Mary Martin Love Thy Neighbor 1940 Musical-Comedy Jack Benny Frank Allen

MARY MARTIN

JACK BENNY

FRED ALLEN

Two comedic titans of radio, Jack Benny and Fred Allen, kept their millions of weekly listeners in helpless hysterics with their on-going mock feud (in real life they were actually good, friends ) Paramount Pictures, sensing the box-office potential of this sublime lunacy, entrusted a generous budget to one of their top directors, Mark Sandrich. The side-splitting results packed movie houses as well as the studio's coffers. The story begins simply enough. On New Year's Eve, Benny accompanies his loyal valet Rochester (the immortal Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson) to pick up his fiancée Josephine (Theresa Harris) from a docking ocean liner. Josephine works as a maid for Allen's niece (the lovely, vivacious Mary Martin), who has just completed a South American tour. Allen is heading for the same dock to pick up Mary but, as fate would have it, his limo and Benny's beloved, decrepit old Maxwell crash into each other, giving the maniacal-with-malicious-glee Allen the opportunity to decimate Benny's vehicle into a pile of junk. What follows is 82 minutes of sheer pandemonium, interspersed with production numbers set to music by Jimmy van Heusen and Johnny Burke. The best is the catchy "Isn't That Just Like Love," sung by Ms. Martin, who then outdoes even herself with her sizzling rendition of "My Heart Belongs to Daddy," the seductive Cole Porter song that had made her an instant Broadway star two years earlier.

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Run-Time about 80 Minutes

Quality Excellent

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MARY MARTIN Love Thy Neighbor