Television Review: LOVE THAT BOB: "Bob Retrenches" (1958)

LOVE THAT BOB a.k.a. THE BOB CUMMINGS SHOW: "Bob Retrenches" (1958 Laurel-McCadden Productions/NBC) Original Air Date: April 8, 1958.  Starring Bob Cummings as Bob Collins, Rosemary deCamp as Margaret MacDonald, Ann B. Davis as Schultzy, Dwayne Hickman as Chuck MacDonald, Charles Lane as S. J. Jollison, Rose Marie as Bertha, Pattie Chapman as Gertrude, Dorothy Johnson as The Model.  Written by Paul Henning, Shirl Gordon and Dick Wesson.  Directed by Bob Cummings.


Series overview for LOVE THAT BOB a.k.a. THE BOB CUMMINGS SHOW at this link:


It's initially a cause for celebration when Bob Collins Photography posts its most successful year to date, beating the past year's gross income by $7426.80.  ($64,467.76 in today's dollars, btw.)  Bob generously gives Schultzy extra money to treat her friends to the day's coffee break, tells nephew Chuck to treat himself to a new wardrobe using a charge card, and prepares to pay his 1957 income tax in one lump.

Bob's trip to pay the taxman ends the party, as the net income is a different story and turns out to be insufficient to satisfy the amount levied by the I.R.S.  Every single expense now warrants Bob's closest scrutiny, from "flowers for gardener" (which turns out to be Bob's attempt to woo Ava Gardner) all the way down to that diamond needle for Chuck's record player.

In an effort to make up for lost income, coffee is no longer free and Chuck is sent out to collect on past due accounts.  But why stop there....?  Schultzy adds an idea of her own as Bob sets out to persuade I.R.S. Agent Jollison that those so-called "dates" are actually business expenditures: just research and development (of new models) which should be deductible, right?

I don't think he's buyin' it, Bob...

LOVE THAT BOB mines more conventional turf than usual in this outing (hasn't every long-running sitcom lead been questioned by the Internal Revenue Service at some point?) with the financial problems created by prosperity taking center stage over our leading man's nocturnal pursuits.  It quickly turns Bob the swingin' single into a veritable square with accounting on the brain.  Not that combining business and pleasure is completely discounted: 1955 Miss Oregon Dorothy Johnson makes her series' debut, credited as "The Model" Bob is interviewing.  While her fate is undetermined at the fade-out, she was obviously hired since Johnson became a semi-regular during the following season as model Harriet Wyle.

Dorothy Johnson at right with our loverboy

Johnson wasn't the only semi-regular-to-be making her bow in Bob Retrenches. This was also the first episode for Rose Marie, who would join the cast during the 1958-59 season as Schultzy's close confidant Martha Randolph.  As is the case with Johnson, same character/different name: she's called "Bertha" in the credits.  Whatever the moniker, Schultzy's buddy joins her in thinking that Bob is the cat's meow.  Just like the photographer's subjects and apparently most of the females in the building judging from the turnout for Schultzy's afternoon coffee break festivities (the best sight gag, expertly timed).



Charles Lane and Rose Marie

Ubiquitous (368 IMDb credits!) TV sourpuss Charles Lane is put to good use as--what else?--I.R.S. agent Jollison, whose humorously terse conversation with Bob is a comic highlight.  Lane and Marie add considerable oomph to a script that was slightly below par for the 1957-58 season.  There's a number of smiles throughout but few belly laughs, and the concept of charging admission to watch The Master in action had been handled better in the superior Bob Gives S.R.O. Performance only a month earlier.

WHO WAS BLOCKING?

With money on the brain for everyone, Bob faced no resistance to his efforts to romance his prospective new model.  Hell, even Schultzy was encouraging him here, since The Show proved to be profitable!

DID BOB SCORE?

Our playboy lays one on Ms. Johnson during her audition, so he seemed on his way.  However, Jollison's ill-timed office call landed Bob in the clink for fraud at the fadeout, so in the end I'd have to say no.  (At least, he probably didn't want to score there.)  Though he did give Schultzy a noticeably longer kiss than usual earlier, when things appeared successful......

