It's a Joke, Son! | |
---|---|
Directed by | Benjamin Stoloff |
Written by | Robert E. Kent Paul Gerard Smith |
Produced by | Aubrey Schenck |
Starring | Kenny Delmar Una Merkel June Lockhart Jimmy Conlin Douglas Dumbrille 'Daisy' the Dog and introducing Kenneth Farrell |
Cinematography | Clyde De Vinna |
Edited by | Norman Colbert |
Music by | Alvin Levin |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Eagle-Lion Films |
Release date |
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Running time | 63 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $650,000 [2] |
It's a Joke, Son! is a 1947 American comedy film directed by Benjamin Stoloff (in his final directorial role in a film) featuring radio comedian Kenny Delmar as Senator Beauregard Claghorn, a character on Fred Allen's radio program and later the inspiration for the cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn. [3] The film was the first American production for Eagle-Lion Films [4] and although it was produced on a very small budget compared to other Hollywood films, [2] it was a box-office disappointment; one theater chain removed the film after less than a week after it only drew $1,000 in ticket sales. [5]
The film contributed to a multimillion-dollar loss for Eagle-Lion in 1947, and Arthur B. Krim later stated that the studio had overpaid for Delmar and overestimated his bankability. [6] It is in the public domain.
When the Daughters of Dixie nominate Magnolia Claghorn as a candidate for state senator, the local political machine run by northerners fears that its candidate will be defeated. Through the Claghorns' daughter's boyfriend Jeff, the members of the machine concoct a plan to run Magnolia's husband Beauregard in order to split the anti-machine vote. However, when Beauregard attracts great popularity, they must seek to stop him.
John Florence Sullivan, known professionally as Fred Allen, was an American comedian. His absurdist topically-pointed radio program The Fred Allen Show (1932–1949) made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the Golden Age of American radio.
Senator Beauregard Claghorn was a popular fictional radio character on the "Allen's Alley" segment of The Fred Allen Show, beginning in 1945. Succeeding the vaguely similar but much less popular Senator Bloat from the earliest "Allen's Alley" routines, Senator Claghorn, portrayed by Allen's announcer Kenny Delmar, was a blustery Southern politician whose home was usually the first at which Allen would knock. Claghorn would typically answer the door with, "Somebody, ah say, somebody knocked! Claghorn's the name, Senator Claghorn, that is. I'm from the South. Suh."
Producers Releasing Corporation was one of the smallest and least prestigious Hollywood film studios of the 1940s. It was considered a prime example of what was called "Poverty Row": a low-rent stretch of Gower Street in Hollywood where shoestring film producers based their operations. However, PRC was more substantial than the usual independent companies that made only a few low-budget movies and then disappeared. PRC was an actual Hollywood studio – albeit the smallest – with its own production facilities and distribution network, and it even accepted imports from the UK. PRC lasted from 1939 to 1947, churning out low-budget B movies for the lower half of a double bill or the upper half of a neighborhood theater showing second-run films. The studio was originally located at 1440 N. Gower St. from 1936 to 1943. PRC then occupied the former Grand National Pictures physical plant at 7324 Santa Monica Blvd., from 1943 to 1946. This address is now an apartment complex.
The Son of the Sheik is a 1926 American silent adventure drama film directed by George Fitzmaurice and starring Rudolph Valentino and Vilma Bánky. The film is based on the 1925 romance novel The Sons of the Sheik by Edith Maude Hull, and is a sequel to the 1921 hit film The Sheik, which also stars Rudolph Valentino. The Son of the Sheik is Valentino's final film and went into general release nearly two weeks after his death from peritonitis at the age of 31.
The Eagle is a 1925 American silent drama film directed by Clarence Brown and starring Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Bánky, and Louise Dresser. Based on the posthumously published 1841 novel Dubrovsky by Alexander Pushkin, the film is about a lieutenant in the Russian army who catches the eye of Czarina Catherine II. After he rejects her advances and flees, she puts out a warrant for his arrest, dead or alive. When he learns that his father has been persecuted and killed, he dons a black mask and becomes an outlaw. Black Eagle does not exist in the novel and was inspired by the performance of Douglas Fairbanks as Zorro in The Mark of Zorro.
