Last Remaining Seats: A Streetcar Named Desire

Tonight was my last night for this year's Last Remaining Seats movie series by the Los Angeles Conservancy. They're actually putting on one more film next week, the German silent film Pandora's Box at the Orpheum, but I'll be in Jersey visiting my father. We're taking a field trip to Gettysburg during the battle's anniversary (July 1-3). In fact, that'll be one of next month's blog posts.

Tonight they showed A Streetcar Named Desire at the Los Angeles Theatre, one of my favorite Broadway theaters downtown. Just look at the photos below. You'll see why. Per my custom, I got downtown early so I could have some drinks and dinner ahead of the show. Unlike past weeks, I wasn't in the mood to try a new joint, so I went to the Library Bar. Only, instead of the Library Burger, I had the Hickory Burger, which is actually very similar, only it has, you know, hickory sauce. And a different kind of cheese. And I got those peppered steak fries with the hickory dip sauce again. God....DAMN those are good! I also tried some of the other beers they have on tap. Yes I got the 1903 Prohibition Ale like I always do, but I also tried the Craftsman Hef and the Arrogant Bastard. It was too much. I wasn't exactly drunk when I stumbled out of there, or else I wouldn't've remembered much about tonight at all. But I was more buzzed than I wanted to be. No matter. Hey, in the film Blanche indulges in the sauce, doesn't she? I was just getting into the spirit of the film!

After Linda Dishman came out and did her usual thing with thanking all the sponsors, they showed a ten-minute cartoon from the early fifties called Duck Amuck. It was cute. Produced by Chuck Jones and voiced by the great Mel Blanc, it's basically a series of cleverly-drawn conflicts between Daffy Duck and the mysterious animator. The animator starts out drawing and redrawing Daffy in all these different environments. He draws Daffy with a guitar, but no sound comes out, so Daffy holds up a sign that says "Sound Please." And then the animator does things like draw Daffy in a sailor suit, but instead of putting him on a ship, which Daffy hopes for, the animator puts him on a volcanic island. Daffy promptly falls into the volcano. He's also drawn in a WWII fighter plane. The animator draws a mountain just in time for Daffy to fly into it. Don't worry! He parachutes to safety. Anyway, finally at the end Daffy demands to know who in tarnation is making his life so difficult. Who do you think it is? When the animator is revealed, it's none other than Bugs Bunny! "Ain't I a stinka?" Oh Bugs, but that's why we love you!

After that, the lights came back up, and this guy came out on stage to give a lecture. He was an older guy named Leith Adams. According to the program, he's the corporate archivist at Warner Brothers. The main point of his lecture was the long and twisty road Streetcar took to achieve true success. Although I don't know, it seems to have done just fine right out of the gate. The play on which it was based had its premier on Broadway. How many plays premier on Broadway? Not many. Tennessee Williams was in his mid thirties or so and was already a theatrical force to be reckoned with. He'd written The Glass Menagerie just a couple years before. Streetcar was an instant smash. It won the Pulitzer, played for two years, and saw simultaneous productions in places like London's West End. A movie adaptation was a no brainer.

Elia Kazan, who directed it on Broadway, also directed the movie version. How could he mess it up? Well, he didn't. The film was nominated for twelve Oscars and won four: Best Supporting Actor and Actress for Karl Malden and Kim Hunter, Best Actress for Vivien Leigh, and Best Art and Set Direction for Richard Day and George James Hopkins.

Nah, the critics were never a problem for the play or the film. It was the censors who had to make things complicated. The way Leith explained it, the first set of obstacles came when the play was still being adapted. In the original play, Blanche's late husband committed suicide after she found out he was having an affair with another guy. But that didn't fly with the Hollywood censors, so in the movie he killed himself because she just plain didn't like him. Also, the ending in the play is much more ambiguous. I won't give it away, but in the movie, it's pretty clear where Stella and Stanley are headed in their relationship.

But even with those and other story changes, the movie still wasn't safe. Whether you see the play or the film, one of the things that strikes you is what a sensual story it is. I mean come on. You've got that Southern heat permeating everything and everyone, with humidity that'll make you sweat no matter how close to the fan you get. Plus, all of the characters are at some extreme emotional state. Everyone's on edge in one form or another. So you've got all this tension, all that sweat, hot women like Stella and Blanche not wearing very much. If you're a Catholic, Streetcar is anathema. Leith talked about the Catholic Church actually banning the film categorically. Cities with majority Catholic populations wouldn't show it in their theaters. Sorry, Boston and Chicago.