Not a bad episode by any means, just unexceptional.  A significant number of smiles, though; this one only suffers in comparison to howlers like Bob Gives S.R.O. Performance and Bob Goes Bird Watching that had aired recently.  The gags may not be gut-busters but they go down easy enough.  Cummings the director has another inspired moment near the end with his presentation of the high-demand "performance and coffee", but there's fewer of those from him and the writers than we've become accustomed to in Bob Retrenches.   (**1/2 out of four)

Film Review: DON'T WORRY, WE'LL THINK OF A TITLE (1966)

Welcome to The Horn Section's contribution to The Dick Van Dyke Show blog-a-thon, celebrating the show's 50th Anniversary today and hosted by Ivan Shreve's Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.  If you haven't checked out Mr. Shreve's blog yet, by all means do so--he offers an incredible wealth of information on classic film, television and radio.  I could single out examples, but it would make this intro to the post prohibitively lengthy, so just check out Thrilling Days at your convenience and you'll see what I mean.


And now, without further ado, our feature presentation, which also serves as the latest edition of......

"Why the Hell isn't this on DVD yet?"-- Number 66

DON'T WORRY, WE'LL THINK OF A TITLE (1966 United Artists) Starring Morey Amsterdam, Rose Marie, Richard Deacon, Jack Heller, Carmen Phillips, Henry Corden, Michael Ford, January Jones (no, not that one).  Directed by Harmon Jones.

Amsterdam, Marie and Jones work together in Deacon's diner, which is under surveillance by Soviet spies who are convinced that a "traitor" cosmonaut is hiding out there, since the defector is Amsterdam's doppelganger.  After Deacon is on the receiving end of slapstick incompetence on his birthday, he fires all three employees, and they move on to work at a bookstore Jones has inherited.  The foreign operatives trail them--and counterspies, robbers and beatniks end up tagging along as the communists attempt to apprehend Amsterdam for "Mr. Big" Heller.

Mr. Big!

I first became acquainted with THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW in daily syndication as a child of the '70's.  From the beginning, my favorite character was Buddy Sorrell, Rob Petrie's slightly sardonic, constantly wisecracking co-worker that Carl Reiner loosely based on his long-time collaborator Mel Brooks. Reiner cast Morey Amsterdam as Sorrell, and the character subsequently lived up to the veteran comic's real-life nickname, "The Human Joke Machine".

A skilled cellist and songwriter whose credits included "Why Oh Why Did I Ever Leave Wyoming" and "Rum and Coca-Cola", Amsterdam was also a standup comedian, author and frequent host on radio and TV.  He was ubiquitous in the latter medium's infancy, starring in his own self-titled series (on Dumont) and for a time hosting NBC's earliest version of THE TONIGHT SHOW, BROADWAY OPEN HOUSE.  At the time that VAN DYKE began its five-year run, Amsterdam was coming off his first dramatic feature role in MURDER, INC.  During the show's run, he further boosted his silver screen profile with the recurring role of Cappy in the A.I.P. BEACH PARTY films and recorded several comedy LP's.

These projects had given Amsterdam (then in his mid-50's) his greatest visibility to date, and during the hiatus preceding VAN DYKE's fifth and final season in 1965, the comic furthered his reputation as a jack of all trades by adding producer and screenwriter to his resume with DON'T WORRY, WE'LL THINK OF A TITLE.   The very first thing we see is the caricature of the star from his early TV ads:

Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore didn't join Amsterdam on his summer vacation, but Rose Marie and Richard Deacon signed on as co-stars and Carl Reiner joined much of TV Land in contributing a cameo.  We've all seen the usual results when the supporting players from a legendary TV classic get together to put on a show without the leads--think SANFORD ARMS or AFTERMASH, only this time on the big screen and for three times the running length.  I'd love to tell you that ever-likable renaissance man Amsterdam bucked the "second banana curse" and triumphed in yet another field with an undiscovered cinematic treasure, but I can't.  There's no way to sugarcoat it:  DON'T WORRY, WE'LL THINK OF A TITLE is very poorly written and executed.

