I interrupt my consideration of The Magnificent
Ambersons for this entry in the Classic Movie
Blog Association’s Comedy Classics Blogathon.
For other posts in the blogathon, click on the
link; you’ll find my colleagues at CMBA holding
forth on comedies from City Lights to Pillow
Talk, from Ball of Fire to The Producers,
and on stars from Jean Harlow to Gene
Tierney. There are a lot of famous names
and revered titles on the agenda; trust
me to pick one you never heard of.

Miss Tatlock’s Millions (1948) is another one of those pre-1950 Paramounts now owned by Universal that I used to see regularly in late-night TV syndication, like Night Has a Thousand Eyes and Alias Nick Beal. That’s where I discovered it in the late 1960s — our local CBS affiliate dipped freely into the Paramount package, and after local news signed off at 11:30 p.m. it was movies every weeknight until the wee hours. Tatlock was one of the titles I used to search for every week in the Late Late Show listings as soon as we got the TV Guide home from the supermarket.

If (as it’s sometimes said) Charade and Witness for the Prosecution are the best Hitchcock movies Hitchcock never made, then Miss Tatlock’s Millions is one of the best Preston Sturges movies Preston Sturges never made. Of course Sturges (like Hitchcock) remains peerless, and I wouldn’t necessarily rank Miss Tatlock’s Millions up there with The Lady Eve or Sullivan’s Travels. But The Great McGinty? Christmas in July? Definitely. (And for that matter, miles ahead of The Sin of Harold Diddlebock or The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend.)

For starters, just take a gander at — feast your eyes upon — the roster of names on this poster. That’s what I call a pretty deep bench. I’ll get to all of them in time, but let’s begin with the fine print way down there at the bottom.

Charles Brackett’s name probably rings a bell, and well it should. He was Billy Wilder’s writing partner for 13 years; they turned out scripts for other directors (Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, Midnight, Ninotchka, Hold Back the Dawn) and, once Billy turned director, for Wilder himself (The Major and the Minor, Five Graves to Cairo, The Lost Weekend, and their mutual masterpiece Sunset Blvd.) Brackett teamed almost as often with young Richard Breen (Breen was 30 in 1948, Brackett 56), and five years later they would share an Oscar (with Walter Reisch) for writing the first Titanic with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck. Brackett and Breen came to Miss Tatlock’s Millions fresh from collaborating with Wilder on A Foreign Affair. (And by the way, for info on another Brackett-Breen collaboration, hop over to Tales of the Easily Distracted and read DorianTB on Henry Hathaway’s Niagara, another terrific Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock didn’t make. But I digress.)

 

 

Miss Tatlock’s Millions begins, like Sullivan’s Travels, with a midnight brawl between two men, this time in a seedy room rather than on a speeding train. Also like Sullivan’s Travels, the opener turns out to be a movie-within-the-movie tease. Not on the screen, but on the set: One of the two men crashes through a window, rolls across an overhang, falls on his back in the street below, and a voice shouts, “Okay, cut!” The director is Paramount ace Mitchell Leisen (“I had hoped he’d hit his head on the chimney coming down, but I guess that’s the best we can get.”), and the man who took the tumble is stuntman Tim Burke (John Lund), doubling for star Ray Milland. Leisen and Milland here make in-joke cameos, a favor to Brackett in return for ones he’s done them: scripts for Leisen (Midnight, Hold Back the Dawn, To Each His Own), roles — and an Oscar — for Milland (The Major and the Minor; Arise, My Love; The Uninvited; The Lost Weekend). (And say, check out that nameless script girl standing between them; eager to make an impression, or what?)

