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Tuesday, July 2, 2019

ME AND THE COLONEL (1958)

Franz Werfel’s Odd Couple play (‘Jacobowsky and the Colonel’) about two Polish exiles trying to get out of WWII France, adapted for B’way and film by S.N. Behrman, got a big dramatic boost on stage as ‘current events’ in the 1940s. An advantage lost when this less effective film version came out over a decade after the war. Still, enough charm & irony come thru, with Danny Kaye, superb in a largely dramatic turn, as the resourceful, gentlemanly Jew trying to keep one step ahead of the Nazis, and Curd Jürgens’ Polish aristocrat, overbearing & anti-Semitic, finally finding the Colonel’s character when the film turns more serious late in the game. (His hoarse comic act in the first half holds the film down, particularly when aide de camp Akim Tamiroff is standing right next to him giving lessons in perfect comic inflection, technique & timing.) As the French mistress who loves Jürgens in spite of his stubborn, boorish ways, and who grows equally fond of Kaye as they travel across the country, Nicole Maurey is so good you wonder why Hollywood didn’t scoop her up. Director Peter Glenville, in the second of only seven films, is typically pedestrian, but at least doesn’t push the delicate play too hard. A tight budget shows in some technical work and stingy interiors (who designed that castle floor?), but the film is rather special and earns its graceful finale.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Louis Calhern must have been funnier & more subtle as the Colonel on B’way under director Elia Kazan. Tyrone Power’s gorgeous wife Annabella made her B’way debut as the girlfriend and exiled Austrian actor Oscar Karlweis, in Danny Kaye’s role, gave what Kazan called the most charming performance he had ever seen. Precisely the quality missing when Joel Grey did Jerry Herman’s flop musicalization THE GRAND TOUR in ‘78. (Both Calhern & Karlweis died early in ‘56.)

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