You’ll Find Out
by Susan King
During the “Ghoul-den” Age of Hollywood, horror Meisters Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi made eight films together including such classics as 1934’s “The Black Cat,” 1939’s “Son of Frankenstein” and 1945’s “The Body Snatcher.” Their seventh collaboration, 1940’s “You’ll Find Out,” marks the only time Peter Lorre worked with the duo. Ironically, they are the supporting players in the hit film which is a monster mash of an old-dark-house horror flick, big band musical and comedy.
"You’ll Find Out” is not a graveyard smash but is worth watching this Halloween as a curio. The film’s star, Kay Kyser, was the exuberant swing-era band leader of the Kollege of Musical Knowledge. No wonder his nickname was the Ol’ Professor; he wore an academic cap and gown and used a professor’s pointer to lead his band. Kyser would later confess he never learned how to read music or play an instrument. His NBC radio show was a combination of music, comedy bits and a quiz show. In fact, “diplomas” were sent to listeners who had sent in quiz questions that were used on the air.
His radio show was in the top ten for 11 years and he had 11 No. 1 records and 35 top ten recordings including “Three Little Fishes” and “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.” One of the band’s breakout stars was coronet man and comic relief Merwyn Bogue, who went by the name Ish Kabibble. Tall and goofy, he sported a weird bowl cut hair style — Jim Carrey had to have copied it for “Dumb and Dumber” — and was introduced as “the guy with the low-cut bangs and the high-kicking coronet.”
Kabibble also excelled in such comic poems such as: “I sneezed into the air; it fell to earth I know not where; But you should have seen the looks on those in whose vicinity I snooze.” Humor has certainly changed in the past eight decades!
Hollywood soon came calling; Kyser and the orchestra made their debuts in RKO’s 1939 musical comedy “That’s Right — You’re Wrong” which was a Kyser catchphrase. The movie, directed by David Butler and co-starring Lucille Ball, was a big hit which led to “You’ll Find Out. “
Butler returned as director for “You’ll Find Out,” which finds Kyser, and the band hired to perform at the 21st birthday party of a very naïve heiress (Helen Parrish). The party takes place on a dark and stormy night at a creepy old mansion filled with secret rooms and staircases — think “The Old Dark House.” Karloff plays the family’s fatherly longtime attorney who has hired a phony psychic (Lugosi) and an alleged expert (Lorre) on the supernatural in a plot to murder the heiress so he can take control of her huge inheritance. But the bespectacled Kyser and Kabibble keep getting in the way.
Audiences loved the movie — Kyser would make five more movies after “You’ll Find Out” — though critics, such as the New York Times’ Bosley Crowther, were not impressed describing it as “one of those silly shudder comedies” adding, “apparently the script writers were scared out of their wits by their own ideas, for the dialogue and plot developments indicate that little was devoted to them.”
TCM.com describes Kyser’s humor as an “acquired taste.” What may have been funny on the radio, just doesn’t translate to the big screen. And Kyser and Kabibble’s antics wear thin. But that isn’t the case with the three iconic actors who seem to be having a field day spoofing their onscreen personae. Butler would later say that making “You’ll Find Out” was “one of the happiest [movies] I ever did. Everybody simply had fun making it.”
In between the shenanigans, there’re many musical numbers including the Oscar-nominated “I’d Know You Anywhere” performed by Ginny Sims, “You Got Me This Way” sung by Harry Babbitt and the novelty tune, “The Bad Humor Man” featuring Kabibble. According to TCM.com, the song was originally designed for the trio as “We’re the Bad Humor Man” but the idea, unfortunately, was dropped.
Supposedly, Karloff, Lugosi and Lorre were set to reunite in 1943 in a movie that was never made, “Chamber of Horrors.” