Herman J. Mankiewicz

(On Cable TV, August 2022) There’s no feeling quite like discovering an overlooked gem buried deep in Hollywood history, and while I’d be careful about praising Million Dollar Legs too much, it’s a comedy with a rat-tat-tat absurdist pacing that feels considerably more contemporary than most of what was going on at the time. Except for the Marx Brothers, that is—and the film’s production history reveals that the script was first intended for the Marxes. Of course, the film doesn’t come out of nowhere: Directed by Edward F. Cline (a frequent Keaton collaborator), co-written by the legendary Joseph L. Mankiewicz, co-produced by Herman J. Mankiewicz and featuring W. C. Fields, the film is a madcap blend of sports comedy and political satire in which a tiny European country (“Klopstokia”) plans to avoid bankruptcy by having its unusually strong president win at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. But even in a zippy 63 minutes, it constantly gets much funnier thanks to an avalanche of silly gags and comic set-pieces—anything from the ridiculous antics of spies to an ultimate seductress (lusciously played by Lyda Roberti, parodying Garbo) having her way with the dumb-as-dirt male characters. The humour goes high and low, in cartoonish concepts, silly dialogue and physical execution. You won’t really see that kind of comedy again before the spoof films of the 1970s onward, and that’s the remarkable discovery that is Million Dollar Legs. Again: keep your expectations in check, but try to see it if you want to see a very different kind of comedy from an early cinema era.