> From: JIM DOHERTY <
jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com>
> Sent: 07/29/03 06:11 AM
>
> [Hope's] "My Favorite Brunette" may be the best
private eye parody (of "Murder My Sweet") ever
filmed.
*
As soon as you use that word "best," you're gonna have
yourself an argument.
For my money, I prefer the "Girl Hunt" number in "The Band
Wagon," with Fred Astaire as a Mike Hammer caricature named
Rod Riley and the following lines of pseudo-tough narration
(written by an uncredited Alan Jay Lerner):
"She came at me in sections. More curves than a scenic
railway."
"She was bad, she was dangerous, I wouldn't trust her any
further than I could throw her -- but -- she was my kind of
woman."
And shouldn't we also mention Daffy Duck in the Robert
Clampett-directed "Great Piggy Bank Robbery"?
*
As long as we're talking "My Favorite Brunette," though, it
might as well be noted that the story's being told as a
flashback from a jail cell counts as parody of "Postman
Always Rings Twice." Its plot is kicked off by Hope's
character, a baby photographer, "minding the store" for a
detective played (in cameo) by Alan Ladd -- thus making it
all a reaction to such Ladd vehicles as "Blue Dahlia" and the
second "Glass Key." And, given that the plot turns on Hope's
specialized camera with its ability to take photos through
keyholes, you could easily claim that "Brunette" is a film
founded upon voyeurism ...
Chris
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