Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz Poster Card
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Lucy has to return the new hat, and takes Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance) along to help her resist temptation.  It’s a very funny scene as the proprietor is trying to ‘tempt’ Lucy with a new hat as Lucy keeps her eyes covered, and as she’s leaving the store she succumbs to temptation, and buys it—asking them to deliver the hat the next day, giving her only one day to get Ricky to lose his temper.

This leads to a very funny scene as Lucy tries, by hook and by crook, to irritate Ricky into losing his temper.  The things Lucy does (reminding him of the lousy day he had at work, blaring the radio as he’s falling asleeep, filing her nails, dropping a box full of crackers all over Ricky’s bed, cracking walnuts with a hammer) are just shy of cruel; even so, it’s a very funny scene, with Desi Arnaz demonstrating some of his own comedy skills.  By morning, when Lucy rolls him out of bed, he lets her know that he knows whats going on.  Just then, he tries to put on his slippers, which Lucy has “helpfully” nailed to the floor.  The audience thinks that Ricky’s about to lose his temper as he counts to ten (in Spanish) very loudly, but he manages to keep his temper anyway.  And the new hat will be delivered soon ...

At the breakfast table, the torture kicks into high gear, as Ethel brings over a ‘dribble’ glass for Ricky to drink his morning tomato juice out of—and spilling it all over his work clothes.  But Ricky still doesn’t lose his temper, not even when Fred Mertz (William Frawley) returns Ricky’s golf club (bent in half).  Ricky still keeps his temper, even when the agent calls back; and with his newfound control over his temper, he’s able to talk him down to the two hundred fifty dollars that he originally offered.  He’s so happy, that he cancels the bet in celebration and tells Lucy that she can get a new hat.  Lucy pretends to order the new hat, only to have the doorbell ring as soon as she hangs up the phone.  Ricky realizes what’s happened, and that Lucy ordered the hat (and lost the bet) the day before—putting him through that torment for no reason.  They end laughing at it, until Ricky gets his revenge by putting Lucy over his lap for a spanking (something that definitely wouldn’t be funny today, of course).

Skip Owens (Bert Lahr): Have you met Dolores?

Tommy Dorsey: Yes, I’ve met Dolores.

Skip Owens (Bert Lahr): she’s queen of the chorus.

Merton Kibble (Red Skelton) You can have the chorus.

Skip Owens (Bert Lahr): Have you met Olivia?

Tommy Dorsey: Her I’d take, Olivia.

Skip Owens (Bert Lahr): Her I’d gladly give ya

Merton Kibble (Red Skelton) Throw her in the river-ya.

Skip Owens (Bert Lahr): Who’s your queen, your rulah?

Merton Kibble (Red Skelton) Tallulah!
For that gal Tallulah I would fight a duela,
I would climb a hillah, I’ll paddle to Brasil-a.

Skip Owens (Bert Lahr): But this is getting sillah.

Merton Kibble (Red Skelton) ‘Cause I love her true-lah.

Skip Owens (Bert Lahr): Who?

Merton Kibble (Red Skelton) Tallulah.

Skip Owens (Bert Lahr): When she starts out the conga, like an anaconda, it’s fricassee.

Merton Kibble (Red Skelton) No one doing her hula can do what Tallulah can do to me.

Merton Kibble (Red Skelton) I have met Fatima

Tallulah Winters (Eleanor Powell) Fatima is a schemma

Merton Kibble (Red Skelton) I have met Marquita

Tallulah Winters (Eleanor Powell) Marquita is a cheeta

Merton Kibble (Red Skelton) I have met Jemima

Tallulah Winters (Eleanor Powell) She’s a social climba

Merton Kibble (Red Skelton) I have met Ophelia

Tallulah Winters (Eleanor Powell) She will double deal ya,

Merton Kibble (Red Skelton) The one who loves me trullah, I’ll take Tallulah

An installment of Max Lucado’s Hermie and Friends Christian kids’ animation, Flo the Lyin’ Fly is a simple story, told with humor that adults can enjoy—but aimed at young children.  It’s effectively a retelling of “the boy who cried wolf”, as Flo the Fly (voiced by Vicki Lawrence) gets caught in telling lies, and actually has a short conversation with God about it.  She’s given an opportunity to start telling the truth, but turns her back on it when the famous singing group “The WaterBeatles” are going to be coming to the marsh for a concert, and she brags about how she knows them all, etc.  Later, after her lie is exposed, she actually does meet the WaterBeatles, but when they are kidnapped by a “fire-breathing dragonfly”, Hermie (voiced by Tim Conway), Wormie (voiced by the late Don Knotts) and the other residents of the marsh don’t believe her.  All turns out well, however, and it ends with the WaterBeatles (sung by Third Day) performing a song about the importance of telling the truth.  The video actually begins with a short vignette of Hermie and Wormie, when Hermie unintentionally causes a small flood, reinforcing the same lesson.

