Once in a Lifetime

I am 59 years old; I have seen a lot of movies; "Once in a Lifetime" is the funniest film I have ever seen.

In the 1960s, when I was in high school in suburban Philadelphia, the local public television station broadcast this Kaufman and Hart play brought to the screen in 1932 with a brio that made it impossible to stop laughing.

The story concerns a Vaudeville troop unable to make a living because films had destroyed Vaudeville. Then, after seeing the "Jazz Singer," the troop members decide to head for Hollywood to open an elocution school for actors eager to speak acceptably for the newly-developed medium of talking pictures.

I have only seen this movie that one time, but every time I hear the word "elocution," I think of "Once in a Lifetime" and remember the train scene where a 9 year-old girl walks up and down the train reciting, "'Boots' by Rudyard Kipling…'Boots, boots, boots….'"

Normally I don't write 'mildly amusing', but this time I did because one reviewer felt it was the funniest film ever. I would beg to differ, though we all have our opinions and I am glad they loved it that much. As for me, it had a few amusing moments.

The story begins with a group of three Vaudevillians are talking about the new sensation, talking pictures. The brains of the group (Aline MacMahon) suggests they capitalize on this by heading to Hollywood and pretending to be voice coaches. Soon, they get hired by a crackpot studio head and although George (Jack Oakie) is by far the dumbest of the group, he manages to have hit after hit!

Overall, this is a mildly funny comedy about the early days of talking pictures. The latter portion with Oakie is the best and occasionally portions of it fall a bit flat...and the third in the trio is about as charismatic as a shoe lace. But, overall well worth seeing...particularly if you love old films.

Considering that it was 1932 and America was in the grip of the Great Depression, "Once in a Lifetime" just may well have been some medicine to lighten the worries of moviegoers. The then head of Universal Studios, Carl Laemmle Jr., hyped the film on that basis in a prologue that runs after the credits and before the opening scene. Laemmle says it was a daring thing to bring a hit Broadway play into a film that poked fun at Hollywood and its people so much. He said it was too funny in the eyes of the critics who thought "it would make the world laugh at us." Laemmle says, "So I decided that if I could make the world laugh in times like these, it would be a great thing to do. I now leave it for you to judge whether I have spared the movies in translating the great stage success to the screen."

Well, the U. S. box office receipts of the top 200 films in 1932 ranged from $7.8 million to $200,000, and this film didn't even make that list. So, Laemmle's hopes for lots of laughs (and a sizable profit, one can bet he was hoping for) didn't happen. This wasn't the first time, and wouldn't be the last, when a highly successful stage production bombs as a movie. And there have been some situations in which shows that were weak or mediocre on the stage, made great and successful films. In most of those situations, of both kinds, the screenplays had to be changed considerably from the stage versions.

It seems to me that there's always one thing that producers have to be especially right about. And that's audiences. There is a significant difference in audiences of Broadway shows and those who fill cinema theaters around the country. The latter includes people of all ages, all interests, all levels of education, all regions, and all income brackets. While some people of the various levels and backgrounds may attend occasional Broadway shows, the vast majority of Broadway clients are mostly affluent, white collar, college graduates, and people who work in skyscrapers. The bottom ticket price for the cheap seats of a Broadway show is at least twice the price of the average movie ticket. And better Broadway seats run, three, four and many times higher.

So, while "Once in a Lifetime" may have had the Broadway audiences laughing at the satire and farce, the movie version seems to have gone over like a lead balloon. The movie audiences didn't find the constant silliness and overly exaggerated characters, acting and situations funny. Nor is it very funny well into the 21st century, There is some witty dialog in the film, but not much. There are quite a few wisecracks, but they just don't seem funny today. And, the deliberate overacting and exaggeration seems worn out and dull in modern times.

Where Laemmle calls it poking fun at Hollywood, I think it's mostly mockery. That's a notch above, or worse than poking and jabbing. It is real ridicule. And I saw something else here that's distasteful if not downright prejudiced or insulting. That was in the character of Herman Glogauer, the head of the studio. Gregory Ratoff plays the movie mogul who speaks broken English. Many of the top studio executives of those early years were immigrants or sons of immigrants, and some spoke poor English. Other things, like the making of a star out of a girl with no talent, of staff not able to see the studio heads, and bad films getting the praise of the critics are exaggerated but not far off the mark. The trouble is, most of this acting just isn't funny in the 21st century. It's very dated to the time and place.

Most of the great comedies made during Hollywood's golden age were obviously in settings of the time. But the situations and dialog of the plots were not tied to the specific time and place. They could just as easily be in another place and time, and still be funny to audiences decades later.

I think the cast mostly did a good job with the material and plot they had. But the screenplay could have been much funnier if written subtly rather than flamboyantly. The cast earns the film five stars.

Here are the lines I think come closest to comedy.

Jerry Hyland, "Hey, May, what's a four-letter word for actor?" May Daniels, "Dope."

Mr. Walker, "We're getting out of this orange-flavored, sun-struck, flea-bitten country on the 4:30 train."

Mr. Walker, "And for six weeks I've been listening to that girl groan and grunt and yodel, and she still can't' act."

Some thoughts about this film.

Act One is Moss Hart's great autobiography. It is available in at least three current formats: hard copy, a Hollywood film version and a video of a prior Lincoln Center Presents live performance of the play recently released for limited streaming via YouTube. Act One devotes a significant amount of time to describe the Hart-Kaufman creative/collaborative process that resulted in the play version of OIAL. In that respect, it is a valuable resource to use when seriously considering the film version as well.

Aline MacMahon stars in the film in one of her great early roles. She was then 33 years old. Folks who know her work only from her many later films will be astonished by her youthful vitality, flair for comedy and attractive appearance. Ms. MacMahon was then a handsome rather than beautiful woman, but she projected an earthy sexuality that was genuinely appealing. It became even better defined one year later when she all but stole the film Gold Diggers of 1933 from the rest of a top notch cast.

Sidney Fox is hardly remembered today, if at all. But her role in OIAL captures her great petite beauty at near the peak of its appeal. How sad it is that there are so few examples of her work in film currently available for review.

Gregory Ratoff was very funny in the role of the befuddled foreign born studio executive. It is interesting to note that beginning with the first version of A Star Is Born a few years later, this type of character would generally become Americanized--thus erasing a fact from our collective memory that was part of Hollywood's early history.

The Singing in the Rain connection to OIAL has been mentioned by others. It is a very significant one. Actually, a fresh look at the OIAL film version definitely reinforces that view.

Louise Fazenda captures the Hollywood gossip reporter in one of her classic comedy roles. Too bad that like Sidney Fox, she is not well remembered today.

Satire in film was very rare during the era when OIAL was made. Jean Harlow's Bombshell, cited by a previous commentator, is of course another example of the genre. But there were few such attempts produced at that time. ' OIAL is an important film--still available on YouTube. It is also a very enjoyable one. It should be seen by a wider audience.

There ought to be a movement to bring this one back from the dead. This is a film for which the term "revival" seems to have been invented. No matter a certain staginess -- its humor and topicality, not to mention its place in history as the first collaboration between George S Kaufman and Moss Hart, make it a "must see." It's not only connected to other early Thirties films like What Price Hollywood, but also to the much adulated Singin' In the Rain. If the latter is a Fifties musical displaying the well-scrubbed brightness of that era's sensibilities, then Once In A Lifetime is its counterpoint, betraying a Depression-era, acerbic grasp of the absurdity of the movie business and of "human business" in general. It ought to be on a double bill with Harlow's Bombshell -- another clever and entertaining early 1930s view of Hollywood and the "geniuses" who ran it.