ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Lou Costello's last movie was this one-and-only solo effort without his long-time partner. It's a lighthearted counter-part to "Attack of the 50-Foot Woman" with some really enjoyable moments, despite a weak ending and a general resemblance to movies like Disney's "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes".

Lou is a timid little inventor who wants to marry his girl friend (Dorothy Provine), but her father (Gale Gordon) doesn't approve.

One day the couple goes out to a canyon near town where uranium deposits create high radiation levels. Dorothy wanders into the wrong spot and -- Presto! she zooms up to monumental height, bursting out of her clothes.

Clever Lou goes to town and buys a parachute which Dorothy makes into a nifty silk dress. He also brings back the Justice of the Peace so he and Dorothy can be married.

There's a nice moonlit scene in which Dorothy lies prone across the landscape in her white dress, seductively lamenting the fact that her enlarged size prevents her and Lou from doing what comes naturally, even though its their wedding night.

Other problems caused by her size are more successfully solved by the resourceful Lou; he improvises a private shower for Dorothy by cutting a whole in his barn roof and then spraying water down onto her with a garden hose.

Meanwhile the Army is conducting war games in the area, and when they spot MegaDorothy they try to capture her. Lou turns them into cavemen with a time-reversal ray.

If you're a Lou Costello fan, give this one a try. Directed by Sidney Miller.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

A very mediocre film & sad way for Costello's film career to have ended.

A project he had hoped to develop before his death was the life of NYC Mayor LaGuardia. Now that I would have liked to have seen.

[Bud Brewster]

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I'm fond of Dorothy Provine because of her appearances in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Great Race, and the one pictured below, Kiss the Girls and Make them Die.


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[bulldogtrekker]

I remember this movie clearly, even though I have not seen it for over 40 years. One of the "jokes" is that Lou tells people that Dorothy is getting "big" (as growing in height) and people think that means that Dorothy is going to have a baby.

[Bud Brewster]

[Eadie]

[scotpens]

[ralfy]

You can download it using Jdownloader:

https://ok.ru/video/343523527310

[Bud Brewster]

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Thanks, Ralfy, but I think I'll err on the side of caution. I've had trouble with download apps during the last year, so I Googled "Is JDownloader safe?" and got this from Question | Mozilla Support.

"Downloading this JDownloader from http://jdownloader.org/download/index gets blocked as virus by IE, Chrome and Windows Defender. However, NOT from Firefox! If you install the adware bundled with this software, you get a horrible virus that injects fake google results."
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

[Pow]

Original title: "The Secret Bride of Candy Rock Mountain."

The movie was intended to spoof "The Amazing Colossal Man"(1957), "War of the Colossal Beast" (1958), "The Attack of the 50-foot Woman," (1958).

Due to the tight film budget the production was unable to construct a giant arm, leg, or foot.

Lou Costello found this film to be a challenging one. He did not have his former comedy partner Bud Abbott to play off for the first time in their in nearly 20-year career as a team.

Adding to that problem was Lou having to do scenes to thin air when Dorthy Provine as Emmy Lou Raven was depicted as a giant.

Her image would be added later in post~production. So Lou was having to play scenes to no one there.

Max's voice would also be added in post~production.

Some felt that this all conspired to throw off Lou's legendary timing and rhythm. He was very apologetic to the crew and would ask to shoot a scene again until he felt he performed it better. Many on the movie found Lou to be a kind and considerate gentleman during the shooting.

Dorthy Provine also had the same problem as Lou did when she was performing as the giant Emmy. She was doing her scenes alone and felt discombobulated by the whole process.
Provine was also concerned as to how her character would appear as a giant on screen.

Lou would die of a heart attack at the age of fifty-three on February 28, 1959. Only nine weeks after the film finished shooting.

His wife Anne would die on December 06, 1959 at forty-seven.

Their marriage had lasted twenty-five years and produced three daughters.

Some felt that the film's failure at the box office was due to the passing of the great comic prior to its release. The mediocre visual effects also hurt the movie, according to industry insiders, along with a so-so script..

[ralfy]

Thanks. I wonder what would happen if he tried to get the adware-free version:

https://jdownloader.org/jdownloader2

So far, I can't find anything else that can download from ok.ru except for Fast Video Downloader, but the free promo ended a month ago.

I'll see if I can find an online site or other program.

[Pow]

From author Gene Warren:

Almost lost in time now is this limp SF spoof, sunk by mediocre direction and an overly-gimmicked script.

Lou was much less boisterous on the set than he had been in the Abbott & Costello pictures. He wasn't part of a team now---just another actor in a picture. This time he went off alone between takes, finding himself a quiet corner so he could study lines. It was the first time in his movie career that he actually studied dialogue for a film. There was now something about the man that seemed almost melancholy.

Lou had good reason to be melancholy; the split with Bud had depressed him, even though he thought it was a good idea; 21 years together formed habits, if nothing else. His wife drank heavily, and he was still in financial trouble, though his (and Abbott's) highly-publicized bouts with the IRS were in the past.

Lewis Rachmil, who produced this film told Chris Costello (Lou's daughter), "Lou appeared at first as if he might be just a bit overwhelmed in not having Abbott as his foil.

Sidebar: Given all those issues going on in his life, I can well understand Lou's sadness. The breakup of Abbott & Costello wasn't under amicable circumstances between the two men. Their films and popularity were waning at the box office — enough so that Universal Studios had let the team go after being with the studio since their very first film, "One Night in the Tropics", which first came out on November 15, 1940, and ending with "Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy" in 1955 for a total of 28 films with Universal.