Perhaps the most fascinating instance of censorship (or the futility thereof) that Leith talked about was the famous "Stella!" scene. First, he showed the scene that made it into the final film. And then he showed the original, pre-censor version. Hilarious! I mean it was basically the same. The main differences were that in the pre-censor version, they had a kind of sexy jazz music, horns with attitude. And there were a couple camera angles that showed off Stella's figure. I don't know. In this day and age, it seems like a whole lot to do about nothing. But maybe in the fifties, the Hollywood censors felt they had a job to do, and a thankless one at that, I'll be bound.

Another thing Leith talked about that had nothing to do with the censors but was still interesting was how all of the talent from the original Broadway production made it to the film version...except Jessica Tandy. She played Blanche, but in the film, of course, Blanche was played by Vivien Leigh. Now why, you may ask? I liked Jessica Tandy. Mind you, due to when I was born, I didn't discover her until eighties and nineties films like Cocoon and Driving Miss Daisy. Still, I know talent when I see it, so I wasn't surprised at all when I eventually found out she'd had a long and distinguished career. I wonder if she was bitter about not getting the film role for Blanche, especially after Vivien Leigh won her Oscar. Well, whatever. If she was as classy as she seemed, then no. But still, what a role! It wasn't exactly new to Vivien Leigh, by the way. While the Broadway production was still going in the late forties, another production of Streetcar was going strong in London's West End, with Vivien Leigh playing Blanche, directed by her husband Laurence Olivier.

While he's the corporate archivist at Warners, Leith wasn't the one who restored this film. I forget the guy's name behind this restoration, but I remember Leith saying that this guy just turned eighty-eight. Leith called him this morning and told him that the restored version was going to be shown at the Los Angeles. "Great film!" was all the guy said in response. Leith went into the various chemical compounds that this eighty-eight year old had experimented with to figure out what was best for the film's preservation.

Leith talked about how Tennessee Williams was part of a Mississippi tradition of great writers. Was there something in the water that one state could produce the likes of Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, and Harper Lee? Ooops, he sort of got it wrong with Harper. She was from Alabama, not Mississippi. You might think that's splitting hairs, but not really. Check out Mississippi's flag.

Leith also talked about how producers had package deals at that time. In this instance we'd be talking about Charles K. Feldman, who was a talent agent before a producer. Charles scored a deal with Warner Brothers for Streetcar's 1951 release. Again, the film was critic proof, but it was censored to the bejesus and didn't play nearly as far and wide as it could've. As Leith said, "Warners didn't know what to do with it." So the film was all but stillborn. It wasn't until 20th Century Fox scooped it up seven years later that it got the distribution it deserved. How weird. Nowadays if a film doesn't get much silver screen time, it'll end up on DVD soon enough and that's that.

Another fascinating thing about Leith's lecture is what he didn't say. First off, yes he did talk about Marlon Brando's acting and how his method style changed acting forever. What makes it all the more amazing is that Marlon hadn't done much of anything before this, at least in film. He was in his early twenties and was just starting out. And he flipped acting on its head forever. I saw Streetcar at the ArcLight Hollywood a few years ago as part of their AFI series. I already knew the story about Marlon. And actually it wasn't his style of acting per se, but a style advocated by Stanislavsky, to which Elia Kazan also subscribed. But Leith didn't say a peep about the much juicier story surrounding Elia Kazan.

Born in Turkey when it was still called the Ottoman Empire, Elia Kazan cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee and named names. Many innocent screenwriters and directors watched their careers crumble thanks to this guy. But then at the Oscar ceremony in 1999, when the poor guy was ninety, they decided to give him an honorary Oscar. Don't you know that was a very divisive decision. I remember watching that from my apartment at USC. They showed Ed Harris and his wife Amy Madigan not applauding. Others didn't applaud, but a bunch of people did. It was weird. Technically you're supposed to separate an artist from his art, but the Cold War is such a strong part of who we are and what our country is.

Leith never talked about Elia Kazan's conflicted legacy. He just talked about Marlon Brando reinventing acting and Elia Kazan being a storytelling master. That was kind of disappointing, I have to admit.

