Word: wynn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Living up to the brilliant promise of its title in every respect, "The Thrill of Brazil" provides a visually and vocally irritating intermission between "Crack-Up," inexplicably billed as the second feature, and the pictures of the Army-Notre Dame game. Keenan Wynn, one of the funniest and most amiable of Hollywood's products, manages to save some scenes. But the concerted opposition of Tito Guizar, Ann Miller, and Evelyn Keyes proves too much for him, and even he is overcome by the morass of bad songs, bad production numbers, and typical South American musical plot, complete with mismated couples...
First, take a top, sure-fire star (Van Johnson). Add a pretty girl who can sing (Pat Kirkwood). Throw in a skilled comic (Keenan Wynn) and a couple of "name" orchestras (Guy Lombardo and Xavier Cugat). Never mind the plot. Van Johnson, looking winsome for the better part of two hours, is all the romance his bobby-sox worshipers really want. Wynn can handle the laughs...
...Cockeyed Miracle, Ghost Frank Morgan, 56, and his late father, thirtyish Keenan Wynn, who obviously died at an early age, wander raffishly through a romantic farce. Their problem: to straighten out a few domestic-financial tangles which were left unsolved when Mr. Morgan was struck down by a heart attack. The movie is inoffensive fooling, but talented Comics Morgan and Wynn have reason to accuse their employers of unkind and inhuman treatment...
Nobody is surprised to find Keenan Wynn amiable and funny, Lucille Ball tough and funny, and Esther Williams in a bathing suit in "Easy to Wed." Nor is it a jolt when ahs and ohs and girlish sighs accompany the first appearance of Van Johnson and reoccur at unpredictable moments throughout. The big surprise is that the story itself, far from being a B plot dressed up in technicolor, abounds in first-rate humour and develops with steady interest to the madcap climax...
Johnson, typecast as a man no woman can conceivably resist for long, isn't resisted for long by either Miss Williams or Miss Ball. He ends up married to Miss Williams, but not without a brief intermediate marriage of convenience, cooked up by Wynn, to the red-head. In one of the neatest speeches of the year, Miss Ball yells her red head off about being the goat of it all, and Wynn comes to the rescue, thus balancing off the foursome. The economic motive is present, too, in the form of a two million dollar libel suit which starts...