or, 'Frank Capra Joins a Union.' A strange, almost confounding exploration of labor, corporate cynicism and citizen activism/civil disobedience. Directed without much inspiration or cleverness by Harmon Jones. It's a somewhat interesting dud. The ideas intrigue, but the tone is extraordinarily flat.
Wooley is outrageously miscast as a laborer (!), who disguises himself (barely) as the head of his own firm, to agitate in the favor of older employees (because he was let go). Despite multiple family members working alongside him, it takes half an hour of film time for them to figure out that no firm has two effete, erudite, wordy, opinionated figures like Wooley associated with it. Going even further, the movie promotes other unlikely ideas; A 43 year old woman abandons her family for a 65 year old. Writer Paddy Chaevsky thinks he's saved some time and effort by having three of the workplace characters also be relations of Monty Wooley, but it just clutters up the movie, and cheats it of a smarter structure. The script feels like it never got a 2nd revision, and though ripe with comic potential, there isn't a single laugh in it; perhaps due to Wooley's overbearing presence. It operates at a weird domestic scale: many of the scenes occur in a living room filled with people, or in a second household, as if it had been a play once. The most interesting idea is a throwaway; corporations in 1951 have grown to an anonymous scale at which no one knows what the boss looks like anymore.
Making all these convolutions more confusing is that two different actors, who look way too similar, play boorish heads of households (Allyn Joslyn / Clinton Sundberg). Wooley and his faux-continental accent are simply over the top. Thelma Ritter is completely extraneous to the plot. Russ Tamblyn in an early role, reads his lines without any energy, facing away from characters, as if he's reading cue-cards. Don't watch it for Monroe. She has twenty lines as a put-upon secretary, and is not a key figure in the piece. This is strictly a Wooley vehicle. It reminded me of George Bernard Shaw's labor/morality tale, 'Major Barbara.'
Wooley is outrageously miscast as a laborer (!), who disguises himself (barely) as the head of his own firm, to agitate in the favor of older employees (because he was let go). Despite multiple family members working alongside him, it takes half an hour of film time for them to figure out that no firm has two effete, erudite, wordy, opinionated figures like Wooley associated with it. Going even further, the movie promotes other unlikely ideas; A 43 year old woman abandons her family for a 65 year old. Writer Paddy Chaevsky thinks he's saved some time and effort by having three of the workplace characters also be relations of Monty Wooley, but it just clutters up the movie, and cheats it of a smarter structure. The script feels like it never got a 2nd revision, and though ripe with comic potential, there isn't a single laugh in it; perhaps due to Wooley's overbearing presence. It operates at a weird domestic scale: many of the scenes occur in a living room filled with people, or in a second household, as if it had been a play once. The most interesting idea is a throwaway; corporations in 1951 have grown to an anonymous scale at which no one knows what the boss looks like anymore.
Making all these convolutions more confusing is that two different actors, who look way too similar, play boorish heads of households (Allyn Joslyn / Clinton Sundberg). Wooley and his faux-continental accent are simply over the top. Thelma Ritter is completely extraneous to the plot. Russ Tamblyn in an early role, reads his lines without any energy, facing away from characters, as if he's reading cue-cards. Don't watch it for Monroe. She has twenty lines as a put-upon secretary, and is not a key figure in the piece. This is strictly a Wooley vehicle. It reminded me of George Bernard Shaw's labor/morality tale, 'Major Barbara.'