Last Remaining Seats: Macunaíma

I skipped the L.A. Conservancy's screening of Cabaret at the Los Angeles Theatre last week. No, I have nothing against Liza Minnelli. I had just come back from a trip to Arizona to watch my brother get his doctorate, followed by revelry and sleepless nights in the City of Lost Wages. I came back on Tuesday, and when I woke up for work on Wednesday, I knew I wouldn't have the energy to go downtown after work. I love the Last Remaining Seats series, but living as far from downtown as I do means going to these things is a whole to-do. I have to get to work early so I can leave early and get downtown on time. When the show ends, usually around eleven, the subways come every twenty minutes or so. It's pushing midnight by the time I get home. It's exhausting. It's too bad I missed Cabaret last week. First of all, I've never seen it. One reason I like these screenings is because the L.A. Conservancy usually picks a classic I've somehow managed to miss. Secondly, the Los Angeles Theatre is one of my favorites. Seriously, you've got to see it. They're showing A Streetcar Named Desire there next week, so not all is lost.

Tonight I was back to the same theater where I saw Buck Privates two weeks ago: Sid Grauman's Million Dollar. Tonight's film was thousands of miles from Buck Privates, though, both literally and figuratively. It was a Brazilian film from 1969 called Macunaíma. No, I'd never heard of it either. You've gotta give the Conservancy props for throwing in something obscure to American audiences. Cabaret was last week, Streetcar's next week. The Sting was the first film this summer. So they've got the classics covered. Why not challenge audiences a bit?

This was a co-presentation with the Latin American Cinemateca of Los Angeles (lacla.org), a summer-long festival of various Latin American films. Indeed, tonight's screening was actually part of the festival programming. That's kind of cool. That means we Conservancy folk who didn't know anything about LACLA can learn about it, while fans of the LACLA learn about the Conservancy. Both organizations are non-profit, so this kind of cooperation can only be a good thing.

As always, I got downtown early to have drinks and grab a bite. Instead of braving a new place, I decided to duck into the Library Bar. I came here a couple times last year. It's one of my faves. It's small and dark and has a nice long bar with a tap selection almost as long. The 1903 Prohibition Ale is a divine nectar, if a bit strong. Also cool was that the Library Bar now has its own food menu. It ain't Spago just exactly, but previously if you were hungry you'd have to go next door to the Wolfgang Puck Cafe and bring your food over. Or, as I did last year, you could call them on your cell from the Library Bar and they'd bring the food over. Anyway, tonight I tried the Library Burger, which wasn't very wide but made up for that with thickness. And instead of regular fries, I got the peppered steak fries with hickory dipping sauce. By the time I showed up at the Million Dollar, I was feeling buzzed, fat, and happy, and all revved up for artsy Brazilian fare.

As always, the Conservancy opened the doors at 7 p.m., and then the show started at eight. Tonight I showed up about ten minutes or so before showtime. That's too bad because according to the program, they actually had some pre-show entertainment at 7 with a DJ named Mochilla. To quote the program, Mochilla "has spent seven years forging a cultural link between Los Angeles and Brazil. Tonight we hear the sound of that transcontinental bridge!" Darn it all. From now on I should check the Conservancy site before each screening, because of course I don't get the program until I show up the night of the show. The site says DJ Mochilla "sets the mood before the screening with the sounds of samba, bossa nova, folk-psyck [huh?], batucada, and more..." Ah well. Live and learn, right?

Anyway, after Conservancy head Linda Dishman gave her little spiel to thank all the sponsors, City Councilman Jose Huizar, whom I'd seen at one or two screenings last year, came out looking as polished as always in his crisp suit. A native of East L.A. and having grown up going to movies on Broadway, Jose is basically the Conservancy's champion in the local political scene. He's all about preservation, especially the Bringing Back Broadway initiative. As with Linda Dishman, part of his point in speaking was to give thanks, only not to the corporate sponsors of tonight's screening like she did, but to all of us for being Conservancy members. It's only because of us that the Conservancy exists. And it's thanks to the Last Remaining Seats series that Conservancy membership has spiked in recent years. This movie series started in the late eighties, but it's taken time to catch on. Jose said that Bringing Back Broadway is a ten-year project. It started in 2004 and is still on track to be done by 2014, according to him. That would be kind of amazing considering that most of the twelve theaters on Broadway aren't done yet. And he said the Broadway streetcar, which I mentioned in my post on The Sting, would be finished by then too. Well okay. If he says so. That'd be pretty awesome if they could pull it off.

