Word: benchley
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...tone of the picture is set at the start by narrator Bob Benchley. "This, he says, "is the perfect example of how not to make a good picture." Perhaps it isn't art, but its much more worth-while than most of Hollywood's more serious efforts...
...entire operation is painless enough, now & then funny. Bing sings a few songs; Hope clowns and rolls his eyes at Dotty; the late Robert Benchley breaks in from time to time to put a gloss on the frozen custard-pie humor...
...Burrows is a wit's wit, a clown's clown. The late Robert Benchley called him "the greatest satirist" in the U.S. The men who make the public laugh-Danny Kaye, Groucho Marx, Fred Allen, Jack Benny-split their sides laughing when Abe performs. Outside a little circle of Hollywood and Manhattan partygoers, few know the 35-year-old, balding, blinking radio writer whose hobby is poking fun at Tin Pan Alley. But last week, Abe agreed that his stuff was too good to keep. He began a $3,000-a-week job writing a new CBS comedy...
...same as the play. The jokes are the same, but they have lost some of the effect that perfect timing gives to a good stage gag. The individuals are mostly up to par, with newcomer Conrad Janis filling the sergeant's shoes quite competently and with the late Bob Benchley suffering nobly as the harassed father. What is most lacking from the current version, however, is that peculiar quality of perpetual excitement and continual building-up of complicated entanglements that makes any farce a successful production...
...late Robert Benchley makes a genial appearance in the film, but unhappily his lines were provided by someone less talented than Benchley at writing a Benchley role. The Stork Club's Sherman Billingsley (played by Bill Goodwin) should be gratified by his screen portrait: he is pictured as handsome, witty, kindly, generous to a fault and extravagantly admired by all his own employes as well as by cafe society at large...