MY FAVORITE BRUNETTE (1947)
B ob Hope's classic take on film noir casts him as would-be gumshoe Ronnie Jackson (in reality a photographer specializing in baby pictures) and allows him to pull off a devastating parody of the hard-boiled detective, neatly puncturing every tried-and-true aspect of the genre before the corpse is even cold. His entry into the world of detecting is itself an in-joke. In finest noir fashion, he tells his story while awaiting execution on death row in San Quentin. ("Gas," he complains, taking a peek at the death chamber. "Haven't even put in electricity.") Hope indulges in typically Marlovian narration style, while continually undercutting it with every thrust-" knew it was Sam McCloud coming back to his office after a busy day pinning the goods on a few assorted crooks and murderers. Sam McCloud, the coolest, toughest private eye in the business. You see, I wanted to be a detective, too. It only took brains, courage , and a gun-and I had the gun." After Hope and the audience eavesdrop on a ludicrous McCloud phone conversation ("Listen, baby, it'll take more than a couple hopped-up gunsels with itchy fingers to scare me off"), he makes his pitch for joining the agency. "I was cut out for this kind of life. All my life I've wanted to be a hard-boiled detective like Humphrey Bogart or Dick Powell-or even Alan Ladd," he pleads with McCloud, who finally turns to face us andproves to actually be Alan Ladd. Despite Hope's proof of his credentials for the job by virtue of owning a trenchcoat just like his hero's, he is rejected as an unsuitable partner. Unfortunately for everyone but the viewer, McCloud makes the mistake of leaving Hope more or less in charge of the office (to answer the telephone), so that following some byplay with bourbon and bullets (Hope handles neither very well-choking on the liquor he calls "smooth," and complaining that the bullets escaping his grasp are "too small"), he is mistaken by theatrically mysterious Dorothy Lamour as the real McCoy (or McCloud, as the case may be). On this premise, hangs the plot.
Boasting a fine trio of villains in Peter Lorre, Lon Chaney Jr. (doing a comic version of his Lennie from 1939's OF MICE AND MEN), and Charles Dingle, and kept moving at lightning speed by director Elliott Nugent, MY FAVORITE BRUNETTE scores on virtually all levels. The comic set-pieces come thick and fast and the finely tuned mixture of bragadoccio and self-effacement in Hope's deliciously sub-Chandler narration ("The house looked like something out of WUTHERING HEIGHTS-you know, the kind of joint where it looks like you can hunt quail in the hallways? I didn't know it then, but I was gonna be the quail") holds the proceedings together.
MY FAVORITE BRUNETTE is so filled with smart lines, performances, and gags that it plays beautifully. Hope's scene with Lamour in which the villains have convinced him that she is insane is as good as anything the pair ever did. ("Uh oh, her schizo's about to phrenia," worries Hope, before relieving her of a letter opener with, "You can open the mailman later.") Just as good are Hope's encounters with Chaney's quarter-wit, Willie (whom he categorizes as "Boulder dam with legs"), wherein he is outsmarted at every turn by the sheer good-natured dumb luck of his adversary. At one point, he cons Willie into bending the bars of his asylum-prison window so that he and Lamour might escape ("You're wonderful. You're solid spinach. Oh, you're great. I'll buy you a rabbit later," Hope tells him), only to have the hulking moron notice the bent bars and set them back to rights with an explanatory, "Ya' gotta be neat, you know."
As in previous Hope films, Bing Crosby makes a guest appearance, this time as a very disappointed executioner when proof of Hope's innocence arrives at the last moment. "He'll take any kind of a part," sneers Hope, finding it necessary to physically divert Lamour's gaze from the direction of the crooner!