Word: wynn
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Boys and Girls Together (Music by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Jack Yellen & Irving Kahal; produced by Ed Wynn). The late great Florenz Ziegfeld was not overly popular with comics. He was firm in the belief that funnymen should remain on the stage only long enough to give his girls a chance to change their clothes. In Boys and Girls Together, Ed Wynn reverses the master's dictum. From the moment he steps out of an old trunk in Act I to announce that all the actors come from show boats and hence his "cast was bred upon the waters...
...really more than one chance in 100 that he would be drafted.* Many a young man submitted good-naturedly to corner-store gibes at his certain fate. The jokes that were cracked were, more often than not, 1917 jokes, even such transmigratory Liberty Bond characters as Ed Wynn's "Weatherstrip" (so called because he kept his father out of the draft). The U. S. moved uncomplainingly on toward Registration...
Unfortunately, after the elements had been stirred and let simmer, the residuum didn't quite jell. Ernest Truex as the paterfamilias, Newton Fuller (who always wanted to live in the country) is well chosen, though his reiterated exhortation of "Just smell that air!" brings back memories of Ed Wynn's lisped plaint "I love the woods, I just love the woods." Jean Dixon as the wife is pleasant, but her change of heart just as the mortgage is going to be foreclosed--yes, there is a mortgage--seems slightly less than sincere. The various younger females, the daughter...
After all, there is no other fool such as he. Anyone else would be ashamed to admit responsibility for the inanities he concocts. Kid stuff through and through--pianos on bicycls, pretzel-shaped air rifles, and baggy pants. But funny withal, and all because Mr. Wynn thought of it and does...
There are parts that drag, but not too many, considering the fact that all musical revues are fated to bore some people some of the time. In these times of stress, too, Ed Wynn usually wanders on the stage of his friend, Mr. Shubert, and saves the act with an ice-cream oil slicker or his eyebrows. Eleanor Roosevelt is sure to like...