A quarter century before he proposed to Jack Lemmon in “Some Like It Hot” — and uttered one of the most famous lines ever, “Well, nobody’s perfect,” when Lemmon revealed he was a man in drag — a 42-year-old Joe E. Brown pops the question to 18-year-old Olivia de Havilland in her film debut, “Alibi Ike.”
De Havilland had been hired by Warner Bros. after her breakthrough performance as Hermia in Max Reinhardt’s famous Hollywood bowl production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” But before she could appear in the lavish film version — stolen, some say, by Brown’s sly bit as Flute, the bellows mender — she was assigned to appear in a more modest production opposite the athletic slapstick comic, already a veteran of the circus, vaudeville and Broadway.
“Alibi Ike” is a good introduction to Brown for those familiar with him only through “Some Like It Hot,” which he made toward the end of his career, long after a seven-year string of star vehicles at Warner Bros. that made him one of Hollywood’s top box-office attractions.
It’s the third in a trilogy of films in which Brown, an avid ballplayer who maintained his own team on the Warner lot, plays members of real-life major league teams, after “Fireman Save My Child” and “Elmer the Great.” This one is arguably the best, based on a series of short stories written in 1915 for the Saturday Evening Post by Ring Lardner and adapted for the screen by William Wister Haines (“The Virginian”).
The big-mouth comic’s a minor leaguer who becomes an ace pitcher for the Chicago Cubs — interestingly, it’s one of the first films to depict a night baseball game though the Cubs famously held out against installing lights until 1988. Among Cubs making cameo appearances are Guy Cantrell, Dick Cox, Cedric Durst, Mike Gazella, Wally Hood, Don Hurst, Smead Jolley, Lou Koupal, Bob Meusel, Wally Rehg and Jim Thorpe.
A spinner of wild yarns, Ike gets mixed up with gamblers as well as the beautiful sister-in-law (DeHavilland) of the team’s manager, played by the inimitable William Frawley of “I Love Lucy” fame. Ike’s proposal in a canoe places DeHavilland in a rare slapstick situation, but some fans of “Some Like It Hot” may be tickled that their wedding in “Alibi Ike” ends with a same-sex kiss. And this isn’t even a pre-Code movie!
“Alibi Ike” is available exclusively from the Warner Archive Collection, a custom-made DVD service that also recently released a couple of even earlier films with Brown, who initially starred in elaborate musicals for Warner Bros. that were filmed in two-color Technicolor. The two on offer, William A. Seiter’s “Going Wild” (1930) and “Sit Tight” (1931) were among a number of Warner Bros. musicals that had most of their numbers cut for U.S. release when audiences wearied of all-singing, all dancing, all-silly movies of the early talkie era.
Brown plays a reporter impersonating an aviator in the former, and sings a duet with a singer named Laura Lee. We don’t hear a note from Lawrence Gray or Walter Pidgeon, two other Warner musical stars who were soon shown the door, though Pidgeon a decade later because a top box-office attraction when teamed with Greer Garson in “Mrs. Miniver” and other dramas.
Lloyd Bacon’s “Sit Tight” (1931) gives top billing to another soon-to-depart musical performer Winnie Lightner, and casts Brown, not for the last time, as a wrestler. And features him in another same-sex kiss (at least he’s dreaming about his girlfriend at the time).
Brown said in interviews that the biggest mistake he made in his career was leaving Warner Bros. in 1937. He appeared in a series of cheaply mounted vehicles mostly produced by David L. Loew.
His more notable late appearances include “Thank Your Lucky Stars” (1944), charming and urbane as himself, entertaining servicemen; the 1951 edition of “Show Boat” (perfect as Captain Andy), a cameo in “Around the World in 80 Days” (1956) and his final film, Jacques Tourneur’s “The Comedy of Terrors” (1964) with Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone.
The Warner Archive Collection is also offering a great entree to another screen comedian, Red Skelton, whose later, sometimes maudlin work on his long-running TV series was far different than the films that made him a star earlier in his career — “The Red Skeleton Whistling Collection,” a set featuring three funny mystery-comedies shot on fairly generous budgets.
Debuting in a supporting role in “Having Wonderful Time” (a Ginger Rogers comedy available from WAC since last year), Skeleton made a couple of Vitaphone shorts before signing with MGM, which didn’t at first know what to do with him. He alternated betweed medium-budget Eleanor Powell musicals and a recuring role in the Dr. Kildare series before producer George Haight came up with bright idea of starring him in a 1941 remake of “Whistling in the Dark” (1933), which had served as a rare screen vehicle for character actor Ernest Truex, recreating his Broadway role.
Skelton was a popular radio comedian, so it’s not surprising this version seems heavily influenced by the Bob Hope old dark house comedies “The Cat and the Canary” (1939) and “The Ghost Breakers” (1940), which made Hope star. Skelton plays a radio detective called The Fox, who is unwittingly recruited into a scam to fleece widows by a pseudo-religious charlatan played by none other than the celebrated Nazi refugee Conrad Veidt (the year before “Casablanca” and his death).
Two sequels quickly followed, the atmospheric “Whistling in Dixie” (1942) — which, like its predecessor, recycled Franz Waxman’s wonderfully creepy credits theme from “The Devil Doll” (1935) and co-starred George Bancroft, once a huge star — and “Whistling in Brooklyn” (1943). Both also featured Ann Rutherford as Skeleton’s girlfriend. She was no doubt glad to get another vacation from MGM’s Andy Hardy series after appearing as De Havilland’s sister in “Gone With the Wind.”
The last entry had Red, falsely accused of being a serial murderer, posing as a baseball player in an exhibition game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Real-life members of the squad who appear in the the film include Max Macon, Alex Kampouris, Ray Hayworth, Pat Ankenman, Newt Kimball and Hal Peck Also on hand is the ubiquitous William Frawley.
The gruff Frawley was a fixture in baseball movies — among them “The Babe Ruth Story,” “Rhubarb,” “Kill the Umpire” and his last, “Safe at Home” with Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris — but in this one he surprisingly plays a police detective.
This short series, which came to an abrupt end after Skeleton scored a huge hit opposite Esther Williams in “Bathing Beauty” (1944), benefits greatly from the snappy direction of the underrated S. Sylvan Simon. Before his untimely death in 1951, Simon also helmed Red’s arguably best comedy “The Fuller Brush Man” (1948) at Columbia.