessing enough of it was to seem not too different from his subsequent work. I highly laughed most of the time so on that note, I highly recommend Come Blow Your Horn. P.S. This review is indeed dedicated in memory of Mr. Simon.

This was my first Frank Sinatra movie. I have seen clips of his work, and I have enjoyed his singing for years, but this was the first time I really took a good look at his acting.

Sinatra plays Alan Baker, a crafty ladies' man who is a disappointment to his overbearing father, who is also his boss (and given Alan's work ethic, that's a good thing). His 21-year-old brother Buddy, who also works for his father and has a 'gee-whiz' quality about him, does everything he can to please his parents, but never manages to satisfy them. One day Buddy decides to move in with his brother. This does not please the father one little bit, and the mother is not happy either. Alan wants his brother to be just like him, so he has the brother 'made over' and, when he has too many girlfriends, lets Buddy pose as a Hollywood producer and take out one of the girls, who wants to be an actress. Alan still has two women to juggle, and unfortunately, one of them is married and a big client of his father's company. And her husband is Dan Blocker (who comes across, unfortunately for Alan but not for us, more as Little Joe than Hoss).

Sinatra is good, giving the impression of a much younger man than he would have been when the film was made. He doesn't seem like the Sinatra I knew at first, but later becomes more serious and more like the familiar image. He also gets to sing one song, doing a great job. The actors playing the stereotypically Jewish parents are wonderful (Religion isn't mentioned, but the image of Jewish parents is a familiar one). I haven't seen much of Molly Picon's work, but from seeing this performance and one episode of 'Gomer Pyle, USMC', I can't see anyone portraying the guilt-inducing Jewish mother any better. The actor playing the father made quite an impression as well.

This was a good movie, and though slightly off-color, nowhere near as naughty as movies being made today.