A fast-talking hustler (Bob Hope) dreams up a scheme to open a home for old ladies and then dump ’em on the street come Christmas day. For decades, America’s most enduring comedian spent his holidays overseas selflessly entertaining our troops, only to bring filmed evidence of his munificence back to NBC where it could be spun into ratings gold. As a child, I ran from Bob Hope Christmas Specials. Now I run to them. Hope is an acquired taste. For every legitimately funny comedy he turned out in his artistic glory days on the Paramount backlot, there are mile-high stacks of idiot cards, testimony to his indolent, post-’60s television work. They sit gathering dust in Old Ski Nose’s joke vault, with nary an intentionally funny barb scrawled across one of them. Hope’s greatest contributions to movie comedy were hatched under Frank Tashlin’s watch. A former Looney Tunes animator and future guru to Jerry Lewis, Tashlin seldom seemed to discriminate between characters made of flesh and blood and those drawn of pen and ink. The Lemon Drop Kid was the director’s first stab at a live-action “cinematoon.” Paramount was not pleased with director Sidney Lanfield’s dailies, so they brought duffer Tash on board to bat cleanup. Lanfield received sole screen credit, but it was Tashlin who directed a good one-third of the film. The film introduced Jay Livingston and Ray Evans’s holiday classic, “Silver Bells.” With all the subsequent versions Xeroxed for Hope’s numerous televised extravaganzas, none compare to this thriftless rendition. Oddly enough, the film was not part of Paramount’s 1950 Christmas package. (It was released in March of 1951.) After Bing Crosby’s recording of “Silver Bells” set the charts on fire in December of 1950, Paramount reassembled the cast and crew to stage a more elaborate filming of the musical number. Hope, in full Santa regalia, and alongside leading lady (and offscreen paramour) Marilyn Maxwell, stroll arm-in-arm crooning his signature Christmas tune, through art directors Hal Pereira and Franz Bachelin’s meticulous soundstage simulation of a bustling Manhattan snowscape. For its climax, a heavenly chorus kicks in, and the music rises to a crescendo as the crane elevates the camera within inches of piercing the studio roof. The farther back we get, the more muffled the city’s sounds become. Music and picture gently entwine as a dissolve reveals a miniature cityscape blanketed by white. When it comes to snow, Tashlin’s man-made dusting is the closest this lapsed-Midwesterner will ever get to feeling sentimental effusion. (1951) — Scott Marks
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