It was my intention to record the 1956 Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly musical, but what I got was the 1955 low rent comedy of the same name. And I was not alone in making this mistake. This 61 minute jokeless comedy received the Academy Award nomination for best writing, motion picture story. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences actually nominated the wrong film! The writers graciously declined.
So, I watched it anyhow. A man trying to scam a boy out of his inheritance discovers a dumb guy (Huntz Hall) at a service station with a very similar name. He produces fake documents to push him as the proper heir so that he can scam him out of the fortune.
The history of The Bowery Boys is quite long and fairly complicated. They started as the Dead End Kids in a 1937 play, which led to a series of seven films. After a few iterations and imitations they eventually rebranded as The Bowery Boys, where they were featured in forty eight films over thirteen years! I’ll let that sink in. That’s more than three and a half films per year for over a decade. That sounds exhausting.
High Society is a pretty joke-free comedy. If you don’t find their gags amusing, and I didn’t, then we are looking at a laugh free zone. Other than one quick snicker at a malapropism, I just watched in silence. Skippable, forgettable, AMRU 2.5.
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