Adolphe Menjou seemed European to movie audiences, though he was actually from Pittsburgh and the son of a French father and an Irish mother. He often played debonair types who looked good in evening dress. In the 1941 comedy "Road Show," Menjou starts out dressed in a white suit a la Mark Twain, then changes into a giant-check zoot suit with enormous wide-brim hat.
In the film, Menjou plays a man who lives in a mental hospital, from which he's been able to escape if he wants. His main "symptom" is the Bloom-A-Daisy, an invention which is like one of those puff-of-smoke-from-the-flash-pan cameras. but which a hand-cranked Polaroid type print mechanism which... Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?
Menjou's zoot suit ensemble is perfect for the last scene in the film, in which the veteran actor, working at a small carnival, drives off thugs with a miniature baseball bat and, later, a fire hose.
No comments:
Post a Comment