Lou and his wife's only son had drowned in the family pool on November 4, 1944. It was a devastating loss from which neither ever fully recovered. It is said that the worst death that can happen to anyone is for a parent to lose a child.

The sets of the Abbott and Costello films were madcap. Their friend Bobby Barber would pull pranks, be the victim of practical jokes. Pies were thrown, seltzer bottles of water sprayed as everyone ran around. Bud & Lou felt it kept their spirits & energy up and made shooting a film fun for everyone. There was also ongoing card games between takes.

All of that atmosphere was now gone as Lou embarked on a solo career. It makes perfect sense that his later appearances in film and television would be challenging for him as he was no longer part of one of the most famous movie comedy teams in history.

Gene Warren: The film received mostly lukewarm to negative reviews. Even Lou's own family was disappointed. Chris Costello says, "It was a bomb . . . I don't think he could've handled having his first movie without Bud Abbott be a failure . . . After seeing it, Mom said, 'This would've killed Lou if he'd seen it.' "

The script mixes many ideas, but would have been better to stick to fewer. Concentrating just on Lou and his big bride probably would have produced more laughs than all the gags centering around Max, or dragging in peculiarly Sinclair Lewis-like spoofs of small-town boosterism; surely the lame, obvious, and familiar Army jokes were unnecessary.

Furthermore. there are too many SF gimmicks. The idea of the regression of the troops should have been discarded, and to burden Lou with a giant wife and talking computer is overkill.

Sidebar: Warren's last comments are confusing. If the film wasn't all that hilarious, just how would focusing upon Lou & his giant bride been any funnier? The idea of a bride becoming a giantess has comic potential but only for a while. It could get old as the movie goes along unless you have a script by Neil Simon or Woody Allen.

Unfortunately this film had neither of those talents scripting it, or anyone else their equal.

So, now we'd be left with a prosaic story centering on Lou & his bride and no other stuff going on. Gene could be right that the overloaded script hurt the film. But a script that only featured Lou and his bride and little else would have potentially proved lackadaisical.

Abbott & Costello in Hollywood by Bob Furmanek and Ron Palumbo:

But the picture took a great toll on Lou. Chris Costello recalls. "I know he was ill when he made that film. I remember him coming home one night looking gray and exhausted. But I think he had to prove something to himself."

Nine weeks after completing the film, Lou collapsed of a heart attack on February 28, 1959. He was hospitalized and seemed to be improving when a second attack on March 4, claimed him.

Two days later he would have been fifty-three. His devoted wife, Anne, followed him on December 6, 1959., at age forty-seven. They were married for twenty-five years and left three daughters, Paddy, Carole, and Chris, and three grandsons.

Lew Rachmill confided, ''The film didn't make it for two reasons. Number one, when the effects were all finally done, they weren't all that slick. The second was, Lou had just died when the picture came out. The immediacy of that had a serious effect.

Ironically, 30-Foot Bride was released a few months before the Three Stooges feature, Have Rocket, Will Travel, a film that rejuvenated the team's career and proved that slapstick comedy had not died. In the wake of that picture, it is interesting to speculate what might have happened to Lou (as well as to Abbott & Costello) had Lou lived longer.

Sidebar: I'm assuming that authors Furmanek & Palumbo are suggesting that perhaps Bud & Lou might have teamed up again for feature films or TV specials.

I kinda doubt that. Their film popularity had significantly dropped at the box office. They had entertained audiences in film from just before World War II and into the 1950s. That's an admirable length for any comedy team career. They lasted longer in films than the Marx Brothers or Martin & Lewis.

Dean & Jerry had essentially eclipsed Bud & Lou's popularity with the public. I never found Dean & Jerry all that funny. They really were not a team in the sense of Bud & Lou. Jerry was really the whole act while Dean stood around and sang and was the love interest. I never felt they had a "magic' between them like Bud & Lou did.

The public had 16 years of Abbott & Costello films, as well as two seasons of their television series, and their recurring guest appearances on the Colgate Comedy Hour.

I think that although audiences were fond of the duo they also became tired of them after so long. Someone once wrote that comedians have a wonderful bag of tricks in their bag at the start of their careers that they produce for the audience. In time though, those gags become too familiar as they are constantly repeated. What was exciting and fresh becomes worn out unless new, original material is created.

Bud & Lou liked to stick with their well-honed classic routines. They had perfected 'em and were comfortable doing them. They also resisted new routines which would have freshened up their act. This would contribute to their decline in popularity.

Furthermore, both men were now older and not in the best of health. They could have done (again) their marvelous wordplay routines, but physical slapstick would have to be ruled out for the men.

I don't know if Bud & Lou would have ever reunited. It doesn't occur with comedy teams who have split up even under amicable circumstances. Lou had grown weary of their act and wanted to go off on his own to try new challenges.

Bud said he'd wait for Lou, but that was never to be.

I believe that Bud & Lou's time had passed. They were once gigantic in the film industry and with audiences. It was said that their movies actually saved Universal Pictures from going under.

They might have gotten together for a TV special or two. But I don't think the comedy duo would have somehow reignited their once immense popularity with future films.

The sun had set on their feature film career.

[Bud Brewster]

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Pow, it's obvious that you spent a great deal of time researching and composing your post above.

Great job!

I enjoyed reading your fine comment and learning all those fascinating (and sometimes sad) facts about Abbott & Costello.

Thanks!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

As always, Bud, you're welcome. And as always, it's fun for me to do and share any research as I learn so much.