Hermie and Friends: Flo the Lyin’ Fly is a very good children’s film, that I enjoyed watching with my children, although only the youngest truly enjoyed it—the others are pre-teen, and simply too old to enjoy it. I recommend it to parents of younger children.

So, where does Lucille Ball fit into this?  In a secondary role as the Caliph’s pretty, scheming, bored sister.  It’s not a comedic role, but Lucy does her part well, as does the equally evil Grand Vizier, played by ... Raymond Burr, TV’s Perry Mason.  The special effects are “cheezy”, as is the dialog, It was fun to watch with my children, as we laughed at the ‘serious’ movie together, but it’s not a comedy, and I frankly wouldn’t pay to watch it—but it was a bit of a treat to watch it on Turner Classic Movies.

The Yellow Cab Man begins with a very funny title sequence, as the accident-prone “Red” Pirdy, portrayed by Red Skelton, falls down stairs and ends up in the hospital, confiding to the audience, “You know this is the best cast I’ve ever been in,” with the various cast members having “signed” his cast.  The film proper begins with character actor Charles Lane, an agent for an insurance company, turning Red down for insurance since he’s accident prone—which Red proceeds to demonstrate in a very funny scene where he’s carrying an over sized cuckoo clock, avoiding one mishap after another, only to eventually step out in front of a cab and be hurt.  Later, the lovely Gloria DeHaven, playing Ellen Goodrich, shows up at Red’s apartment, offering a settlement from the cab company.  Red’s an inventor, in the style of Rube Goldberg, which he demonstrates as she triggers his burglar alarm.  It’s soon revealed that Red has invented “elasti-glass”, an unbreakable glass. 

He has a demonstration of it scheduled with the president of the Yellow Cab company, but due to skulduggery by Walter Slezak and Herbert Anderson, ordinary glass is substituted for Red’s invention and he ends up injuring the president of the company.  Gloria DeHaven’s character is then demoted, and Red is determined to help; Mickey, the cab man that hit Red the day before, played by James Gleason, convinces him to not give up, and arranges for him to work as a Yellow Cab men (hence the title) until an opportunity arrives to demonstrate it again. With the aid of Mickey, Red is hired by the Yellow Cab company, nearly losing his job on the very first day when he gets mixed up in a chaotic wedding reception.  It’s a very funny scene, where a bratty child takes Red’s pocket watch and puts it into a mailbox, leading people to think there’s a bomb in the mailbox, resulting in a very funny overreaction from the various police people.

A Southern Yankee is a very funny movie, set at the tail end of the American Civil War, where Red Skelton plays the role of Aubrey Filmore, an inept bellboy at a Northern hotel, who manages to catch “the Grey Spider”, a very famous (and dangerous) Southern spy.  He quickly falls in love with Sallyann, a Southern nurse (played by the lovely and talented Arlene Dahl), who has come to lead the Grey Spider to a meeting with other Southern undercover spies in the North, who have pieced together the Northern strategy for an upcoming battle.  In short order, Red Skelton is tasked with continuing his impersonation, taking false plans to the Confederacy, and bringing back information from a Northern undercover spy as well.

It’s a very funny movie, one of my favorite Red Skelton films.  There are several funny scenes, including Red unwittingly sitting on a pine cone, the scene displayed on the cover of the VHS where Red has to cross the line between the Northern and Southern troops while they’re engaged in a furious battle, which he does by wearing a Northern army uniform on one side and a Southern army uniform on his other side, while carrying a flag, also with an American flag on one side—which works well, until the wind blows the flag the other way, displaying his trick.  My favorite comedy scene, however, is an extended scene in a Southern hospital, once Red has made it across the Mason-Dixon line, where a team of dentists pull one “bad” tooth that doesn’t need to be pulled - and then another.  Many other clowns have done hilarious dentist scenes (Laurel and Hardy and Tim Conway come to mind), but no one has done it better than this.

I truly enjoyed A Southern Yankee, and I hope that you do as well.  I rate it 4 clowns out of 5.

