Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish listening to a home grown CD, the complete soundtrack to the motion picture known as Pepe, starring Cantinflas, Dan Dailey, Shirley Jones, and thirty-five count them thirty-five guest stars a la Around the World in Eighty Days, which also had Cantinflas. I saw it in April of 1961, when it moved from the Stanley Warner Beverly Hills roadshow engagement to continuous performances over at the 4 Star Theater. At that point, it was still uncut and still in stereophonic sound. I liked it enough to see it several times, had the soundtrack LP on Colpix. There were several sequences in the film I absolutely loved. The movie was shorn of about thirty minutes when it went into general release. I’m not sure I saw that version until much later. It was shown recently on TCM, as they’ve done several times – a scope transfer that I’ve actually had on DVD since the early 2000s, so that’s when that transfer was done. It’s brown and needs to be redone with proper color. Anyway, it’s now on Tubi with commercials, so of course I watched it last night, the shortened 157-minute version. It originally ran 195-minutes PLUS an intermission and many of the LA critics complained about the running time. About twenty years ago, a film collector I was friends with got hold of an uncut, Technicolor, stereo 35mm print. I made him run it once a year for me. The film has real issues, all of them in the horrible screenplay. Poor Dan Dailey’s character is such a jerk throughout ninety percent of the film that he’s just loathsome. His turnaround towards the end doesn’t help. He’s a bully, he’s nasty as can be to Pepe and the character Shirley Jones. The latter looks so beautiful in Pepe and she’s really good even though she has to play the same beats over and over again. She’s also quite a good dancer. In my favorite sequence in the movie, she’s working in a kind of beatnik jernt and is part of the stage show they do, which consists of Bobby Darin singing a song called That’s How it Went All Right, All Right, which is followed by a dance/ballet with Shirley Jones, Michael Callan, and Matt Mattox (he was one of the brothers in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) – that’s called The Rumble and while it has choreography by Eugene Loring, the “rumble” part between Callan and Mattox is clearly ripped off from the musical West Side Story – the film version of the latter was still a year from its release when Pepe opened.
The great thing about the number is seeing how great a Riff Michael Callan must have been on Broadway. His dancing is superb (Mattox, too) and he lights up the screen. I also love the sequence where Shirley dances to the song The Faraway Part of Town, by Andre and Dory Previn, sung by Judy Garland. Previn also wrote the Darin song and The Rumble music. The cameos are mostly fun, Cantinflas is a charmer and very funny, but again, the movie is so negative most of the time with Dailey’s character and even Edward G. Robinson as himself constantly berating Dailey. The music is fun throughout. All in all, a very weird movie with an abrupt ending, almost as if the screenwriters said, “We better just end it now.” It really is a shame about Dan Dailey, who I saw give two superb performances in two national tours at the Huntington Hartford – first The Odd Couple, where he played Oscar to Richard Benjamin’s Felix, and then another Neil Simon show, Plaza Suite with Lee Grant – as he only gets one moment to be the charmer he can be, and that’s in the Maurice Chevalier number Mimi, where he, Chevalier, and Cantinflas do the song and dance and it’s great. Otherwise, the writers fail him utterly. And yet, I still like it and wish Columbia would do a Blu-ray of the full-length version – they have all the cut footage and the later and much-missed Nick Redman kept trying to get Columbia to do it. I fear they’ll never get around to it. And the fellow who had the uncut print passed away eight years ago and heaven knows where all his stuff is now.
Otherwise, I took a Melatonin and fell asleep very quickly and slept soundly but woke up six hours later and couldn’t get back to sleep. Interestingly, there were two book auctions happening, so I followed the first of them for for four hours – it was the leftovers from Otto Penzler’s mystery collection – Otto owned The Mysterious Bookshop in New York and LA and also published books. His “A” stuff was all auctioned off in two separate auctions at Heritage Auctions back in 2019 and he made about 1.5 million bucks. Some of his leftovers did okay, but most of it was groups of books, many inscribed to him, but these all went in the early hundreds – for thirty or forty books per lot. But this was an auction with other stuff in it (over 500 lots – it went all day), so I moved to the other book auction, which began at eleven. That auction had some very nice stuff, a lot of which went so cheaply that it was shocking.
I had Pad Thai for food and that was very good as it always is from the nearby jernt I get it from. Otherwise, I didn’t do much – figured out the opening and closing number for the August Kritzerland show, had some e-mails to deal with, several telephonic conversations, and some further e-mails about a potential project that I really want to happen, so send excellent vibes and xylophones that it and several other things that are in the ether happen and soon. Fingers and other digits crossed. Later in the day, I had some blueberries. That was exciting. Then I watched Pepe and here we are.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ll continue making a show order – can’t write the commentary until I know the order. I just realized that when Janet Leigh is taking a bubble bath in Pepe and humming for almost all of it – it’s Marni Nixon clearly doing it. Anyway, I’ll eat something at some point – maybe tuna sandwiches – and then I can watch, listen, and relax.
Not sure what’s up for the weekend, but whatever it is let’s hope it’s fun.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, do whatever needs doing, continue making a show order, write commentary, eat, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are you favorite films of Miss Shirley Jones? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, always happy to watch Pepe.