Strike Me Pink (film)

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Strike Me Pink
Strike Me Pink 1936 poster.jpg
1936 Theatrical Poster
Directed by Norman Taurog
Written by Clarence Budington Kelland
Walter DeLeon
Francis Martin
Frank Butler
Philip Rapp
Produced by Samuel Goldwyn
Starring
Cinematography Merritt B. Gerstad
Edited by Sherman Todd
Music by Harold Arlen
Alfred Newman
Production
company
Distributed by United Artists
Release date
  • January 24, 1936 (1936-01-24)
Running time
100 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$1.7 million [1] [2]

Strike Me Pink is a 1936 American musical comedy film directed by Norman Taurog, starring Eddie Cantor and Ethel Merman, and produced by Samuel Goldwyn.

Contents

Cantor plays a nebbishy employee of an amusement park, forced to assert himself against a gang of slot-machine racketeers. The climax involves a wild chase over a roller coaster and in a hot-air balloon, filmed at The Pike in Long Beach, California. The film's sets were designed by the art director Richard Day.

The film was Eddie Cantor's sixth of six films for Goldwyn, all produced and released within seven years. The story derives from the novel Dreamland by the once-popular writer Clarence Budington Kelland, reworked as a 1933 stage musical comedy by Ray Henderson for Jimmy Durante.

Cast

Critical reception

Writing for The Spectator in 1936, Graham Greene gave the film a good review, pointing out that in addition to the comedic value, the actorly qualities of Eddie Cantor made the film a true success. Although Greene suggests that Cantor is not perhaps quite at the level of Charlie Chaplin, he describes the scene between Pink and the gunman is "superb", and suggests that "one will have to wait a very long time for any film funnier than this one". [3]

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References

  1. "WHICH CINEMA FILMS HAVE EARNED THE MOST MONEY SINCE 1914?". The Argus . Melbourne. 4 March 1944. p. 3 Supplement: The Argus Weekend magazine. Retrieved 6 August 2012 via National Library of Australia.
  2. Quigley Publishing Company "The All Time Best Sellers", International Motion Picture Almanac 1937-38 (1938) p 942 accessed 19 April 2014
  3. Greene, Graham (20 March 1936). "The Milky Way/Strike Me Pink/Night Mail/Crime and Punishment". The Spectator . (reprinted in: Taylor, John Russell, ed. (1980). The Pleasure Dome . pp.  59–60. ISBN   0192812866.)