Part 9: Lug-holes… and Mince Pies
This is the ninth of a ten part series by John Repsch, telling some of the stories from the history of the Goon Show. This article first appeared in Newsletter 130 in July 2010.
“Henry, there’s someone knocking on the door.” Now, though, we could actually see who it was that was knocking, and watch Henry Crun hobbling off to find out too. It was 1956 and a 29-minute short called The Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn was hammering away in cinemas around the country. This was the latest spin-off movie to try capturing the essence of The Goon Show.
The first attempt had been in 1951 with Penny Points to Paradise. Written by the permanently unknown John Ormonde, the plot centres on Harry, playing Harry Flakers, a working class everyman who wins £100,000 on the pools. Unaffected by the windfall, he and his mate Spike Donnelly travel down to Brighton for a holiday in a seedy guest house, taking the money with them. There the place is alive with people out to relieve them of it.
The film has not dated well. It comes across more as a simple, knockabout comedy than anything you would expect from the team whose surreal radio antics revolutionized comedy. True, for Goon rarity value every frame is sacred, but were it not for the fact that this 77-minute production marked the start of three illustrious careers, the whole thing would have long since been pushing up the daisies.
Sellers was of a similarly uncomplimentary opinion twenty years later when ‘Photoplay’ asked him if he remembered his first appearance in front of a camera: “Well, if you like to call it an appearance, yes. Spike, Harry, myself, Alfred Marks, Bill Kerr, Paddie O’Neil once made a film for £100 each in Brighton Studios called Penny Points to Paradise, which was about the football pools. It really was a terrifyingly bad film! I played an old colonel of about 60, but the make-up man was unable to make me look any older than I was. All he could do was make my hair white. I looked like a very young man with white hair!”
Sellers’ role was that of Major Arnold P. Fringe. The scatty character offers a faint gleam of Goonery when he suggests that Harry’s fortune would be best invested in such schemes as his North Pole Coconut Corporation. The major is an early version of Bloodnok, but one which the later Bloodnok could have had for breakfast and belched out with his curried eggs. Sellers continues: “It was a sort of character part, running around saying, ‘Ah, there you are, Harry m’boy!’ I didn’t know what to do with my hands. If you see the film, you’ll find me waving and pointing. ‘Ah, there you are, Harry m’boy!’ Every time he came in the room, whenever anything was happening – ‘Ah, there you are, Harry m’boy!’ Jimmy Grafton, who collaborated on the script, he used to write that at the beginning of every piece of dialogue of mine. I’d come out of the loo saying, ‘Aaah, there you are, Harry m’boy!'”
SPIKE Harry? Harry? My name’s Spike. You know, Major, this is wearing a bit thin.
MAJOR Is it, my boy? So it is. Oh well, we can soon remedy that. Two large gins, please.
[HARRY and SPIKE leave, fleeing the pub bore.]
MAJOR [to himself] Ah, you’d never think it, would you? They all seem to have contracted the dreadful affliction, the Spondoolicks. A most pernicious disease. The natives used to get it in their bazaars. They used to go mad and bite dogs. We had to shoot them. Sometimes we had to shoot the dogs as well. They weren’t very pleased about it, you know…
As for Spike’s character, he doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself, so settles for pulling faces and rolling his eyes a lot.
With admirable memory recall, Peter describes how the film was promoted: “Harry, Spike and I were billed for it as the White Faced Coons or White Coons – the word Goons hadn’t registered yet: ‘Chocolate Coons or White Coons: Peter Sellers acts, Harry Secombe sings and Spike Milligan plays the fool in Penny Points to Paradise!’ It was a pretty shocking movie and yet we thought, ‘Hollywood, here we come!’ We thought that, but we didn’t come – neither did the film…”
However, the film may not have been quite so “terrifyingly bad” if, as Peter claimed in 1955, it only cost £9,000 but made £75,000. And to put it in context, the film was made before Crazy People had even begun, and before they had built up confidence for the big screen. On top of that, any manic desire to chew up the scenery and fly off into fantasy land was tightly straitjacketed by a break-neck time schedule and a frayed shoestring budget. So it is no seizure-inducing shock that the project was mainly a device to showcase individual acts, impersonations and humorous sketches, with scant regard for their having anything to do with advancing the plot.
But had that not been the case we would have lost Harry’s famous shaving act. Gone too would have been a couple of funny moments when Harry mimes a nervous surgeon carrying out a heart operation, and also takes part in a stage act where he is hypnotized into thinking he is a soprano, and duets with a girl singing bass.