The main pre-show event was a Q&A hosted by an L.A.-based Brazilian radio DJ named Sergio Mielniczenko. He hosts a couple of Brazilian radio shows here in town, Global Village and Brazilian Hour (brazilianhour.org). You can tell Sergio earns a living with his voice. He's a great speaker, a natural host. He had two guests. The first was this young American guy who looked to be in his thirties or so. The program doesn't give his name. Apparently he's a scholar well versed in all things Brazil. The other guest was a seventy-five-year-old black Brazilian actor named Milton Gonçalves. Like you, I'd never heard of Milton, but apparently he's quite the legend in Brazil, kind of like their Robert Duvall or Paul Newman. He's been in the business pretty much forever. His English is terrific. I wasn't surprised to learn that he's dabbled in the occasional American film, such as Kiss of the Spider Woman, Moon Over Parador (that movie's hilarious!), Wild Orchid, and--you talk about a masterpiece--Kickboxer 3: The Art of War. In Macunaíma he plays Jigue, one of Macunaíma's brothers.

Before Sergio walked over to the chairs on the right side of the stage, he stepped up to the podium where Councilman Huizar had spoken and said a whole bunch of stuff to us in Portuguese. I don't speak a lick of that language, but plenty of other people in the audience did, as at one point they laughed at something he said, and applauded when he finished and headed over to the chairs.

As you might imagine, Sergio was far more interested in hearing from Milton than he was from the scholar guy. The latter only answered one question during the entire Q&A, but he was still informative. He talked about the political and social environment in Brazil in 1968, during the year leading up to Macunaíma's production. That is to say, the environment was pretty unstable. The military took over the Brazilian government in December of 1968. When it came to movies, they censored pretty much everything. And they certainly didn't want anything artsy fartsy like Macunaíma being made. They'd view it as subversive or something. It isn't, of course. As I'll get into in a moment, it's not the easiest film to digest, but I suppose if you're a military dictator, a movie you can't understand must be an evil movie. So today in Brazil Macunaíma is praised not only as a good film, but as a real accomplishment of getting around the military censors. The fact that they made it at all is nothing short of a miracle.

Milton's acting career started about ten years before Macunaíma, when he was in his mid twenties. That didn't stop his activism apparently. Milton related an episode in the mid sixties, when he was thirty and partook in some demonstration or other. Police came. Shots broke out. Dude was one of the ones who was shot. These activists were trying to get Brazil to be more socialist. Milton said he used to be an unabashed socialist who hated America. He hated everything about it. But with forty-five years of hindsight, he can see how wrong he was. Not only does he like our country, but he's a huge fan of Barack Obama. The U.S. is "once again showing the world how democracy is done" by electing a black man president. Milton's still working steadily in Brazil, in both movies and TV. His son Maurício has also been bitten by the acting bug. He's been acting steadily for twenty years now and is also a published writer.

Okay. Now. Let me talk about the novel on which Macunaíma is based. Entitled Macunaíma: The Hero without a Character, it was written by Mário de Andrade. The best way to put it is that Mário was the William Faulkner of Brazil. Faulkner's widely considered the best American novelist of the twentieth century. Well, that's pretty much how Mário is viewed down yonder. And he wasn't just a writer by the way. First of all, Mário was trained as a musician and, while he never made a living in an orchestra or anything, he was a noted musicologist. He also loved art history and earned a living as an art critic. And he was a photographer. Oh yeah, and he liked to write. Novels as well as poetry. His home base was São Paulo. He did for that megalopolis (it's even bigger than L.A.!) what Faulkner did for Mississippi.

Macunaíma is a modernist novel. That means it's really hard to read. Again, think Faulkner. Think The Sound and the Fury. Think James Joyce's Ulysses. It was published in 1928 when Mário was in his mid thirties. By the time he died of a heart attack in 1945, he hadn't done anything else as huge. This novel was his masterpiece. He did do lots of other things, though, as I said above. In general Mário is viewed as the godfather of São Paulo's art scene. He was the founding director of São Paulo's Department of Culture. Did I mention he was sort of a big deal down there?

The movie was directed by this guy named Joaquim Pedro de Andrade (no relation to Mário). As that young scholar said, it was made on the sly, and on the fly, and with little money. Just as Mário wrote the novel in his mid thirties, Joaquim was in his mid thirties when he directed it. He'd directed six or seven movies at this point in his career, and he'd direct another six or so before he died of lung cancer in the late eighties at the age of fifty-six.

