At 12:07 PM 7/29/03 -0700, you wrote:
>Chris,
>
>Re your comments below:
>
> > > [Hope's] "My Favorite Brunette" may be the
best
> > private eye parody (of "Murder My Sweet")
ever
> > filmed.
> >
> > *
> >
> > As soon as you use that word "best," you're
gonna
> > have yourself an argument.
>
>That wasn't my comment. It was Dick Lochte's. I
was
>piggy-backing off it remembering a line of
V/O
>narration I found both particularly funny,
and
>typically Hope.
>
> > For my money, I prefer the "Girl Hunt" number
in
> > "The Band Wagon," with Fred Astaire as a Mike
Hammer
> > caricature named Rod Riley and the following
lines
> > of pseudo-tough narration (written by an
uncredited
> > Alan Jay Lerner):
> >
> > "She came at me in sections. More curves than
a
> > scenic railway."
> >
> > "She was bad, she was dangerous, I wouldn't
trust
> > her any further than I could throw her -- but
-- she
> > was my kind of woman."
>
>I like it, too, and, I think Mickey Spillane did
as
>well. It always struck me as more than a
coincidence
>that his Mike Hammer "comeback" novel was entitled
THE
>GIRL HUNTERS.
>
> > And shouldn't we also mention Daffy Duck in
the
> > Robert Clampett-directed "Great Piggy Bank
Robbery"?
>
>And who can forget the V/O narration from
that
>classic? "She had guilt written all over her
face,"
>muses Daffy, as we see a close-up which shows that,
by
>God, she really does have guilt written all over
her
>face.
>
> > As long as we're talking "My Favorite
Brunette,"
> > though, it might as well be noted that the
story's
> > being told as a flashback from a jail cell
counts as
> > parody of "Postman Always Rings Twice." Its
plot is
> > kicked off by Hope's character, a baby
photographer,
> > "minding the store" for a detective played
(in
> > cameo) by Alan Ladd -- thus making it all a
reaction
> > to such Ladd vehicles as "Blue Dahlia" and
the
> > second "Glass Key." And, given that the plot
turns
> > on Hope's specialized camera with its ability
to
> > take photos through keyholes, you could easily
claim
> > that "Brunette" is a film founded upon
voyeurism ...
>
>To a lesser degree, it also recalls MURDER, MY
SWEET
>which is told as a flashback from a police
station
>where Marlowe is undergoing a grilling.
>
>Just before we're shown Alan Ladd as the
"real"
>detective, Hope tells Ladd's character that he
wants
>to be a hard-boiled private eye, "like Humphrey
Bogart
>and Dick Powell. And Alan Ladd."
From a life-long Bob Hope fan, this is a GREAT
conversation, guys. I have
"My Favorite Brunette on DVD, and am going to watch it right
now. I've never seen "They've Got me Covered" or "The Great
Lover" but thought "My Favorite Spy" was terrific. I'm going
to look for those other two...
All the Best,
Brian
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 03 Aug 2003 EDT