Getting Penny Points canned within three weeks earned them the luxury of making another one! One week’s spare studio time was all it took for Let’s Go Crazy (running time: 32 minutes). Scripted and improvised by Sellers and Milligan, it stars the two of them in a posh nightclub, and provides the anarchic edge that the previous one lacks. While Spike plays a human version of Eccles, Peter lets loose five characters out of his hat, including the old favourite Crystal Jollibottom from Ray’s a Laugh days, and the even older favourite Groucho from Marx Brothers moviemania.
Sellers, looking and sounding every bit like Groucho, asks Spike the waiter, “Do you serve crabs here? Well, serve my friend,” and taking a crab out of his pocket adds, “He hasn’t eaten for three weeks.” Then making her grand entrance as the outrageous dowager-type, Jellibottom is asked if she has a reservation. What an audacity! “Reservation? What do you think I am – a Red Indian?”
Back to Groucho prancing about between the tables, informing us that “What I am about to do has been censored,” and exiting. Off-screen we hear a girl scream. Groucho reappears saying, “It’s a shame you missed that scene.” But we didn’t. As Spike used to say, “The pictures are better on the other side of the eyes.”
Meanwhile fusty musical and variety acts come and go, offering the same olde-tyme curiosity value as those Brighton streets in Penny Points. But one of them stands out from all the rest, with a macabre, surreal look about it. To the music of Rossini, an acrobatic duo balletically act out ways to kill each other. Taking it in turn to wallop and ravage, the man pummels the woman with a violin, and she returns the compliment by stamping on his chest in high heels. For any self-respecting sado-masochist, Let’s Go Crazy is worth watching for this scene alone, and the Milligan-Sellers contributions are a bonus. It certainly knocked spots off what was to follow.
Like Penny Points, Down Among the Z Men is of more interest as a historical document than for its comic content. Putting it bluntly, if you have 71 minutes to spare and want a good laugh, you don’t sit down to watch Down Among the Z Men. On the other hand, if you simply want to gawp at the phenomenon of all four original Goons together on film for the first and final time or to sail the seven seas spreading the word that your eyes have seen the glory of Michael Bentine’s ‘chair-back’ routine, this is the one to watch.
The storyline revolves around a secret atomic formula and Harry’s attempts to foil the crooks who are after it. Grocery assistant Harry Jones follows inventor Professor Osric Pureheart, played by Bentine, to an Army camp. Spike gives a mild rendering of Private Eccles; Harry is a charming, accident-prone buffoon, though fails to hold this misbegotten mess together in the way that Neddie does in The Goon Show; and Sellers plays it straight as the commanding officer, another diluted Bloodnok. He has his moment, though, in a comedy revue impersonation of two American hern-herns, showcasing his extraordinary skill at switching between characters. Listen closely and you should hear stagehands laughing out of shot behind the camera.
If anyone is memorable it is the wild-haired Bentine, slicing off the ham in hunks and managing to stay cross-eyed throughout the picture. Playing his radio character, he comes across as more bizarre than funny, though a ‘Time Out’ reviewer described him as “one of the funniest absent-minded professors to wander across a movie screen”, and some-one else suggested that Jerry Lewis must have used this as a training film.
Basically the whole thing is a cringe-making waste of talent. Imagine signing up the Monty Python team to make a movie in the 1970s, then telling them that they won’t be writing it because you have booked other scriptwriters, along with a glamorous leading lady, dancers and assorted novelty acts. That is what happened in 1952 to the Goons, Britain’s hottest new comedy act, when small-time movie featurette producer E.J. Fancey got his hands on them.
It was probably Fancey who Sellers had in mind when bemoaning it all nearly thirty years later: “We were working with crap. We thought it didn’t matter what you did, it’s Hollywood! This is it! But this film fellow said, ‘They don’t understand that Goon stuff… You’ve got to give it to them on the nail. And don’t do none of them funny voices, because they don’t understand ’em either…'”
Nor were the actors helped by the film’s skinflint budget and its 2-week shooting schedule. It allowed them but one take per shot, unless an absolute disaster occurred, and the risk of fluffing a line or a move was an uncomfortable truss. Graham Stark, who was also playing a part, wrote about it in his book ‘Remembering Peter Sellers’ recalling the small studio in North London’s Maida Vale and how things got off to a bumpy start: “The first morning of filming, Peter and I learnt a lesson which we never forgot. Full of excitement and enthusiasm, we cornered the poor, innocent director as he was surveying the tiny set, no doubt wondering how, in God’s name, he was going to shoot in this cramped area, and what was he doing trying to get a picture out in two weeks with an inexperienced cast. To add salt to the wound he was then faced with two actors, one dressed as a military man (Peter), the other as a crook (me). Peter started launching into his own personal exposition of his part. ‘I feel,’ he said, ‘that the character I am playing has certain undercurrents of repression which I might best express by having a noticeable twitch.’