Not finding much to laugh about, eh?

A spy spoof ("James Bond" even voice-cameos via phone) by way of vaudeville wasn't a bad idea when DON'T WORRY was filmed in the summer of '65, and few people could rival Amsterdam's encyclopedic recall of jokes--his nightclub act was centered around it.  Henny Youngman and perhaps Milton Berle (who cameos here) would have been the only people in the same ballpark.  Unfortunately Amsterdam filled his screenplay to the brim with the oldest ones he knew.  Literally.  They had to be:

"I was up all night trying to get my window open."
"There's no window in that room!"
"No wonder I couldn't get it open."

"Why are you pulling that piece of rope?"
"Y'ever try pushing one?"

Amsterdam's film ended up delayed for over a year and barely released in 1966 after VAN DYKE had ended its run.  By then GET SMART! had already spoofed the genre definitively for the target audience, even beating DON'T WORRY to the punchline of "Mr. Big" being played by a little person (Heller in this film, Michael Dunn in SMART!).  Too bad, because the screenplay needed a surprise or two.

Maybe if I throw in a Tom Swiftie.....

Amsterdam, Marie and Deacon all take the opportunity to break the fourth wall.  Repeatedly in Marie's case, and Deacon lets us know that he realizes he was playing a different role earlier in the picture.  If Amsterdam was striving for a HELLZAPOPPIN' feel, he didn't succeed in making his film anywhere close to zany enough.  If he was attempting a straight spy spoof, he didn't have the budget or collaborators.  Harmon Jones had never directed a comedy before (unless GORILLA AT LARGE counts); January Jones (related to the director?) is "introduced" with a key role, but exhibits no comic timing or acting ability and even appears uncomfortable on camera.  With maybe four sets to work with and a distinct lack of any espionage staples to tweak, DON'T WORRY has the look and feel of a lazy home movie, coming across like Morey Amsterdam and friends dabbling in movie making instead of having a truly inspired idea for a motion picture.

While it may not be funny or well-made, it is a veritable treasure chest of celebrity cameos.  The production costs may not have allowed for any elaborate action or comedy setpieces, but lots of recognizable names and faces were willing to join in on the fun.  For example, Moe Howard, who unfortunately didn't bring Larry or Curley-Joe with him:

I can't poke him in the eyes!  He's wearing glasses!

Irene Ryan (THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES) borrowed the Clampett truckster from Jethro to give our two leads a lift.  Milton Berle (probably paying Morey back for a stolen joke) got the hoary aforementioned "rope" gag.  Danny Thomas ordered a meal at the diner and Steve Allen dropped by the bookstore.  Cliff Arquette joined his HOLLYWOOD SQUARES co-panelists, with no lines and two seconds of screen time, but distinctively playing Charley Weaver.

And, just to show you how persuasive Morey Amsterdam was back in the day, he even convinced The Greatest Actor Who Ever Lived to donate about a half hour of his time:

Mack Tuck!

Everything including the kitchen sink is thrown in, but to no avail: DON'T WORRY, WE'LL THINK OF A TITLE was barely a blip at the box office in 1966 and would be Amsterdam's only feature production credit and only screenplay.  He, Marie and Deacon went back to television, where they all remained welcome guest stars and game show panelists, with regular gigs on MATCH GAME, HOLLYWOOD SQUARES and THE MOTHERS-IN-LAW respectively.

So.....why isn't this on DVD yet?

It more or less vanished after barely being released in 1966, and never even received a VHS release. Until well into the 2000's few had even heard of it.  But TCM dusted it off a years ago, Netflix Instant added it in 2010 and now----MGM Archives has it available for pre-order.  So....on October 11th, according to this link--it will be!

Why it should be on DVD:

It might not be a good movie, but it is a genuine artifact of its television era, and it does give three beloved character actors a moment in the spotlight.  I'd say it's a must for DICK VAN DYKE SHOW fans to see at least once and any fan of 1960's television will probably find it worth a look as well.

As mentioned above, DON'T WORRY, WE'LL THINK OF A TITLE is available on Netflix Instant if you'd like to give it a look before shelling out the $19.95.