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Staff Picks: What to Watch This Month

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LGBTQIA+ Icons and Allies

Unable to secure financial backers for their new Broadway play, producers Don Avery and Geoffrey Crandall are about to abandon their endeavors when they are visited by wealthy Eileen Drake, the fiance of their leading man, John Carter. Eileen pleads with Avery and Crandall to continue their search for a backer because John refuses to marry her until he has a job. The producers try to convince Eileen to invest in their play, but she tells them that her fortune is held in trust by her reclusive aunt Hattie, who is dominated by her imperious business manager, Harvey Parker. Learning that Hattie has sequestered herself in the house for thirty years while waiting for the return of her long-lost love, Charlie Farley, the first mate on a whaling ship, Avery and Crandall decide to pose as Charlie's mates and visit Hattie. After informing Hattie of her beloved Charlie's demise, Avery and Crandall present her with Charlie's most cherished possession: a play that he wrote for her. In memoriam, Hattie asks the two to take her to a riverfront bar that she and Charlie used to frequent. There Hattie learns that Charlie's shipmates are impostors when the bartender shows her a photograph of a very alive Charlie with his arms around two women. To teach Avery and Crandall a lesson, Hattie incites a night of barroom brawling, after which the beaten producers confess their true identity and ask her for money. Hattie sends Harvey to meet with the producers, and he agrees to recommend that she finance their play if Avery and Crandall will pay him twenty percent of the proceeds. After Hattie advances the producers the first half of her payment, rehearsals begin. The production proceeds smoothly until Harvey, who is in love with Eileen, learns that she and John are engaged and demands a new leading man before delivering the final check. To placate Harvey, Crandall proposes that Avery play the lead in dress rehearsal until they receive Hattie's check, and then John will step into the role on opening night. When Avery becomes enamored by his own performance, however, he decides to continue the role. On opening night, Crandall arranges for a sandbag to drop on Avery's head, but the bag misses Avery and hits Harvey instead. Retiring to his dressing room to adjust his makeup, Avery is confronted by two robbers, who knock him unconscious. When Harvey's meek assistant Holly tells Hattie that the business manager has been swindling her, Hattie gives Eileen and John her blessing. John steps into the leading role, and as the play is about to begin, Crandall is hit by a sandbag. When the two producers finally awaken in the hospital, they rush to the theater ,where they are greeted by a sign announcing that their play is in its second successful month.

Elyse Knox, Donald MacBride, and Alan Mowbray in Footlight Fever (1941)

There's some life left in the old girl still.

Sequel to "Curtain Call" is very different in style

In the followup to a weak RKO backstage comedy (&quot;Curtain Call&quot;), Alan Mowbray and Donald MacBride reprise their roles as scheming theater producers that are desperate to raise money for their next play. They encounter old recluse Elisabeth Risdon, claiming to be old friends of the only man she ever loved who jilted her, show her a great night on the town and are overjoyed by her agreement to invest. Now all she needs is the approval of her financial manager (Bradley Page) who wants a piece of the profits, if there are any. In what was essentially a possible Wheeler and Woolsey script idea retooled for character actors Mowbray and MacBride (one of the few films where he&#39;s not some dumb slow burning cop), farce is the name of the game and there&#39;s plenty of funny people to force out some laughs. Risdon, who played the harridan wife of Leon Errol&#39;s in the &quot;Mexican Spitfire&quot; films, is a delight, an amusing turn that will remind viewers of their stern aunt getting some spring in her step after a few glasses of wine. She easily walks away with the film. Also stepping in for the fun are Elyse Knox as Risdon&#39;s pretty niece, Lee Bonnell as a young actor whom Page resents for pursuing Knox, Mantan Moreland as the elevator operator whom Mowbray and MacBride try to fleece and Chester Clute as Page&#39;s assistant clerk. It&#39;s all pretty silly and unrealistic, and the play they&#39;re putting on wouldn&#39;t sell tickets in community theater, let alone on Broadway. But rarely do you see such a large ensemble of talent which makes the mediocrity much more acceptable. After all, play acting purposely horrible performances is a talent to itself, and these funny people have plenty of talent to spare.

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Footlight Fever

This sequel to &quot;Curtain Call&quot; is a much broader comedy with Mowbray and MacBride camping it up something shocking in a silly story about impoverished theatrical producers trying to raise money for a new Broadway play from a Miss Havisham-like recluse (Risdon). The pair aren&#39;t great comic actors and it&#39;s easy to see why the partnership didn&#39;t survive this film. But Mowbray gets to perform a very long variation on the old gag in which a hammy stage actor refuses to lie down when shot. It may once have raised a laugh or two. Otherwise the direction is terribly slow for this kind of lowbrow farce. The supporting cast are nobodies.

I caught the second half of this on tv once and thought is was absolutely hilarious, the scene where a bad actor refused to die on stage had me laughing very loudly, and other scenes were amusing too. Perhaps not for everyone, but I thought it was great and would love to see it again.

User reviews

Footlight Fever

There's some life left in the old girl still.

Sequel to "Curtain Call" is very different in style

some very funny scenes

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