“Then it was my turn. ‘If I could just suggest the cigarette always stuck in the side of the mouth,’ I said, ‘thereby allowing me a permanent sneer, I think it might add considerably to the depth of my portrayal.’
The director, a tall figure still wearing his RAF officer’s greatcoat, gazed above our heads for a silent moment. Then he looked down at us. ‘I’ve got eight minutes’ screen time a day to shoot,’ he said. ‘Do it quickly.’ He then walked away.”
Further stifling any hint of laughter are some distracting songs by the pretty Carol Carr, and the appearances of a squad of shapely showgirls. Having said that, the more perceptive critics might rate their precision-timed dance numbers as the best bits of the film, offering relief from the stress of un-funny comedy.
Stating the obvious, both Z Men and Penny Points would have been better if the Goons had written them. Given a strong script and a well-attuned director, Z Men could have absorbed the musical numbers, just as the Marx Brothers’ director Sam Wood did with A Day at the Races and A Night at the Opera.
In a ‘Picturegoer‘ article (19.2.55), Peter explains how the Goons had a lot to live up to in the eyes of discerning fans: “Such an audience will be satisfied only with the real thing; the essence of Goonery must be captured, or we’re liable to lose a lot of adherents. Which is just why the two attempts to date to make Goon films have, in the long run, done us a disservice, although they made a large amount of money.
“Penny Points to Paradise, which cost £9,000, has made up to the present time £75,000; Down Among the Z Men has also amassed profits running into thousands. [Some sources contradict this. Wikipedia claims that Z Men was not a commercial success, and ‘Time Out’ that it was a flop.] In neither film was the story ours, nor had we any say in the direction.
“Until a brilliant director with an acute sense of contemporary humour, who would be prepared to let us co-direct, comes along, The Goon Show must remain purely radio entertainment; by allowing ourselves to be presented into unsuitable films, we end by pleasing no one.
“On the other hand, with the right set-up, I think the Goons on film could be startlingly successful, provided that an unconventional technique were used.
“Certain characters, for example Bluebottle, could not convincingly be humanized – so a form of cartoon on film, seen successfully in an early Gene Kelly musical, might be employed.
“Bloodnok, Seagoon, Eccles, Henry Crun and Minnie Bannister could be brought to life in human form and the result might well be a new form of film comedy with an international appeal.”
And that little digression boots us back to where we started: The Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn. The writing of this one was a big joint effort based on a story by Larry Stephens; co-written by Larry, Harry Booth and Jon Penington (all prolific script-writers); and re-written on-set by Milligan and Sellers. The director was Joseph (Whisky Galore editor) Sterling, and working on his first case as producer was Michael Deeley.
This time the team struck gold. Battle Horn is arguably the best example of Goon humour on film, and the nearest they would get to a filmed Goon Show, or rather to the more gravity-bound Telegoons. Bursting with inspired puns, double-entendres and sight gags – with some of the jokes lifted straight from Goon Shows – it’s an early instance of the straight-faced send-up of movie cliches, later popularized by Airplane! and The Naked Gun. Battle Horn cocks a snook at the C.I.D., taking its structure and presentation from Edgar Lustgarten’s series of half-hour Scotland Yard crime films, and sharing the same Merton Park film Studios in South-west London.
On this occasion Harry’s shoes were filled by the multi-impersonating Dick Emery. The absence of the ‘golden-voiced Goon’ was always assumed to be due to prior engagements, but the producer now suggests that Harry wanted too high a fee to appear in the film. Whatever the truth, much as we miss seeing him, it’s to the film’s advantage that we don’t. Given Harry’s self-confessed difficulty with voicing any voice but his own, he would have been hard-pressed to do justice to all the roles Dick Emery played.
Sellers, meanwhile, presents another gallery of caricatures which, for all their absurdity, are not overplayed like those of his co-stars, and thus imply a feel of real people about them.
Naturally the star of the show is the fabulously rare musical monstrosity known as the Mukkinese Battle Horn. Shock, horror, someone swipes it from a museum and triggers an intrepid hunt for the thing. Cold on the trail is Sellers as Supt Quilt, a forerunner of Clouseau in all but accent, and Milligan as Sgt Brown, Quilt’s even more hopeless sidekick. And shadowing their every move are the dramatic chords of an orchestra, blaring out their suspense whenever something ridiculous happens.
Arriving in the museum, Quilt and Brown look around.