Let me describe the movie as best I can. I don't want to give away too much, though. For one thing, that would be hard to do. Some things about this movie you really need to see to understand. For another, if I give away too much, it'll ruin the novelty of it. Novelty's not the right word. That makes it sound cheap. Let me put it this way: I don't want to ruin the feeling of what it's like to see a film that simultaneously defies every single narrative convention known to man while still holding your attention.

The title character is born a full-grown black man somewhere in the Brazilian jungle. His mom's this white woman who's obviously being played by a guy. The black guy playing Macunaíma is Grande Otelo, a very famous Brazilian comedian at the time. He was fifty-four when this film was made. And yes, he's hilarious. I mean he's this obviously middle-aged black guy all wrapped up and being spoon-fed like a baby. And he whines and so forth. Dude was obviously a comic genius.

So anyway, Macunaíma eventually turns white and heads into the modern city with his brothers, one of whom is Milton Gonçalves's character, Jigue. The guy who plays the white Macunaíma, by the way, is the same guy who played his mom at the beginning, Paulo José. In the city he meets this hot militant chick (every guy's fantasy) named Ci. They have a kid, a black kid, but both Ci and the baby blow up and die because Ci messes up with a home-made bomb. With her death comes the disappearance of her good-luck talisman, something called the muiraquitã. And therein lies our man's ultimate objective, finding that talisman.

The biggest challenge of Macunaíma is that it forces you to let go of narrative convention. To let go of space and time. Mário sure did when he wrote the novel. The protagonist starts out sometime long ago. And the next thing you know, he's in the modern city. I had mixed feelings about the movie. Yeah, I understand they were trying to adapt an artsy modernist novel, but why? Maybe it sounds blasphemous to say, but this wasn't a great movie. I'm just one critic, but still. I paid good money and went out of my way to see this on a school night, so sorry if I was expecting Citizen Kane. Maybe I'm being unfair. Like Citizen Kane, Macunaíma needs to be judged in the context in which it was produced. Now that I think about it, the fact that they whipped up this piece in a country that was being hammered into submission at the time by a theocracy that censored all movies is to be commended. Don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike the movie. I liked it. What's more, this is one of those movies that you'll like the more you see it. I suppose I'm saying they shouldn't've adapted the novel at all. Or at the very least they should've waited until Brazil was a safer place to make movies, instead of make it at a time when you had a military in charge who thought movies were evil.

I'm glad I'm not a critic. Macunaíma was beloved in Brazil. It won awards at various film festivals and so on, although it doesn't seem to have made an impression in the U.S. It wasn't nominated for Best Foreign Film. The winner of that award in '69 was Z, the French-language political thriller from Algeria, directed by Costa-Gavras.

Whatever you think of the film, you've got to give the Los Angeles Conservancy credit for teaming up with LACLA to put on something like this. That'll teach all those people who expect the Conservancy to stick with the safe classics.

Last Remaining Seats: Buck Privates

Walking back to the subway after last week's screening of The Sting, I passed a restaurant on 7th and Grand called Bottega Louie. It was nearing eleven at night and I noticed people still in there. They had a full bar and everything. So tonight after work, as I usually do on Last Remaining Seats Wednesdays, I got downtown early to grab a bite. In the spirit of trying out one of the innumerable restaurants you've got downtown, I hopped into Bottega Louie. I'd never seen a bar with Firestone Pale Ale on tap, so naturally that was my beverage of choice. Those beer glasses are huge! I'm sure it was more than a pint. Just two was all I needed to achieve bliss. As for the food, I always order pork chops if I see it on a menu, which is almost never. Rosemary potatoes on the side. It was quite a treat, a perfect pre-show meal.

Speaking of treats, that's what the L.A. Conservancy had in store for us tonight. They screened the Abbott and Costello comedy Buck Privates at the Million Dollar Theatre.

