Danny Kaye

This summer I am watching Angela Lansbury movies.

This week I watched The Court Jester (1955) with Angela, Danny Kaye, and Basil Rathbone. It is a musical/comedy.

The main words to describe this movie are silliness, ridiculousness, and peak Danny Kaye moments.

It really fell apart toward the end, I felt, but there were some hilarious moments that made up for it.

First, a bit of the plot with a description from Google:

“Former carnival performer Hubert Hawkins (Danny Kaye) and maid Jean (Glynis Johns) are assigned to protect the infant royal heir from tyrannical King Roderick I (Cecil Parker). While Jean takes the baby to an abbey, Hawkins gains access to the court by impersonating the king’s jester, unaware that the jester is really an assassin hired by scheming Sir Ravenhurst (Basil Rathbone). When Princess Gwendolyn (Angela Lansbury), falls for Hawkins, a witch secretly aids him in becoming a knight.”

This film is just a lot of craziness caused by misunderstandings, misdirection, and generalized oopsies.

We start the movie by learning that an entire royal family was killed so that the current King, King Roderick I, could take the throne. Actually, though, the entire family wasn’t killed, according to rumors anyhow. The rumors say an infant survived and bears upon his bottom a birthmark of a purple pimpernel.

The rumors further say the child is being cared for in the forest by an “elusive, dashing outlaw” known as the black fox. As if to prove these rumors, one of the king’s men is killed as they are riding near the forest and a note attached to the arrow announces that the child is alive and The Black Fox has him.

Not sure why this was being announced because I would think it would be better to keep this all a secret until the child is older and then they bring the child in to overthrow the usurper, but…what do I know?

After the note scene we are taken to the castle where the king’s advisor, Sir Ravenhurst (Rathbone), is stating the rumor about the child being in the care of the black fox is simply a silly story to scare the king. The other advisors say there is something to the rumor and to the power of the black fox. They feel that the king should form an alliance with Griswold of the North because he is strong and has men who can help them fight against The Black Fox.

Ravenhurst is against this and the other advisors say it is because Ravenhurst wants to be the king’s right hand man and have more power.

The king says even if he wanted to form an alliance he doesn’t have anything to offer Griswold to sweeten the deal. The one advisor says that the king does have something he could give Griswold — the hand of his daughter Gwendolyn — our fair Angela — in marriage.

Angela is gorgeous in this movie. She’s super skinny (not that she’s ever been big), tall and elegant.

My son told me recently that young Angela was beautiful and that even “old Angela” in Murder She Wrote wasn’t so bad. I can’t wait to show him her in this film (I watched it on my own) because this will further solidify his feelings.

Gwendolyn says she is not interested in marriage because the castle witch, Griselda, told her that a more dashing man than Griswold would be coming along to sweep her off her feet.

Now the scene switches to the lair of the black fox, where Hubert tells the black fox he has brought a group of midgets with him from the carnival (Hubert’s former job) to fight for The Black Fox. This brings me to one of the weirdest promo photos I’ve ever seen:

I’ll be seeing this one in my nightmares tonight.

It is the job of Danny’s character, Hubert, to care of the baby and he thinks it is a job that should go to a woman. Well! How rude.

But The Black Fox doesn’t agree and tells Hubert he will continue the job.

Hubert is a little more excited about having to take care of the baby when he is charged with traveling with the beautiful Jean to take the child to the abbey for protection.

When I was reading about the actors in this movie, I found out that Glynis Johns (Jean) also played the mother in Disney’s Mary Poppins. The first one, of course.

Anyhow, moving on — The pair stop for the night and that’s when they not only admit their feelings for each other (smoochy, smoochy) but a man stumbles into the small stable they are in and asks to stay with them for the night. He’s on his way to see the king, he says. He is a court jester and his name is Giacomo.

Ah-ha! Hubert and Jean were just talking about how it would be a good thing if they had a spy in the castle who could tell them if the king was coming after The Black Fox. How very fortuitous this unexpected meeting has been.

Giacomo is knocked out and Hubert steals his clothes and his wagon, which is emblazoned, for some weird reason, with Giacomo’s name across the back of it.

So Jean takes off toward the abbey and Hubert takes off toward the castle.

Sadly, Jean is captured by soldiers from the castle who are looking for good looking women for the king. The baby is hidden in a basket and she and the baby are taken to the castle where she manages to hide the baby away from the king and his men.

Meanwhile, Gwendolyn learns that Griselda lied to her about the dashing man and is about to have her killed when Hubert shows up on the road below and Griselda claims that he is the man that Gwendolyn is supposed to marry.

Whew. This plot is starting to get pretty twisted at this point. From here on out, things get pretty crazy with Griselda casting spells and poisoning people left and right. Ravenhurst also thinks that Giacomo (Hubert) is an assassin who is going to take out the three advisors who wanted to create the alliance with Griswold.

