Word: funniest
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Harvey (by Mary Coyle Chase; produced by Brock Pemberton) is the funniest and most likable fantasy that Broadway has seen in years. Described in one sentence, this yarn about a balmy tosspot who knows an imaginary outsized rabbit named Harvey may suggest all the horrors of relentless whimsy. Distributed over three acts, Elwood P. Dowd and the hare of the dog that bit him become a delightful adventure in wackiness...
...when it is created with fingers instead of thumbs. The best of this film is Laughton's broad hamming of the hammy ghost and some friendly moments between Miss O'Brien and Mr. Young. But not all the comedy is ghostly. One of the picture's funniest scenes shows G.I.s, abashed by M.G.M.'s conception of aristocratic England, trying to be graceful with their teacups...
...himself, is just that and accordingly walks away with the show. As a onetime vaudeville headliner reduced to the want-ad columns, a sort of daftly faithful hound for the heroines, this wonderful clown does little that is new except find his long-lost son, in the picture's funniest shot. But when, leering fiercely, he sings Inka Dinka Doo, or when, in hyper-Dostoevskian mental conflict, he confides Did You Ever Have the Feelin' That You Wanted to Go, he gives pleasure of an intensity roughly equivalent to saturation bombing. Jimmy Durante remains living proof that demonic energy...
...also one of the year's top surprises. It presents Bing Crosby as a Catholic priest, and gets away with it so gracefully that Crosby, the priesthood and the audience are equal gainers. It offers, in the performance of nutcracker-faced, 56-year-old Barry Fitzgerald, the finest, funniest and most touching portrayal of old age that has yet reached the screen. In so doing, it points the way to the great films which will be possible when Hollywood becomes aware of the richness and delight of human character observed for its own sake...
...Funniest shot: a monologue by Hargrove's girl's paunchy father (Robert Benchley), who buzzes away about his experiences in World War I while baffled Private Hargrove tries to get in a word...