The Horn Blows at Midnight

How can any comedy with Jack Benny and a supporting cast that includes Margaret Dumont, Reginald Gardiner, John Alexander, Allyn Joslyn, Ethel Griffies, Mike Mazurki, Franklin Pangborn and Guy Kibbe be that bad???

Well, it's easy to see why this one just fell short of the mark. The script is a hodgepodge about a trumpeter who must redeem himself by returning to earth on a special mission. His girlfriend is played by the lovely Alexis Smith who shows a flair for light comedy in this caper.

Relying on a succession of sight gags to keep things moving, it's all done in brisk screwball/fantasy style under Raoul Walsh's direction. You can spot the youthful Bobby Blake in the park sequence as the boy who won't give up Benny's trumpet.

The heavenly sequences are done with a certain style that is missing in the earthbound adventures--but the uneven film is not nearly as bad as Benny claimed it to be.

In his long running radio and television show, Jack Benny often built jokes around THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT--a movie described as so awful that it put an end to his movie career. These jokes always got a laugh, but rumors of the film's failure were really only comic exaggeration; true, it had not been a major hit, but neither was it a major failure. And if Benny's film appearances were few and far between after 1945, this was more a matter of his incredibly popular radio and television series than with a lack of offers.

THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT is not a great film, but it is a very interesting one and quite often a very entertaining one. The story concerns a trumpet player (Benny) in love with a harpist (Alexis Smith)--who gets him a radio job on the "Paradise Coffee Program," which advertises a coffee that promises a gentle sleep and sweet dreams. And dream he does, but one would not call it sweet: he dreams he is an angel sent to earth to blow the trumpet that will destroy the world.

Although the script is a bit weak, it has some really great concepts. Heaven is a bureaucracy beset by an endless orchestra and a shortage of angel-power. Elevators take angels to earth, right to the lobby of a New York hotel--and tie up elevator traffic, much to the annoyance of guests. And fallen angels lie in wait to trip Ethanael up! The art direction is extremely fine, dribbling comic surrealism with tremendous flair. In perhaps the film's most memorable scene, Ethanael finds himself drowning in a gigantic cup of coffee. Paradise Coffee, no doubt! Benny, co-star Alexis Smith, and such memorable characters as Franklin Pangborn, Margaret Dumont, and Guy Kibbe perform the show with as much energy as they can muster, and at it's best the movie is hilariously over-the-top. The script lets them down once too often for comfort, but even so the whole thing makes for an entertaining show. Recommended as imaginative, often extremely clever fluff.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Jack Benny was a fabulous comedian who was very successful in radio and television, and made a few films. This one, "The Horn Blows at Midnight," was one that apparently wasn't a big hit - one hears everything from it bombed to did okay but no smash. Benny, however, made a lot of jokes about how it died at the box office.

Maybe the film works better today than it did toward the end of World War II, but it's fun to watch. Benny plays a trumpet player stuck on a harpist (Alexis Smith). She helps him get a radio job playing during the "Paradise Coffee Program." The coffee, instead of keeping you awake, however, advertises that it helps one sleep and have pleasant dreams. During a broadcast, Benny falls asleep and dreams he's an angel dispatched to earth to blow a trumpet and start the world's end. Being Jack Benny, he has a few problems.

The film has some very funny sections, including Ethanael (Benny) in a huge cup of coffee, nearly drowning. Elevators are used to transport the angels (and there's a shortage of them in heaven, by the way), and when the angels land on earth, they're in the lobby of a New York hotel.

Benny and Smith costar with Franklin Pangborn, Margaret Dumont and Guy Kibbee, all extremely talented at comedy. The script, unfortunately, doesn't support them as much as it should, so the overall effect is spotty.

Nevertheless, this is a very entertaining movie for the most part with some good ideas and good direction. If only the script had been a little stronger - it would have been a classic.

I saw this one New Year's night on TV when I was about eleven. The second time I saw it was last night when it was on cable. It was true to my memory. Jack Benny WAS stuck in a giant coffee cup and it WAS an extremely funny movie. The coffee cup gag is one of the most surreal things I've ever seen in a movie from Hollywood's golden age. Imagine a Tex Avery cartoon done in live action and you'll get an idea of the visual. Jack Benny really does look as if he's being filmed in a mechanized coffee cup/coffee pot/coffee spoon structure. It's incredible. Harold Lloyd would have been hard-pressed to match this scene. This scene itself makes this movie well worth watching. The mood of the movie is happy and bouncy as only movies made between 1945 and 1949 are. There must have been some optimism informing Hollywood's imagination as the Second World War wound down. Movies between then and the beginning of the Korean War practically burst with a sense of victory. THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT works as a testimony to a time when America felt itself riding on top of the world. There are other sight gags taking advantage of vertiginous views. People dangle from the ledge of buildings throughout. This is directed by the man who directed HIGH SIERRA, THE ROARING TWENTIES and a few other classics. The dialogue is very much like radio comedy. Jack Benny was, of course, a radio comic. The scene in the diner would have played quite well, if not even a bit better, on radio. I find it significant that a few years after this movie came out, Benny performed in a radio version of it. Others have commented on the fact that he turned this movie's relative box-office failure into a running joke which lasted the rest of his career. Benny's shtick demanded that he exaggerate negative qualities: He deliberately played violin off-key to highlight his radio persona's vanity; He pretended to feud with Fred Allen, when in reality there was no hostility between them. Both comedians boosted their ratings with their supposed feud. He was only playing his part by making people think THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT was the cinematic equivalent of his violin-playing. Not only was it up to Hollywood's standard comedic levels of that time, it surpassed them. Perhaps my familiarity with old-time radio makes me more partial to this movie than the average viewer. I am surprised, nevertheless, that many people find THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT a little pointless. The visuals are amazing, the dialogue is snappy and the music is great. You'll hear a tune which sounds a bit like the Looney Tunes theme. There's a reason for this. Carl Stalling was one of the people who worked on the music, and he worked on many Warner Brothers cartoons. If you like comedy you'll enjoy this movie.

A surreal comedy from Warner Bros., apparently made while studio heads were on vacation. How else do we explain such inspired lunacies as a hotel elevator to heaven, angels with periodic bouts of delirium tremens (likely what the writers were suffering), or a giant coffee service hanging from the side of a skyscraper! Somehow this exotica got from storyboard to screen without the usual deadening hand of studio convention. It's pretty funny too, although the big screen is not the best venue for Jack Benny, whose personal brand of humor shows best on radio or tv. Still, the laughs are there among the general weirdness, and anyone who turns down the sound of the final scene should experience a nightmare of urban existence as frightening as any from vintage film noir, with Benny literally drowning in a sea of caffeine. This is also a chance for men to scope out that heavenly body known as Alexis Smith. Her statuesque bearing was probably a little too stiff for major stardom, but no one ever looked better in a toga or the high fashions of the day. All in all, this inventive little comedy was far ahead of its time, and despite Benny's running radio gag, possesses all the underpinnings of a minor cult classic.