When I think of Lucille Ball, I tend to think of comedy, since that’s what she’s most famous for—however, she also made several serious films, and Lured is a good example of that.  She stars as Sandra Carpenter, an American dancer in London, England—where her friend has been murdered by a serial killer, who has been luring young women to their doom through ads in the personal column in the newspaper.  Lucy is soon acting as bait, answering various personal ads and reporting suspicious activity to Scotland Yard.  Along the way, she has several vignettes, such as meeting a young boy who’s substituting for his older brother, and finds several dangerous people—including Boris Karloff, who plays a semi-dangerous madman; but he’s not the killer that Scotland Yard is looking for.

Along the way, she falls in love with George Sanders’ character, Robert Fleming.  He, however, becomes a suspect in the murder—after Lucy has fallen in love with him, and become engaged.  There is much evidence pointing to his guilt—too much so, in fact, and the cagey Scotland Yard inspector, played by Charles Coburn, suspects that he’s being framed.  It becomes plain to the audience by this time who the real murderer is, but that’s all right; the movie was a pleasant surprise to watch, and I hope you enjoy it as well.

From early in The Outlaws is Coming, where our three intrepid photographers (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Joe DeRita) need to take a photograph of “Elvis” the skunk—who really doesn’t want his picture taken.

From later in the movie, when the Three Stooges try to infiltrate the meeting of Indians/Native Americans to find out what the villainous Rance Roden is up to—only for Curly Joe to have a problem with his disguise ...

A close-up of the Three Stooges in Indian makeup - I love Moe’s Tic-Tac-Toe pattern.

The last of the Three Stooges‘ feature films, The Outlaws is Coming is in some ways better, and in other ways worse, than their other feature length films.  There are several positive things about it—The Outlaws is Coming serves as a good parody of the Western movie, when three inept photographers (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Joe DeRita) are sent west with their editor, Kenneth Cabot (played by Adam West, a year before his huge success as TV’s Batman), working for a conservation magazine and trying to find out who is behind the wholesale slaughter of the buffalo.

The answer is the villain of the picture, Rance Roden, aided by his right-hand man, Trigger Mortis (love that name!), who are slaughtering the buffalo in order to coerce the hungry Indians (now called Native Americans, but I played Cowboys and Indians as a child ... but I digress) to attack the cavalry, and give his criminal cabal free regin.  Rance has the beautiful Annie Oakley (Nancy Kovack) working in his saloon, but she’s actually working against him, using her sharpshooting skills to cover for Cabot’s total ineptness with a gun—very similar to the Don Knotts film The Shakiest Gun in the West or Bob Hope in Paleface.

The movie has many very funny moments, such as when Larry and Curly Joe read the newsprint off of Moe’s face after a mishap with a printing press, Curly Joe tries to enter through a saloon door with a cigar, trying to rescue Moe from a glue-y chair, Moe, Larry and Curly sneak into the room of the various gunslingers hired by Rance, in order to pour glue into their holsters and give Cabot a fighting chance—and Larry and Curly Joe go into the wrong room, surrounded by (sleeping) dancing girls.  It’s a very funny routine, especially with the running joke about Wild Bill Hickock.  There are other funny moments as well, such as Henry Gibson (of TV’s Laugh-In) as the son of the Indian Chief, who serves as a 1960’s mod translator, the gunfight, the Three Stooges “reforming” the gunslingers, and the pie fight at the climax.

It’s a funny movie, and worth watching, not only because it’s the Three Stooges’ last feature film.  What’s the negative?  At this point in their careers, the Stooges were no longer young men, and it was starting to show—Moe, for example, was 67 years old.

Product description of The Outlaws is Coming, courtesy of Amazon.com

The Outlaws is Coming (1965), also known as The Three Stooges Meet the Gunslingers, is a wacky Western in which Larry, Moe and Curly-Joe co-star with Adam West (TV’s “Batman"), Henry Gibson (TV’s “Laugh-In"), longtime Stooge sidekick Emil Sitka and Nancy Kovack (Frankie and Johnny). The Stooges are sent, along with an editor, by a conservationist magazine publisher on the East Coast to investigate a gunslinger who is wiping out the buffalo population in the West in order to turn the Indians against his enemy, the U.S. Cavalry. With a little help from Annie Oakley and an unusual cache of weapons (including cream pies), they are able to dodge the posse’s bullets...and make the West safe for the wild creatures that roam its frontiers.

You may also want to look at the photo gallery for The Outlaws is Coming.