WOMAN PC Good morning, sir.
QUILT Good morning, constable. Where’s the body?
WOMAN PC Body, sir? Oh, there’s no body here.
QUILT You mean… we’re alone?
[MUSIC: Romantic theme]
[NARRATOR Wasting no time, Supt Quilt and Sgt Brown begin a thorough search for clues.]
BROWN Look, sir. [Strikes dramatic pose, pointing at floor] An impression of a heel.
QUILT Very clever, Brown, but we haven’t time for your impressions now.
[He crosses to the display cabinet which had housed the battle horn before it was smashed by a brick. He addresses Nodule, the curator (played by Emery).]
What’s all this about, eh?
NODULE That. Oh, we had a robbery last night.
QUILT A robbery. Anything stolen? Let’s have a look. [Reads name-plate.] “Metropolitan Museum. Mukkinese Battle Horn, 9th century, copper inlaid with rubies and emeralds.” [Lifts out brick from within cabinet.] You’ve been swindled, old man.
NODULE What?
QUILT Yes, this is an ordinary house brick.
NODULE I know. The Mukkinese Battle Horn has been stolen.
QUILT What? [Drops brick on Nodule’s foot.]
NODULE Aaah!
QUILT I must warn you that anything you say will be taken down and used in evidence against you.
A hotch-potch of witnesses present themselves for interrogation, including an Eccles character who comes across as stupid but without the redeeming qualities of the radio Eccles. Spike makes up for it, though, in his star turn as an unemployed silent movie actor who blunders into the police HQ thinking he is in the labour exchange and asking – in movie captions – for his money.
Tactical advice from on high is provided by the Assistant Commissioner, Sir Jervis Fruit, giving a fruity impression of Sellers taking off Grytpype-Thynne. Camp decadence personified, Fruit lounges on his chaise longue in a smoking jacket, clasping a white telephone in one hand and a long cigarette holder in the other. He instructs Quilt to enquire after a battle horn at all known pawnshops, and to take every precaution. Oscar Wilde would have been proud of the dear boy.
Suddenly something crashes through Quilt’s office window. Is this a clue? No, it’s a rock with the owner’s name and address attached: ‘Fred Smith, window repairer, 14a Hurley Street.’ “Why,” exclaims Brown, “that’s 14a Hurley Street.” – “Yes,” replies Quilt, “and no more than a stone’s throw from here.” Off they go in search of pawnshops.
Eventually they arrive at one with its three-ball sign augmented by an extra ball – “Business must be good” – whose premises are fortunately closed. Had the shop been open, they would not have needed to knock, and we would have remained bereft of a visual version of all those “Someone’s knocking on the door” scenes between Crun and Bannister. Henry dithers amongst the dust while, off-screen, Minnie bleats in harmony with the battering on the door. But why doesn’t she appear? Has she lost her old set of gnashers and just can’t get the wood? It’s still priceless, though.
The rest of the story has more twists and turns than a Turgistan corkscrew, ending in a transport of hysterical chaos – or chaotic hysteria. That may have something to do with the behind-the-scenes turmoil that the Sellers biographer, Roger Lewis, to work with but terribly trying. They’re changing the gags all the time.”
Lewis says that halfway through shooting, Spike suffered a mental breakdown, and he has dug up a statement from Peter describing its repercussions. The film, Peter said, was “a very unfortunate affair which I would like to explain. This was going to be a short film made exactly as we wanted it. We had a group of film makers who were interested in doing this with us; but at the time it went to the floor, my colleague Spike Milligan was taken ill and we were left with an uncompleted script. These people couldn’t put off the shooting date as they had already booked the studios, so we had to go ahead and literally write from day to day on the floor, which spoilt it. We had about three ideas in the beginning of the film which were good, but the rest was made up as we went along. This is no way to make a picture…”
Lewis promptly redirects the blame to Sellers for his own “frivolity” on the set and for the sulks he had when his “wild ideas” were not accepted. Lewis also mentions a row with a continuity girl who had not been informed of a script change he had made, and that Sellers caused one young actress to cry because “Nobody tells you anything. I think that I’m in this scene now, but I don’t know.”
Despite all that, Battle Horn did good business. In 1975 it was again well received when it was re-released as the support feature to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Its producer, Michael Deeley, has since clocked up The Italian Job, The Deer Hunter and Blade Runner, but thinks that, pound for pound, The Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn is probably his most successful film: “It cost £4,500 and I reckon it has netted me over £100,000 over the last thirty to forty years.”
Hats off to all those guilty of being implicated in it.
The Goon Show Preservation Society 