High Society

It's not one of the better Bowery Boys pictures -- by the mid 50s the gang seemed pretty tired. It's main interest is seeing Amanda Blake just before Gunsmoke and, hell, I'd never turn down a chance to see Leo and Huntz, even when they're not at the top of their game.

But F Gwynplaine MacIntyre has it all wrong. The writers who were nominated for High Society weren't some delusional losers who thought some way they might actually win an Oscar. They were Hollywood veterans who had been in Hollywood for a quarter-century -- Bernds in fact started as a sound engineer at Columbia who worked on Frank Capra's 30s classics. Bernds and Ullmann toiled (profitably) in the world of B comedies and short subjects, working, in tandem or alone, on such fondly remembered endeavors as the the My Little Margie TV series, many Three Stooges shorts, some Blondie and Ma & Pa Kettle movies, and films starring Elvis, Brett Halsey, Zsa Zsa Gabor,Stanley Clements, Scotty Beckett (in a couple of Gasoline Alley pictures) and Rad Fulton.

They were fully aware of their place in the industry, and when they withdrew their Oscar nomination it wasn't for any self-serving reason but to spare the Academy any embarrassment when its writers branch screwed up so royally. As they said when they did so, the nomination "was clearly a case of mistaken identity." Ironically, although the MGM musical High Society is much better than the nominated Bowery Boys picture, I definitely prefer the best Bowery Boys films (Blues Busters, Blonde Dynamite, Live Wires, Bowery Bombshell) to the Charles Walters musical with Crosby, Kelly and SInatra.