T-Men is a 1947 semidocumentary and police procedural style film noir about United States Treasury agents. The film was directed by Anthony Mann and shot by noted noir cameraman John Alton. The production features Dennis O'Keefe, Mary Meade, Alfred Ryder, Wallace Ford, June Lockhart and Charles McGraw. A year later, director Mann used the film's male lead, Dennis O'Keefe, in Raw Deal.
Eagle-Lion Films was the name of two distinct, though related, companies. In 1944, UK film magnate J. Arthur Rank created an American distribution company with the name to handle his British films. The following year, under a reciprocal distribution arrangement with Rank, the U.S. company Pathé Industries, which already owned the small Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) studio, established an Eagle-Lion Films production subsidiary, while Rank's American business dropped the name. PRC, with its existing distribution exchanges, handled releases in the U.S. When PRC shut down in 1948, its distribution exchanges were assumed by Eagle-Lion Films. In 1950, Pathé merged Eagle-Lion with an independent reissues distributor, Film Classics, to create Eagle-Lion Classics. The latter was acquired by and merged into United Artists a year later. Rank also released films in the United Kingdom through Eagle-Lion Distributors Limited.
Kenneth Howard Delmar was an American actor active in radio, films, and animation. An announcer on the pioneering radio news series The March of Time, he became a national radio sensation in 1945 as Senator Beauregard Claghorn on the running "Allen's Alley" sketch on The Fred Allen Show. The character Delmar created was a primary inspiration for the Warner Bros. cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn.
What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? is a 1966 comedy DeLuxe Color film written by William Peter Blatty and directed by Blake Edwards for the Mirisch Company in Panavision. It stars James Coburn and Dick Shawn.
Joe Sawyer was a Canadian film actor. He appeared in more than 200 films between 1927 and 1962, and was sometimes billed under his birth name.
Lady of Burlesque is a 1943 American musical comedy-mystery film, produced by RKO Pictures and directed by William A. Wellman and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Michael O'Shea. It is a faithful, if sanitized, adaptation of the 1941 novel The G-String Murders written by strip tease queen Gypsy Rose Lee.
Foghorn Leghorn is a cartoon rooster who appears in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons and films from Warner Bros. Animation. He was created by Robert McKimson, and starred in 29 cartoons from 1946 to 1964 in the golden age of American animation. All 29 of these cartoons were directed by McKimson.
Guest in the House is a 1944 American film noir directed by John Brahm starring Anne Baxter and Ralph Bellamy.
Ilya Lopert was an American film producer and distributor. He was renowned for distributing foreign films for both arthouse and mainstream release in the United States. He was often credited as I. E. Lopert.
Harold Mirisch was an American film production company executive.
Hollywood on the Tiber is a phrase used to describe the period in the 1950s and 1960s when the Italian capital of Rome emerged as a major location for international filmmaking attracting many foreign productions to the Cinecittà studios. By contrast to the native Italian film industry, these movies were made in English for global release. Although the primary markets for such films were American and British audiences, they enjoyed widespread popularity in other countries, including Italy.
The Fred Allen Show is a long-running American radio comedy program starring comedian Fred Allen and his wife Portland Hoffa. Over the course of the program's 17-year run, it was sponsored by Linit Bath Soaps, Hellmann's, Ipana, Sal Hepatica, Texaco and Tenderleaf Tea. The program ended in 1949 under the sponsorship of the Ford Motor Company.
Produzioni Europee Associati (PEA) is an Italian film production company founded in 1962 by Alberto Grimaldi to produce international co-productions. It released its first feature film The Shadow of Zorro in December that year. Its next production was its first Spaghetti Western: Texas Ranger released in 1964.
Cathy Baker is an American actress, best known for her work on the American television variety show Hee Haw.
Events in 1910 in animation.