Word: comic
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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They heard him out. His broadcasts offered a certain comic relief from the dull BBC, and in the long run they only toughened the tough British spirit. A musical comedy was written around the Haw Haw theme and a mystery thriller was named...
...soap on the road; took a mail-order course in steam engineering; courted the belle of Springfield, Ill. ("Beautiful creature-she later married a brakeman.") He joined a street carnival as barker and sold the Perfesser's cure with a medicine show. In 1919 he became a comic-strip artist, began drawing The Bungles. By last week he was good & tired of that...
...with a musical. Chained to one set, it does not even-except except for a lively Antony Tudor ballet - rattle its chains with dancing. The show boils down, in the end, to some smart lyrics, snappy lines, Victor Moore's mis cast charm, Shirley Booth's comic poise, Annamary Dickey's singing, Viola Essen's dancing - and Sullivan's delightful but rather dry-docked score...
Besides being a brilliant comic entertainer, Kaye has considerable talent as a straight actor. Here he gets his first good chance to display this talent, playing two deep-metropolitan types. One is Buzzy Bellew, hard-glazed headliner at the Pelican Club, half insane with self-appreciation; the other is Buzzy's super-identical twin brother Edwin, a meek, bleak, gentle tome-prowler who spends most of his time at the Public Library, and adequately maps out his sensual life When he tells a pretty librarian (Virginia Mayo): "I love the smell of leather bindings...
...given to work with -a first-rate idea developed in second gear -Danny Kaye does a beautiful job. As the scholar he merely sketches charmingly, without perfecting, the humor, pathos and odd dignity the role might have ; but as the nightclub star he is magnificent. At the straight comic setpieces - the dancing and delivery of the bangtwanging Bali Boogie; the impersonation of a Russian baritone in Laocoonic struggle between his hay fever and Otchi Tchorniya; a glistening little telephonic imitation of a pet shop in full cry, including goldfish; and the hilarious opera climax - Kaye is a great but still...