519 - Room Service, United States, 1938. Dir. William A. Seiter.

Sunday, June 3, 2018

519 - Room Service, United States, 1938.  Dir. William A. Seiter.

Jumping butterballs!

The boys are trying to put on a play, but the real play is going on up in their hotel room.

Producer Gordon Miller (Groucho Marx) has run up a $1,200 tab at the White Way Hotel.  (White Way refers to "The Great White Way," which is a nickname for Broadway, referring to the long line of street lamps that line the streets.)

He and his entourage--Harry Binelli and Faker Englund, played by brothers Chico and Harpo Marx respectively--are staying in a suite, and his twenty-two actors are staying in rooms on the 19th floor.  But Miller has not paid a dime on his tab.

Hotel manager Joseph Gribble (Cliff Dunstan) has allowed this to go on because he is Miller's brother-in-law, and he is trying to float him long enough to get his play up and running so that the money can come rolling in.

But Gribble's boss, Gregory Wagner (Donald MacBride), discovers the overdue tab, and he demands that the men pay or evacuate immediately.

Meanwhile, the play's bright-eyed author Leo Davis (Frank Albertson) shows up from home, having burned his bridges behind him, thinking he is about to launch a glorious career.  When he discovers the men in the room manipulating circumstances to bide their time, he gets swept up into the shenanigans.

Yet he also has a girlfriend, Hilda Manny, played by none other than an underage Ann Miller, and his googly schoolboy feelings for her might also get in the way.

Miller knows that as long as they can continuously occupy the room, without leaving for any reason, then Wagner cannot kick them out.  So they stay.  They grow hungry.  They feign illness.  They kidnap a doctor.  They chase a turkey around the room.  They feign suicide by poison.  Anything to delay until some money comes in.

Miller has his actors hide out in the hotel ballroom to keep Wagner thinking they are no longer in the hotel.

But he has an actress who comes through for him.  Christine Marlowe, played by none other than Lucille Ball, has found a backer, a representative for the very rich Zachary Fisk, who is coming to write a check for $15,000.  If only they can get it in time.

And if only the backer does not back out when the representative sees the chaos going on in the room.

Somehow, some way, Gordon Miller is going to get this show mounted.  Nothing can stop him, for the show must go on.

Whether there is any money or not.

And regardless of what he has to do to get the money and to get the show on.

Being a producer is about having unflinching, unwavering will power.

And when that producer is Groucho Marx, it is displayed through never-ending zaniness.