As he leaves the set, Burke is approached by Denno Noonan (Barry Fitzgerald), who found him through a picture file at Central Casting. Noonan is the social secretary (i.e., “keeper”) for one Schuyler Tatlock, the eccentric (i.e., “barking mad”) scion of the wealthy Santa Barbara Tatlocks, shipped off by his concerned (i.e., “embarrassed”) family to the safe distance of the Hawaiian Islands. That is, he was Schuyler’s keeper — until two years ago, when Schuyler, indulging his weakness for matches, burned himself to death while Noonan was in the village indulging his own weakness for Irish whisky. Noonan never told the family, just stayed there enjoying the sunshine, tropical breezes, and $500-a-month allowance checks. But now Schuyler’s grandparents have both died, and Noonan must produce him for the reading of the will; he wants to hire Burke to impersonate Schuyler, “a thousand dollars in 48 hours and no physical discomfort whatsoever.” Noonan insists the family won’t know the difference — “They haven’t seen him in ten years and they didn’t look at him then.” Looking at a snapshot, Burke admits there is a strong resemblance. Of course, he’ll have to darken his blonde hair, adopt the glasses Schuyler always wore…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…and put the proper expression on his face.

 

 

Burke is still dubious, but as Noonan wisely points out, it beats falling off buildings for 150 bucks a pop, so before long they’re motoring up the Coast Highway toward Santa Barbara. That’s where Burke gets his first glimpse of the Tatlock estate. “Just a sweet little family cottage,” Noonan explains, “with 22 bathrooms.” “How come they didn’t buy the Pacific Ocean too?” asks Burke. “They would’ve,” Noonan says, “only they couldn’t landscape the other side.”

In that sweet little cottage up there, the heirs of Grandfather and Grandmother Tatlock have started to gather. Already there is Schuyler’s younger sister Nancy (Wanda Hendrix), who lived with her grandparents, joined by her uncles Gifford (Dan Tobin) and Miles (Monty Woolley) and Miles’s wife Emily (Dorothy Stickney). Emily is sweetly engrossed in her embroidery, but the two brothers are already licking their chops. Miles calculates that after all the assorted taxes and fees, their parents’ estate will come to “only” about $6 million. “As a practicing communist, you should be pleased.” “Gifford’s not a communist, Miles dear,” Emily says; “he just likes to see his name on letterheads.” “Oh, I admit you’re not one by conviction,” says Miles. “You just haven’t the guts to face being a rich man.” Nancy is appalled at their naked greed and goes for a walk in the vast garden (with its $900-a-month watering bill).

Finally, Burke/Schuyler meets 19-year-old Nancy, who greets him affectionately and remembers how he was “so sweet to me when I was little.” Burke is speechless, not sure how to respond, and Nancy turns dolefully to Noonan. “He’s worse, isn’t he?” Nancy is beautiful, fetching and open-hearted, and it’s a real effort for Burke to maintain Schuyler’s idiot grin. This job is getting more complicated by the minute.

The next morning at breakfast, Miles, Cassie and Gifford fawn over their new favorite nephew, then ignore him as he climbs under the patio table, complacently sure that their conversation will go over his head — literally and figuratively. From his perch at their feet, Burke hears the three siblings cut a deal: Miles and Gifford will have themselves made Schuyler’s trustees, and will then settle a generous allowance — “Say, $100,000 a year for life” — on Nancy, which Cassie will gain control of by marrying Nancy off to Nicky.

That night after dinner, Nicky turns up the heat over candlelight and cocktails in the greenhouse. Meanwhile, Burke prowls protectively (and jealously) in the trees overhead, keeping an eye on the snake Nicky’s progress. Suddenly he slips and falls through the glass roof, landing flat on his back at Nicky and Nancy’s feet, in a real-life reprise of the stunt that opens the picture. This time, however, he’s injured and momentarily stunned. Before his head can clear, he speaks to Nancy, forgetting to keep up the babbling Schuyler act. Nancy is thrilled, convinced that the shock has knocked Schuyler into his right mind, and that she has “a real brother” at last.

In the days that follow, Nancy appoints herself Schuyler’s personal therapist, moving him into the room next to hers, nursing him back to health, planning to take over his education and ease him into adult society. The aunt and uncles scramble to ingratiate themselves with their newly-competent nephew. And Nicky pouts and fumes that suddenly Nancy has no time for him.