By 1951, the American musical theater had reached a degree of art and sophistication that were the envy of the rest of the world. Through talents like Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser, and others, musical theater had never been so diverse. From serious musical plays like South Pacific and The King and I to musical comedies like Guys and Dolls and Kiss Me Kate, the great musicals ran for years to tremendous audience response. But those masterpieces weren’t the only musical shows running. There was still a place then for the star-driven comic show, and 1951’s Top Banana was one of the shows that fit that bill. Seen today in its 1954 film incarnation, the jokes are ancient and the production obvious, and everyone is pushing too hard to be funny and make an impression. Still, despite the “photographed theater” approach to the film, the movie does allow us to step into a time capsule and be transported back to Broadway in 1954 just to see what a typical early 1950s star show looked and felt like. It’s not always pretty, but for students of musical theater, the movie is sort of invaluable.
Top Banana (MGM MOD)
Directed by Alfred E. Green
Studio: MGM/UA
Year: 1954
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Running Time: 84 minutes
Rating: NR
Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 mono English
Subtitles: none
MSRP: $ 19.98
Release Date: available now
Review Date: October 22, 2011
The Film
2.5/5
Jerry Biffle (Phil Silvers) is the top attraction on television with his variety program that leans heavily on his years spent as a baggy pants burlesque comic. But the soap company that sponsors his show decides that the program needs some romance, and Jerry is ordered to bring on a girl singer who can play his love interest. Jerry chooses department store model Sally Peters (Judy Lynn), but he doesn’t bank on his show’s leading baritone Cliff Lane (Danny Scholl) falling for Sally and she for him. Without his explicit knowledge, Jerry helps Cliff and Sally elope, an act that so outrages his sponsor that Jerry is immediately canned.
Filmed on a stage in the same style as the show was performed for not quite a year on Broadway and then as it toured the country, this is the very definition of “photographed theater,” a primitive technique that hadn’t been much seen since the earliest days of the talkies with The Hollywood Revue of 1929 where at most we get medium and long shots with almost not the hint of a close-up, and with the actors all cheating out toward the audience when they address one another, another time-honored theatrical tradition. We see footlights, spotlights turned on when actors begin to sing, and the grand drape which closes behind performers while scenery is changed during numbers. There are a couple of shots of an audience present, but there is no laughter at any of the comic mayhem or applause apart from a couple of brief moments near the end of what would have been Act I. The film has been heavily condensed from its full stage presentation. All of Rose Marie’s solos are gone (including the best number in the show, a terrific comic ballad “I Fought Every Step of the Way”) and most of the other numbers, too. There is a pleasing ballad for the lovebirds “Be My Guest,” and we’re introduced to Danny Scholl’s baritone talents with “You’re So Beautiful,” the best song in the film as released. Speaking of that, the film that we see appears to have heavy cuts throughout. Some scenes end abruptly and then start again with the star in a different outfit and with no explanation.
The film also reminds us of an era when stage musicals had separate singing and dancing ensembles. (Today's musicals employ triple threat talents who can do it all.) In fact, during “Be My Guest,” a chorus of singers wanders out onto the stage to sing backup for the two co-stars, and late in the show, an elaborate dance number seemingly set in hell leads into the big burlesque finale where singers join the dancers at the conclusion. The burlesque numbers in the show which recall a much earlier era of vaudeville are heavily drawn on to offer Phil Silvers opportunities to shine. These also enable the company to throw in a very talented acrobatic contortionist who manages to glue himself to Silvers in the elopement sequence giving it its only genuinely funny moments. The music and lyrics were written by the very talented Johnny Mercer, so their exclusion from the film is to be regretted. The show’s cast album gives a much better sense of the musical content of this show than the few oddly placed numbers in the film do.
Phil Silvers won the Best Actor Tony Award for his role in the stage version of the show, and it’s certainly an exhausting performance, allegedly based on Milton Berle who at the time was TV’s top comic. Take what he did for a half hour during his Sergeant Bilko days and magnify that by ten to get the oppressively manic style of “on” that he exhibits throughout the show (of course, this was his shtick, and few were better at it than Silvers). In the show presented here, he doesn’t sing much (nor does anyone else), but he’s in almost every scene and usually in the foreground. Rose Marie gets second billing (and second-to-last bow; yes, they do curtain calls to the title song just as in the theater), but she’s barely in the movie and with almost all of her musical moments gone, she’s a forgettable presence. Danny Scholl as Cliff Lane sings with theatrical flair (which doesn’t always play well for the camera), and Johnny Coy as the show’s lead dancer has a lovely, effortless tap solo in a tramp costume near the end of the film. It’s always great to have stage veterans like Herbie Faye, Joey Faye, and Jack Albertson on hand to feed Silvers the straight lines, and Albertson’s performance as the show’s world weary head writer is actually very good.
Video Quality
3/5
The movie has been framed at 1.33:1, but there is a great deal of headroom, and one suspects a 1.75:1 aspect ratio would have framed the show better for the TV screen. (There is so much headroom that in some long shots during the elopement sequence, one can see the boom microphone overhead.) It was also shot in 3D, and there are a few moments when books or flowers are tossed at the camera, to little effect in 2D, of course, Color is better than one might expect though consistency varies throughout, and flesh tones aren’t always natural. Sharpness isn’t bad either. But the print used for the transfer has scratches, dirt, and some reel change markers which sometimes intrude on the presentation. The film has been divided into 9 chapters.
Audio Quality
2.5/5
The Dolby Digital 2.0 mono track is decoded by Dolby Prologic into the center channel. There isn’t much high end or low end to the sound, so resonance is very flat. Still, the dialogue is always discernible, and there is a lot of it. There is hiss, sometimes to a more noticeable degree than at other times, and you hear clicks and pops and crackle from time to time as well. Obviously, for this made-on-demand disc, no clean-up was even attempted.
Special Features
0/5
There are no bonus features on this made-on-demand disc.
In Conclusion
2.5/5 (not an average)
Top Banana is a dated comic stage farce that doesn’t play well decades away from its inception, but as a souvenir of the kind of show that could run a season back in the day, it’s a rather fascinating archival artifact. Theater fans may want to try to rent the title to see what star turns on the stage looked like almost sixty years ago.
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC
