Word: elixirs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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There were cheers from thousands, and Orangemen toasted their Queen's coming in gallons of frothy stout, the national elixir. The Queen and husband Philip spent the night at Government House, watched the traditional lambeg drummers lambasting their three-foot drums with ferocious, stout-filled glee. Eventually, they gave Elizabeth a headache, and Sir Basil Brooke, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, popped his head outside to ask them to desist. They did, but said goodnight by playfully clouting him with their caps...
Monkey Business (20th Century-Fox) works overtime at a far-fetched plot about a laboratory chimpanzee who accidentally mixes an elixir of youth. When Research Chemist Gary Grant and his wife (Ginger Rogers) drink some of this magical potion, they promptly revert to adolescence. Gary gets himself a crew haircut, a loud sport jacket and a fire-red convertible. Ginger, turning into a giggly jitterbug, slips a live goldfish into Tycoon Charles Coburn's trousers and plants a custard pie under his posterior...
Ponderously written by Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer and I.A.L. Diamond, and noisily directed by Howard Hawks, Monkey Business has some amusing monkeyshines. But the picture's simple-minded running gag wears thin long before the elixir of youth wears out for Gary and Ginger. Also prominently on hand: Marilyn Monroe as a pneumatic private secretary to whom Boss Coburn hands a sheaf of copy with the instruction: "Find someone to type this...
...what makes "Wagonmaster" especially unfortunate is that it shows all the craftsmanship of a fine one. Ford's feel for detail and character is excellent. He creates a traveling pitchman who runs out of water in the desert, and is found dead drunk after two days of guzzling Magic Elixir to alleviate his thirst. There is a Charles Addams-type family of half-witted bandits, and a wagon train of Mormon emigrants inspired by frequent bleats on a ram's horn. But Ford fails to weld these details together with much of a plot, and relies on the second rate...