Before all is said and done there will be sword fights, a jousting match, fake and real romances, a midget army, and, of course, plenty of musical numbers by Mr. Kaye.

There is also the famous scene between Danny, Glynis Johns, and Mildred Natwick where they discuss which vessel the poison is in.

Here is a clip of it, in case you’ve never seen the movie:

I won’t share too much more in case you want to watch the movie yourself.

The movie was directed by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank.

According to an article on TCM.com, Panama and Frank formed a production company with Kaye called Dena Productions, named after Danny’s daughter, after Kaye’s success in 1947 with the film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

The idea behind the production company was to introduce the real Danny to film audiences. He had been acting on Broadway and in smaller productions on stage for years.

The Court Jester was the company’s second movie and proved to be a huge success but not right away. It actually bombed at the box office, despite it’s stellar cast. Years later though it was regarded as one of Danny’s finest films with, according to TCM, “comedy routines that have entered the annals of film history.”

Amazon features trivia and facts through their xray feature when you watch a movie there on a computer or device. I often forget that because I usually watch the movies on my TV but this time I watched part of the movie on my phone and bits of the trivia popped up.

One of them was a story from Danny’s daughter who said that fans often came up to him and recited the entire tongue twister scene for him.

What Angela said about the movie:

Angela had been playing mainly dramatic roles before this movie and was able to have some fun with the role. Part of that fun was watching Danny Kaye work she said in the Kaye bio Nobody’s Fool by Martin Gottfried.

“His use of hands was inspired by commedia dell’arte,” she said. “And in the way he moved, he was absolutely original; he was one off the mold.”

She added, “Danny wasn’t an ensemble player – he was the one around whom everyone danced, and we all dressed to him. We never stopped laughing. There was none of that moodiness he could have elsewhere, that abruptness, ignoring people. If something interested him, sparked him, he came alive. The minute that was over, he was closed for business, which I think is true of many of the great comic performers. They are constantly out to lunch. Where they are, I don’t know.”

Gottfried also wrote an autobiography on Angela and said of her role in the movie: “It allowed her to play not only a princess, but a princess her own age. She was made up to look young and lovely. She got to wear beautiful clothes that showed off her fine, slender figure.”

What I thought overall

This was a ton of fun. As I mentioned above, I wasn’t a huge fan of the ending when things started to fall apart in some ways and just descend into chaotic ridiculousness but that was a minor issue when there were so many other great moments and interactions in the film.

Angela wasn’t in this one a ton but she was in it enough to enjoy her mix of wide-eyed adoration of Danny’s character and her devious ways to get what she wanted. She truly was beautiful in the film as well.

I loved the wordplay and back and forth between the characters. None of the songs really stuck out to me but they were fun.

This is a great film to escape into and forget about your problems with. The bright and colorful outfits alone will distract you from the stresses of your days.

Trivia about the movie:

Basil Rathbone had made many movies where he was the sword-wielding villain so when it came to his role in this film, he was ready. He was 66 at the time, though, having already redefined Sherlock Holmes in 14 films from 1939 to 1946, and wasn’t ready for how quick Danny would be able to move the sword. A body double had to be called in to film some of the fencing scenes because Danny was moving so fast that Basil was almost injured. It was because of his superior fencing skills that no one was injured but he still couldn’t keep up with Danny’s fast, though less accurate, moves.

According to TCM.com. “(Basil’s) talents were carefully observed by Danny: With his quick reflexes and his extraordinary sense of mime, which enabled him to imitate easily anything seen once, Kaye could outfence Rathbone after a few weeks of instruction.” (various sources, including TCM.com.)

During the “Maladjusted Jester” sequence, King Roderick I (Cecil Parker) kicks Hawkins (Danny Kaye) every time he makes a mistake. It took 11 takes, and afterward, Kaye said he had bruises all over his hip. (source IMdB)

The “Now I can shoot and toot” speech during “The Maladjusted Jester” was previously said by Danny Kaye in Up in Arms (1944).

From IMdB: “This was composer Vic Schoen‘s first movie. He was not officially trained in the mechanisms of how music was synchronized to film, so he had to learn on the job. It took him a long time, but he was very proud of his work. Composer Igor Stravinsky listened to his score and later complimented Schoen, saying he had broken all of the rules.”

A U.S. Civil War reenactment group, The American Legion Zouaves of Richard F. Smith Post No. 29, Jackson, Michigan” performed the intricate high speed marching maneuvers during the knighting ceremony. (source, Classic Movie Hub)

Have you ever seen this movie?

What did you think?

Cat from Cat’s Wire shared her thoughts on the movie here..

Here is what is left of my Summer of Angela:

August 1 – The Court Jester

August 8 – The Picture of Dorian Gray

August 15 – A Life At Stake

August 22 – All Fall Down

August 29 – Something for Everyone

If you want to read about some of the other movies I watched you can find them here:

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

The Manchurian Candidate