A Little Hope for the Holidays

If you need a little Christmas cheer, look no further than Bob Hope starring in the 1951 film The Lemon Drop Kid . This film, not to be confused with the champion thoroughbred race horse also named The Lemon Drop Kid, is another great Hope comedy involving gambling, Santa suites, Christmas, and ends with a smile. The film has been broken into 9 to 10 minute segments, but those who are patient enough can view it here, thanks to YouTube and Google video.

The premise of the movie begins when the Lemon Drop Kid aka Sidney Melbourne (Bob Hope) comes from New York City to work the Florida racetrack. He falls in with the beautifully dumb Stella (Andrea King) and persuades her to change her bet. When the bet looses, The Kid finds out Stella is the girl of gangster Moose Moran (Fred Clark), who wants The Kid to reimburse him for the money his girl lost him at the racetrack. The Kid tries to get the money from girlfriend Brainy Baxter (Marilyn Maxwell) and then from fellow miscreant "Oxford" Charlie (Lloyd Nolan). He spies a man dresses as Santa Claus and decides collection donations as Santa is the perfect scheme. After a night in jail, he realizes he needs a backer for this scheme and puts his so-called charitable intentions towards Nellie Thursday (Jane Darwell), a woman who can't get a home because of her incarcerated husband's reputation. A bunch of fellow small time crooks get involved in The Kid's scheme to collect the money under Nellie's name and use it for himself. Of course, no one knows that The Kid is collecting for himself and this is where things get tricky. The plot ties itself up and then unravels wonderfully with just the hint of suspense that comedy needs to make it truly funny.

A little bit of trivia, this song introduced the Christmas tune "Silver Bells", which is sung by Hope and Maxell. Also, William Frawley appeared as "Gloomy" Willie Dunhill in this version and the 1934 version of The Lemon Drop Kid. The film was even included as an example in an article about the Law and Popular Culture from the University of San Francisco.

For some reviews, you can always check out this one from The New York Times or this one from eltremendo3000.com. More info can be found here thanks to cinema.theiapolis.com. And this film ranked as #12 on Dirty Harry's Place's Top 25 Christmas films. So, there you have it, a little Hope for the holidays.

Where are all the musicals?

Are musicals a dying film genre or are they just now making a come back? Sometimes it seems that in early film you couldn’t have a movie unless that movie had a song in it and movie musicals were one of the sure-fire moneymakers for the big studios. Every one of the Marx Brothers' movies have a song in as to the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope Road Movies. There are so many famous movie musicals, most of them adapted from Broadway musicals.

A very short list of my personal favorites are Singin’ in the Rain, Porgy and Bess, Carmen Jones, Guys & Dolls, The King and I, The Jazz Singer, Meet Me in St. Louis, An American in Paris, My Fair Lady, No Business Like Show Business, Anything Goes, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Gypsy, and Show Boat. The list could go on and on, but I won’t fill up an entire post with a list of great musicals. The point is that old movies are chock full of musicals or at least song. Sometimes its hokey, sometimes its too sugary sweet and upbeat, but it always adds humor to a comedy or sadness to a drama. I still tear up every time I hear the strains of “Ol’ Man River” from Show Boat.

Of course, the popularity of musicals seemed to taper off in the late Eighties, and Nineties. Sure, there were such classics as Evita and John Waters’ Cry Baby and the Original Hairspray (which I find far superior to the current version. Just saying), but musicals were nowhere near as dominate on the film screen as they have been in the past. Of course, nowadays, musicals seem to be making a comeback. We have Chicago, Moulin Rouge, The Producers, and Sweeny Todd, all movie versions of Broadway plays (or in the case of The Producers, a version of a Broadway play that is a version of a movie). Still, musicals are not as prominent in our culture sphere as they once where.

I have a lot of remaining questions about what happened to the good old-fashioned movie musical. Why is it that studios don’t seen musicals as the seat-filling blockbusters they used to? What about our culture doesn’t seem to enjoy musicals as much as we used to? Did the musicals change or did we?