Cinevent Notes Past: HER PRIMITIVE MAN (1944)

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Richard M Roberts
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Cinevent Notes Past: HER PRIMITIVE MAN (1944)

Postby Richard M Roberts » Fri Mar 14, 2014 5:05 am

We've been cranking out new program notes for this years Cinevent, and we'll be posting some of those soon to whet your appetites to come out for the Fest, but here's a few more past one to start off the year, first up being this 1944 Univerasl Comedy:


HER PRIMITIVE MAN

Here’s this year’s offering for forgotten and underrated Universal Comedy with the first of Universal’s mid-1940’s films from the producing and writing team of Michael Fessier and Ernest Pagano, who had written the successful comedy FIRED WIFE ( sequel to Universal’s 1940 Screwball hit HIRED WIFE, shown at last years Cinevent) in 1943 and was rewarded with their own unit producing a series of quirky laughgetters that are sadly neglected today and in need of rediscovery.

Ernest Pagano had been a comedy writer since the Silent Days, with credits like Buster Keaton’s SPITE MARRIAGE (1929) for MGM in 1929. He was also a staff writer and gagman at Educational Pictures from the early to mid-1930’s, working frequently with his friend Roscoe Arbuckle (working under the pseudonym William Goodrich), and even writing Buster Keaton’s first two Educational comedies, THE GOLD GHOST and ALLEZ OOP in 1934. Pagano began amassing some impressive feature credits in the late 1930’s including SHALL WE DANCE and A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS with Fred Astaire, and had teamed with Michael Fessier to write two more Astaire vehicles, YOU’LL NEVER GET RICH and YOU WERE NEVER LOVLIER for Columbia in 1941-42. The comedies this team wrote and produced for Universal from 1944-47 were all interesting comedies off the beaten path, from SAN DIEGO, I LOVE YOU(1944), THAT’S THE SPIRIT and THAT NIGHT WITH YOU (both 1945), all featuring nice Buster Keaton cameos, to two rather fun Yvonne DeCarlo romps, FRONTIER GAL (1945) and SLAVE GIRL (1947). Pagano and Fessier lost their unit when Universal merged with International Pictures, and Pagano never worked in the Industry again before his untimely death in 1953, and Fessier moved on to television.

HER PRIMITIVE MAN brings back together actors Robert Paige and Louise Albritton from FIRED WIFE in this very silly tale about an armchair “adventurer” – writer Pete Matthews (Paige) whose latest book “Life and Death Among The Lupari Savages” is raking in bucks in advance sales for his Publisher Martin Osborne (Robert Benchley), though unknowingly to all, Matthews is writing the book from the barstool of an Havana Casino, cadging all of the info from world-travelled bartender Orrin Tracy (Edward Everett Horton). Wealthy Anthropologist Shelia Winthrop (Albritton) learns of Pete’s deception, and tells publisher Osborne that she plans to publically expose the book’s hoaxdom, and is going to the Lupari islands to bring back a genuine headhunter. So Matthews beats Winthrop to the islands to impersonate said headhunter and takes the promised trip to New York back with her. And this is where the usually ensuing ‘wacky things” ensue.

Fessier and Pagano stock HER PRIMITIVE MAN with a powerhouse comedy cast: both Robert Benchley AND Edward Everett Horton, as well as Walter Catlett, Ernest Truex, Helen Broderick and Nydia Westman. Keep an eye out for Irving Bacon, Tim Ryan, Florence Lake, Matt McHugh, Walter Tetley, and even Vernon Dent running down the road from Columbia to do bit parts. And Paige and Albritton are no slouch as the attractive comedy leads. Louise Albritton had become Universal’s lower-rent Rosalind Russell and did just fine in the part, just as well as she would play the eccentric gal in SAN DIEGO, I LOVE YOU the same year. An interesting actress, Albritton unfortunately had two strikes against her as a Hollywood starlet, height and intelligence, and rather then finding a niche’ playing the heroine’s wise-cracking but single best friend ala Eve Arden, Albritton bid adieu to Hollywood and her career and married CBS newsman and journalist Charles Collingswood and settled down to a happy union that lasted until her death in 1979.

Purists and other snobby-pants will look down their noses at Director Charles Lamont, a Universal Comedy Craftsman whose name does appear on a number of Abbott and Costello, Ma and Pa Kettle, and even the occasional Francis the Talking Mule picture, but then again, this is why this Author likes him, and why he had a long, successful career at Universal making hit money-makers. Born into a vaudeville and circus family, Lamont had gotten into pictures directing two-reel comedies for Grand Asher and Universal in the early teens before settling down into more than a decade of helming short comedies for Educational Pictures with the occasional freelance at Universal and Columbia after talkies came in.

When Educational closed it’s doors on their West-Coast operations in 1937, Lamont broke into directing B pictures like INTERNATIONAL CRIME (1938), one of Grand National’s SHADOW films, then found himself a new and rather lengthy berth handling many of Universal’s comedy features and musicals. Fussy Film-Freaks sneer away (it may be all your good at) at a journeyman Director like Lamont, but films like FRONTIER GAL (1945), MA AND PA KETTLE (1950), CURTAIN CALL AT CACTUS CREEK (1950), and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN (1951) were what kept Universal in business in the post-war years, and are still enjoyable and easy to take on the Late Late Show or with a Cinephile Audience today, thanks to Lamont being a solid comedy maker who knew how to make popular films and good star comedy vehicles which kept him working decades in a tough business to survive in.

Charles Lamont left Universal in 1956 and spent several years directing television shows for Walt Disney like ANNETTE and ZORRO before he retired in 1959. Yet he had another 35 years of happy retirement ahead of him before his passing away in 1995 in his late 90’s.

HER PRIMITIVE MAN is a fun bit of fluff with a fine cast of comics and a decent script having a darn good time, you’ll have one too when you see it.



RICHARD M ROBERTS

Ed Watz
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Re: Cinevent Notes Past: HER PRIMITIVE MAN (1944)

Postby Ed Watz » Wed Mar 19, 2014 4:40 pm

Excellent writeup as usual, Richard. One of my all-time favorite Robert Benchley scenes is in this film, when he creeps down the grand staircase trying to escape from the mansion he's broken into, peering around as he moves forward, looking for a possible exit. "Who are you?" the grand dame of the house asks. Benchley, wearing a tailored business suit, matter-of-factly replies, "I'm the plumber." "You don't look like a plumber," she sneers. "How do YOU know what a plumber looks like?" he answers indignantly as he makes his retreat. The film's ending is a real surprise to the audience -- the usually genial Benchley suddenly becomes violent and mistakenly punches a genuine tribal savage in the face! I never understood the one and a half star rating assigned this film in the old TV MOVIES edition, because HER PRIMITIVE MAN is truly a total delight.
"Of course he smiled -- just like you and me." -- Harold Goodwin, on Buster Keaton (1976)


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