This was a treat for a few reasons. For starters, it was at the Million Dollar Theatre, one of those palatial movie theaters on Broadway. Built in 1918 by Sid Grauman for, yes, a million bucks (before he built the Chinese and Egyptian theaters over in Hollywood), it's one of the oldest of the twelve theaters on Broadway. Secondly, I'd never seen Buck Privates. I remember watching old Abbott and Costello stuff on TV as a youngster back in the eighties and being tickled to death by it. I'm trying to think... One of the movies I remember is that horror movie spoof with Wolf Man and/or Frankenstein. Anyway, Buck Privates was new to me, and that's sort of the bonus with these Conservancy screenings, is that they usually involve classics that have somehow fallen off my movie radar. The third cool thing was all the pre-show stuff they had. If you've read any of my other Last Remaining Seats posts, you'll know that there's usually a half-hour or more's worth of stuff before the movie starts. Usually it's a lecture or a Q&A or something, but tonight they pulled out all the stops with this sort of song and dance act with people decked out in the attire of the forties, when Buck Privates was made. They even had a World War II newsreel from 1941, which they showed as if it were current. You talk about getting the audience into the spirit of things! I'm not sure the Conservancy could've done a more thorough job.

Before the entertainment started, Tony Valdez from Fox-11 came out and gave a very impassioned speech about the film. For you non-L.A. folk, Tony's a general assignment reporter for L.A.'s Fox affiliate. He's in his sixties or seventies and has been a reporter his whole life. And he's an L.A. native. According to the Fox site, he went to L.A. City College and Cal State Northridge. As you might expect from a veteran news guy, Tony was a terrific speaker. He said that at this same time sixty-eight years ago, specifically June 3, 1941, Buck Privates was playing at the Cameo down the street. The Cameo's even older than the Million Dollar. It opened in 1910. In fact, it might be the oldest theater on Broadway. It hasn't been restored yet. A natural storyteller, Tony related his own personal memories of going to the movies on Broadway as a youngster, when all twelve theaters were in their prime, and a double feature cost something like a dime. You believe that? Anyway, if Buck Privates was still playing in June of '41, that meant it must've had some staying power. It opened on January 31 of that year. How often do you see that these days, a comedy still going on the big screen four or five months later? Movies come out on DVD sooner than that.

When Tony was done, this Army band from Fort MacArthur marched out onto the stage. Fort MacArthur's an old Army base in L.A. Harbor that was active from World War I until the mid seventies. Today it's a museum, and the Conservancy has been leading the charge to keep the whole complex in tip top shape. The band that came out was officially called the Fort MacArthur Officers Orchestra. They performed various numbers with a group of scantily clad babes called the Satin Dollz Pinup Dancers. They weren't that scantily clad, not by today's standards, although I'm sure it was racy sixty years ago. Nonetheless they were pretty adorable. Before the show started, a few of them were out in the lobby greeting people and handing out programs and whatnot, as were a few of the Army musicians.

The guy emceeing this whole pre-show extravaganza was named Maxwell DeMille. I'm not sure if that's his real name or what. Like Charlie Phoenix at last week's screening of The Sting, Maxwell DeMille was decked out in a suit in the style of the forties, and he spoke in that kind of clipped rapid-fire cadence that nowadays we only see in old movies. Before the band and the Satin Dollz came out, Max stood at an old fashioned mic at the front of the stage and pretended he was doing a radio broadcast. With him was one of the Satin Dollz. Together they did a sort of mock radio salute to the armed forces.

The Satin Dollz did two numbers, one toward the beginning of the pre-show, and then one more toward the end. The meat of the pre-show was a set by the Fort MacArthur boys. And then when the lights finally went down, they showed a ten-minute news spot called News of the Day Volume XIII, no. 230: Cavalcade of 1941! It's interesting to note that when Buck Privates came out, the U.S. hadn't entered World War II yet. That didn't happen until Pearl Harbor in December of that year. Nonetheless it appears our military was geared up for action well ahead of time.

I'm sure you've heard of Abbott and Costello, right? Even if you've never seen any of their movies, you probably recognize the names. Their most famous comedy routine was "Who's On First," which is one the best word games you'll ever hear. Seriously, it never gets old. And it became so legendary that Abbott and Costello are honored (not inducted, but honored) in the baseball hall of fame in Cooperstown. They're the only non-athletes there to have that distinction. "Who's On First" was one of the first things they did together when they teamed up in Jersey in 1938. It was a radio bit they did, and continued doing for years. They even performed it in person for FDR.

