Double Double Dynamite

Sometimes, a couple of the films you chose at random turn out to have similar themes, plots or characters, and - Ta Da! - you have an impromptu film festival. This week, we had a Schnooks Who Won't Marry Their Girlfriends Because They Don't Have Enough Money and When They Get a Lot of Money, Comedy Ensues film festival.

First up, Double Dynamite (1950), starring, get ready, Frank Sinatra and Groucho Marx, with Jane Russell. Sinatra is a humble schnook who works in a bank and doesn't earn enough to marry Russell. When he saves a bookie from a beating, the bookie sets him up with a good thing, and he wins $60,000. But when he gets back to the bank, he finds that $75,000 has been embezzled. So he takes the problem to Groucho, a waiter friend and general momzer, who takes the whole thing off his hands.

Groucho is great in this, in my opinion, just having fun. Sinatra isn't bad either. A lot of people don't see him in the schnook role (see On the Town or Anchors Aweigh), but I think it's kind of cute. He may be more convincing as a heel, but I don't have to like it.

Jane Russell isn't too bad either. She isn't very glamorous looking, with a heavy jaw and somewhat prominent eyes. Her other prominent assets, the double dynamite of the title, she keeps well covered. Her voice has a kind of Midwest whine - it's easy to see her as a smalltown girl in the big city. Fortunately, she only sings half a song.

Sinatra sings the other half, and has a duet with Groucho. Both are completely forgettable - even Sammy Kahn has off days.

The other movie I picked up at the local library, just because it was an old movie that I hadn't seen: Preston Sturges' Christmas in July (1940). In this one, Dick Powell plays the poor but honest clerk who won't marry until he wins a $25,000 coffee slogan contest and can afford it. His co-workers trick him into thinking that he has won, and merriment ensues. The main idea here is that Powell just needs the affirmation that winning gives him. As a contest winner, he gets open credit, a better job, a raise, anything. But sooner or later, he has to find out.

Because this is Preston Sturges, we get a lot of great character actors, doing capitalists and executives or Irish or Jewish tenement dwellers. We also get some speeches about giving the common man a chance - some gooey, some pretty wise. The humor is refreshingly off-kilter too. For example, Powell's prize-winning slogan is "If you can't sleep at night/It's not the coffee/It's the bunk". People just don't know how to take this.

The humor in Double Dynamite is a bit more predictable, even Groucho's. But both movies have the girlfriends give the same speech about two living as cheaply as one, and how much did our parents earn when they got married.

Two random movies about a couple who can't get married until they have enough money and what happens when they get a lot. What are the odds?