It Happened One Knife (35 page)

While Lillis and Townes are meant to belong in the same strata as other great comedy teams—such as Abbott & Costello, Burns & Allen, Laurel & Hardy, and Martin & Lewis—they are in no way based on any real-life comedians (at least not consciously); with the one notable exception that I swiped their names from a pretty well-known comedy duo: Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby and Leslie Townes “Bob” Hope.

Directed by Gregory LaCava, screenplay by Morrie Ryskind and Eric Hatch, based on the novel by Hatch. Starring William Powell, Carole Lombard, and Eugene Pallette.

• Powell plays a “forgotten man,” another name for a homeless victim of the Great Depression, who is acquired by Lombard as part of a scavenger hunt and made a butler in her somewhat dizzy home. But there’s more to him than meets the eye.
  
• Morrie Ryskind, who wrote the screenplay from Eric Hatch’s novel, also cowrote
  Animal Crackers
  (1930) and
  A Night at the Opera
  (1935) for the Marx Brothers, with George S. Kaufman.
  
• In a very small role, one can find Jane Wyman, who later married (and divorced) Ronald Reagan.
  

Directed by Edward F. Cline, screenplay by Prescott Chaplin, W. C. Fields, and John T. Neville, story by Otis Criblecoblis. Starring W. C. Fields, Gloria Jean, Leon Errol, and Margaret Dumont.

• In case anyone was wondering, Otis Criblecoblis was actually W. C. Fields.
  
• The film blends reality and fantasy as Fields plays himself, trying to sell a story to Esoteric Pictures. It then moves back and forth into Fields’s story and his trying to sell it. It was Fields’s final starring role.
  
• Mrs. Hemoglobin is played by Margaret Dumont, apparently on leave from playing straight man to Groucho Marx.
  

Directed by George Marshall, screenplay by Walter DeLeon, based on a play by Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard. Starring Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Anthony Quinn, and Willie Best.

• Willie Best eventually played the elevator operator on the fifties TV show
  My Little Margie
  . He also wrote the song “I Love You for Sentimental Reasons.”
  
• Not in any way related to
  Ghostbusters
  (1984), this film stars Hope as a somewhat disreputable radio reporter who tags along with Goddard when she inherits a supposedly haunted mansion. The film was actually a quick follow-up to the hit
  The Cat and the Canary
  (1939), with the same stars and director.
  
• Another bit part: Robert Ryan (
  The Wild Bunch
  ,
  The Dirty Dozen
  ,
  The Longest Day
  ).
  

Directed by Frank Capra, screenplay by Robert Riskin, story by Samuel Hopkins Adams. Starring Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, and Alan Hale.

• Yes, Alan Hale is the father of the Skipper (Alan Hale, Jr.) on
  Gilligan’s Island.
  
• This was the first movie to sweep the “big” Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. The leading roles were originally offered to Robert Montgomery and Myrna Loy, both of whom turned the movie down. Colbert originally didn’t want the role, either, but agreed to take the part when her salary was increased. Gable allegedly told a friend after filming, “I just finished the worst picture in the world.”
  
• The working title, from the short story it was based on, was
  Night Bus
  . Thank goodness I didn’t have to come up with a pun for
  that
  .
  
• Director Capra tricked Colbert into doing the famous “skirt lift” hitchhiking scene, which she initially refused to do, by bringing in a body double with legs Colbert found unattractive.
  

Directed by Woody Allen, screenplay by Woody Allen and Mickey Rose. Starring Woody Allen, Louise Lasser, Carlos Montalban, David Ortiz, Rene Enriquez, and Howard Cosell.

• No, that isn’t the David Ortiz who now plays for the Boston Red Sox. But Carlos Montalban was Ricardo’s older brother, and also played El Exigente in coffee commercials, and Rene Enriquez played Lieutenant Caetano on
  Hill Street Blues.
  
• One of Woody Allen’s earlier, funnier movies,
  Bananas
  features Woody as Fielding Mellish, a timid New Yorker who becomes involved in a South American revolution to impress his girlfriend. Sportscaster Howard Cosell gives play-by-play of both a dictator’s assassination and Fielding’s wedding night.
  
• Watch for a brief scene in which a young punk terrorizes Woody on the subway. The punk was played by Sylvester Stallone.
  

It might take a village to raise a child (where are the villagers when you have to pay for college?), but it definitely takes a small army to get me through the writing process. Without a selfless and generous group of individuals, I would have to go out and get a real job, and who would
that
help, exactly?

In order for Harry and Les to seem like real classic comedians (did anybody notice the reference to them in
Some Like It Hot-Buttered
?), I relied on a number of sources, including my Marx Brothers bible,
Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo
, by Joe Adamson. If you can find a copy, more power to ya. I have two.

Special thanks to everyone at the Lillian Booth Actors’ Home in Englewood, especially Jordan Strohl, the administrator of the Home, and Lynne Hoppe, the director of communications for the Actors Fund. I am a proud member of the Fund, largely because of these two extremely accommodating, helpful, and cheerful people. I hope the Actors’ Home is presented in the most positive way possible herein, because it really is a special place.

Thanks to Ivan Van Laningham, who contacted me through the DorothyL Listserv (here’s a shout-out to the intrepid moderators there), for educating me on the subject of dentures and how they’re marked. It might not have seemed like a big point to you, but I couldn’t have gotten past that page without Ivan.

Invaluable help to the Double Feature Mysteries overall has come from many kind souls who seem bound and determined to help me succeed. My sincere gratitude to Victoria Hugo-Vidal and all of Team Pepperoni, who don’t realize they have better things to do than promote my work (so don’t tell them); Victoria’s dad, Ross; her mom, Julia Spencer-Fleming; and her brother, Spencer, are all on the team, and I think a lot of people wouldn’t have heard about these books without their tireless, generous work. I can’t thank them enough.

Thanks of course to Linda Ellerbee for being a good sport and a true friend. Thanks to Tom Straw, Joe Stinson, Matt Kaufhold, and Chris Grabenstein for saying nice things when I really needed nice things to be said—and none of them knew it.

At Berkley Prime Crime: Thanks to Tom Haushalter for putting up with my incessant questions and goofy schemes, and to the incomparable Shannon Jamieson Vazquez, who forced me against my will to have the book make sense, and even braved the wilds of New Jersey to attend a popcorn party. Sure, other editors will correct your grammar, but how many are willing to take New Jersey Transit?

To Christina Hogrebe and the gang at the Jane Rotrosen Agency, thank you for dealing with all the stuff I couldn’t possibly understand, which is anything that doesn’t involve writing the book itself. What a relief to have a wonderful agent in your corner!

All that effort would be for naught, however, if it weren’t for terrific booksellers, like Marilyn and Lisa at Moonstone in Flemington, New Jersey; Dianne and Craig at Borders in Fairfield, Connecticut (they should put on a seminar in author events for other bookstores); and the irreplaceable Bonnie and Joe at Black Orchid, whom I won’t miss, because they’re still around, but whose store was so friendly and welcoming, and isn’t there any more. Dammit.

But more than anyone, thank you to my astonishing family: my mother; my brother, Charlie; my inspiring son, Josh (as he approaches college!); my
awesome
daughter, Eve; and especially my incredibly understanding wife, Jessica, who has supported my writing habit for twenty-one years and hasn’t complained once. Now,
that’s
inspiration.