My Favorite Year
More fun than funny but rich in character and nostaligia
MY FAVORITE YEAR so far is one of this season’s favorite films. It’s appeal is partly due to its star—Peter O’Toole—the smartness of direction and the rich, infatuating nostaligia. The weakness of the competition has helped some, too.
The year referred to in the title is 1954, the heyday of live television. The place is New York City with the central action occurring in a pandemonious TV studio that produces “The Comedy Cavalcade,” a very lively “live” show starring Sid Caesar act-alike Stan “King” Kaiser. It is one of the shows fledgling writers, Benjy Stone, whose fond reminiscence the movie purports to be.
Benjy’s novitiate as writer and lover, turbulent enough already, is made chaotic and memorable when he arranges to have his screen idol, Alan Swann, appear on the show. Formerly a swashbuckling B-movie hero, Swann is now a dissolute rascal. Benjy attempts to save both his job and his hero, who must raise some money or be deported, by promising to keep Swann sober and out of trouble for one week.
Chaperoning Swann turns out to be hazardous and futile. With the best of intentions Benjy finds himself an accomplice to a sex-scandal, horse-theft, and a near-hanging. The association is productive, though: Swann counsels Benjy in romance and Benjy gets the fading legend to start thinking responsibly.
Their brief friendship is threatened when Swann decides to flunk a climactic test of character. In a tone devoid of reverence Benjy tells his idol just what is at stake: loyalty and belief and so forth. “Get this bum outa here,” he concludes.
The relationship is touching and fun and takes place amid a circus of likeable oddballs. Benjy’s family, for example, who commit every conceivable gaucherie when he brings home his movie star; and King Kaiser, chronically high strung and thoughtless, who placates an offended mobster by insulting him some more. Benjy’s workmates include a writer who never stops yelling and another who never speaks.
Joe Bologna is a riot as the comic King and O’Toole, as usual, is captivating. He renders up classifies and clowning in a mixture just right for this caressing poke at a more sanguine screen era.
Swann, like the movie as a whole, is both a parody and a reproduction of those brighter-than-life creations of earlier years. It seems that director Benjamin and his scriptwriters are as nostalgic as Benjy stone for the good old days of sword movies, corny TV comedy and even the frantic bedlam of live broadcasting. Period costume and clutter are profuse as though that, too, is blushingly missed.
The mood is hard to resist. As a persuasive tribute to merrier days of entertainment the movie stands. As a comedy in its own right it totters. Like writer Steinberg’s other recent movies, YES, GEORGIO, everything needed for a side-splitter is present except the gags. Too few are attempted and too many of those are duds.
Even with the paucity of humor and a curious inattention to the main character, Benjy, it’s a pleasing, well-executed, deservedly popular movie. It’s due to be moved on, though, so you’d better see it now.
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1. Published in the “Washington Missourian” December 8, 1982