When they teamed up in '38, Bud Abbott, the skinny one, was already in his forties. Lou Costello was ten years his junior. Yes, they were both from Jersey, but when Universal signed them to a movie contact in 1940, they obviously had to relocate across the country. Buck Privates is their second film, but it's the one that put them on the map. They ended up doing a good three dozen films together over the next twenty years. That's almost two per year for two decades. Has anyone in the modern age kept up such a pace, let alone a comedy team? Their last film together was 1956's Dance with Me, Henry!, right after which they went their separate ways. Costello passed away from a heart attack three years later, just four days shy of his fifty-third birthday. His wife died later that same year. She was in her late forties. Their daughter also ended up dying just shy of fifty, in the late 1980s. Weird, huh? As for Abbott, he lived into his eighties.

Lou Costello has a poignant connection to Los Angeles, to East L.A. specifically, which is where he settled down. Only a couple years after Buck Privates, his infant son fell into the backyard pool and drowned just before his first birthday. Costello wasn't home at the time, but his wife was. Apparently he blamed her for the kid's death until their dying days. He never divorced her. They were strict Catholics. But the marriage was effectively in the can. Perhaps it was the heartbreak that killed him in the end. It's kind of amazing that he managed not to lose a beat after this tragedy. He'd do the "Who's On First" routine with tears in his eyes sometimes. Today East L.A. has the rec center that he built in the wake of his son's death. It's called the Costello Recreation Center and includes the Costello Pool. He wanted to make sure any and all kids had access to swimming lessons so no other parents would have to endure what he did. The rec center still stands today. It's about five miles east of downtown. In fact, just this past year the L.A. Conservancy rescued it from being demolished and replaced by condos and apartments.

I don't want to give away everything about the film itself. Actually there isn't much to give away. Like all the best comedies, the plot's pretty simple. Abbott and Costello play Slicker Smith and Herbie Brown (even the names make you laugh!). They're a couple of street peddlers who sell neckties out of a suitcase. Then the cops bust them, led by this one officer named Michael Collins (played by former Olympic wrestler Nat Pendleton). Slicker and Herbie haul ass into this movie theater...which turns out to be an Army recruitment center, a small detail they don't pick up on until they've inadvertently enlisted. The plot thickens when they get to the base and find out their drill instructor is none other than Michael Collins.

This film sort of has two parallel plot lines. The first is the funny one, with Herbie and Slicker trying to stay out of trouble. As you'd expect if you've seen Abbott and Costello before, it's Costello's Herbie who bungles everything while Abbott's Slicker tries to undo all the damage. The other plot is the more dramatic one. It has to do with this wealthy young playboy named Randolph (Lee Bowman) and his valet Bob (Alan Curtis). They're enlisting at the same theater at the same time. Only in their case, they actually mean to enlist. Randolph takes none of this seriously. He thinks he's only going through the motions and that dear old Dad will use his clout to keep Randolph from actually serving. Dad has other ideas. He thinks his boy's a sissy and thinks the Army will toughen him up. Bob's already a tough bastard and resents having to work for Randolph. The tension between Randolph and Bob heightens yet more during boot camp when it turns out that Bob's old friend Judy (Jane Frazee) is one of the camp hostesses. Randolph is immediately smitten with Judy.

Randolph eventually chickens out when the troops split up into teams for a shooting match. He decides he wants to hang out with Judy. Naturally everyone else hates him for this. So for the rest of the film Randolph has to find a way to redeem himself AND score with Judy AND earn back Bob's respect. See what I mean? Randolph is far more the protagonist of this picture than the Abbott and Costello characters.

The Andrews Sisters were terrific. I hadn't heard of them before. They were these three sisters from Minnesota who formed a song and dance act. Patty, Maxine, and Laverne Andrews were only in their early twenties when Buck Privates came out, but their fame grew afterward, throughout the forties and fifties. As with Buck Privates, they usually appeared in movies and TV shows as themselves. In Buck Privates they performed four different numbers, scattered throughout the film. Each and every time they finished, the audience in the Million Dollar applauded. Those sisters really were something. They stole all four of their scenes. Why haven't I heard of them before? Not old enough, I guess. Too bad. The Andrews Sisters are yet another example of the old saying: They don't make 'em like they used to.

Six years later, in 1947, Abbott and Costello did a sequel to Buck Privates called Buck Privates Come Home. It takes place right after the war. They come back from Europe and try to resettle into their old lives as necktie salesmen. Michael Collins goes back to being a cop. Herbie tries smuggling a French orphan into the country. Hilarity ensues. Even though he lived another twenty years after this film, this was Nat Pendleton's final film.