New Picture

It's In The Bag (United Artists) was made by Fred Allen and a lively assortment of assistant comics during part of The Wit's medically enforced vacation (high blood pressure) from radio. It is not in the same class with the funniest movies ever made--they stopped making them that funny about the time Hollywood learned to talk. But it is funny enough to do very well until a better one comes along, which is likely to be quite a while.

The picture starts off with a bang it never betters when emery-voiced, satchel-eyed Fred Allen takes charge of the screen and gives the interminable screen credits the kicking-around they have so long been begging for: "This is Mr. Skirball's father-in-law," he explains of Director Richard Wallace, remarking also that Producer Skirball gets his name up there twice. When that is over you enter a charade-like world which is in many respects more rational than the one it ribs, and any amount more entertaining--a world in which children are hideously overeducated and essentially very sinister; lawyers (notably Cruikshank-like John Carradine) are crooks who will not only not stop at murder but prefer to begin with it; gangsters (William Bendix et al.) hold stockholders' meetings as punctiliously as any other big businessmen; the high priest of the mysteries exhumed by Sigmund Freud is a wild-eyed goon (Jerry Colonna) who can't stop slapping his own face. There is also a capitalist (Robert Benchley) who appears at his daughter's wedding with a neon endorsement of his product--PARKER'S PASTE KILLS RATS--glowing on the back of his frock coat.

All this and a lot more is hung on the sort of story Fred Allen used to contrive for the dramatic half of each week's broadcast: Fred Floogle (Mr. Allen), a Flea Circus Diaghilev, falls heir to his uncle's multimillion fortune, which attorneys have managed to reduce to five chairs and a pool table. By the time Floogle learns that one of the chairs contains a considerable stash of cash, he is heavily in debt and under suspicion of murdering the uncle, and the chairs are all over town. His search for them involves visits to Mrs. Pansy Nussbaum (Minerva PioUs. very cute in her screen debut), to Jack Benny, and to a gay-nineties cafe where Allen joins in expensive quartetting with Don Ameche, Rudy Vallee, and Victor Moore.

Just as it was on the air, it is clear in the film that Fred Allen could be still funnier and much more fierce if he were taking a few million fewer people into account. The fact remains that Allen is not only a first-rate humorist but also the possessor of one of America's most honest, observant and murderously sardonic minds. That is one reason why so many people who shun most radio programs go out of their way to find one of his.

Fred Allen's low opinions of radio and movies are, in general, those which plain men disregard when "intellectuals" express them more fancily. Spoken with the Allen wit, they pierce the complacent armor of Hollywood and the broadcasters like bazooka shells. His dissertations on Hollywood's sweater girls and its pretty men who can barely say mama are enough to warm the souls of both bluenoses and admirers of good acting. A ten-minute Allen disquisition on movie men who think they know all about pictures and get in the way of those who at least have some ideas, or on the terrifying Hollywood pressures of big money, luxurious living, overproduction, and the necessity never to let one's reputation falter, dip or even pause for breath or thought, is as illuminating as Budd Schulberg's excellent What Makes Sammy Run. Allen cannot understand how young writers who value their talent and their health can think of working in Hollywood when the stage offers mature audiences, reasonable money (not to mention possible screen fees), and time for enough rest between plays to make the next one good.

It is the same with radio. Allen plans to start in again in the autumn; but not because he much wants to. "All I do it for," he says flatly, "is the money." He goes on to outline, in some detail, how even that inducement is withering, since income taxes and agent's fees promptly drain $100,000 a year down to $15,000. Radio, too, is pretty close to a hopeless field for anyone of serious ability, he thinks. The average mentality of the audience is low; the work, good or bad, is hopelessly ephemeral; the scavengers and those too unoriginal even to steal good work make the air almost too stale to breathe. Speaking of radio and films alike, he pronounces "mass production'' the way a particularly vigorous Pope might pronounce anathema.

It is much the same, for that matter, when Allen talks about Allen. He is strictly unimpressed by honors and awards, referring to their physical manifestations as "ten cents worth of parchment" or "an aluminum scab." He is equally uninterested in his social standing. Friends have asked why he doesn't join some such establishment as the New York Athletic Club, but he continues his 30-year membership in the 63rd St. YMCA because he likes the place and the people who use it.

Allen has a levelheaded opinion of his own abilities, an equally honest but probably exaggerated opinion of his limitations. He knows he is one of the few original men in radio, and he knows he has worked himself sick in the field without being able to use the best he has. Asked what he would really like to do, however, his reply is almost shockingly humble: "Write, if I had the brains."

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