Post by Doghouse6 on Apr 4, 2018 17:21:49 GMT
It happened only once, in a 1937 RKO screwball comedy musical, Hitting A New High.
Pictured above are Edward Everett Horton, Lily Pons, Eric Blore and Jack Oakie. The picture was the studio's final attempt to make a film star of opera singer Pons, and she and leading man John Howard got top billing. I selected it last night from my cable system's On Demand menu purely on the basis of Horton and Blore, whose comedic duels are familiar to viewers of Astaire/Rogers pictures and, while Blore was prominently featured, he and Horton play only one scene together.
It's instead the unexpected partnership of Horton and Oakie that really carries the film. Beyond their individual mastery of the double-take and tendencies to garrulousness, their screen personalities had little in common and their comedic styles couldn't be farther apart: Oakie, brash, fast-talking, wisecracking, back-slapping and even overbearing, but in a way that's so jovial it becomes charming; Horton, haughtily fussy, easily flustered, impatient and excitable.
The material itself is contrived and silly, but confident pros Eddie and Jack mesh so beautifully that they mine performance gold from scripted dross just from their strong but divergent personalities, and sure-footed interactions that are as smoothly executed as those of the well-oiled mechanics of teams like Abbott and Costello. It's as though they've been working together and honing their timing and harmony for years, but it's only a one-off.
Hitting A New High is not the sort of film for which its director Raoul Walsh is known, and it's anyone's guess how much he had to do with the chemistry between Horton and Oakie. Whatever the case, it provides one of the delights that can be found in even the most minor, obscure or forgotten films of the classic era: great performers who, knowing exactly what they're doing and how to do it, can step before the camera and elevate what's on the page to a level of cooperative teamwork usually found in only the most practiced of collaborations.
Pictured above are Edward Everett Horton, Lily Pons, Eric Blore and Jack Oakie. The picture was the studio's final attempt to make a film star of opera singer Pons, and she and leading man John Howard got top billing. I selected it last night from my cable system's On Demand menu purely on the basis of Horton and Blore, whose comedic duels are familiar to viewers of Astaire/Rogers pictures and, while Blore was prominently featured, he and Horton play only one scene together.
It's instead the unexpected partnership of Horton and Oakie that really carries the film. Beyond their individual mastery of the double-take and tendencies to garrulousness, their screen personalities had little in common and their comedic styles couldn't be farther apart: Oakie, brash, fast-talking, wisecracking, back-slapping and even overbearing, but in a way that's so jovial it becomes charming; Horton, haughtily fussy, easily flustered, impatient and excitable.
The material itself is contrived and silly, but confident pros Eddie and Jack mesh so beautifully that they mine performance gold from scripted dross just from their strong but divergent personalities, and sure-footed interactions that are as smoothly executed as those of the well-oiled mechanics of teams like Abbott and Costello. It's as though they've been working together and honing their timing and harmony for years, but it's only a one-off.
Hitting A New High is not the sort of film for which its director Raoul Walsh is known, and it's anyone's guess how much he had to do with the chemistry between Horton and Oakie. Whatever the case, it provides one of the delights that can be found in even the most minor, obscure or forgotten films of the classic era: great performers who, knowing exactly what they're doing and how to do it, can step before the camera and elevate what's on the page to a level of cooperative teamwork usually found in only the most practiced of collaborations.
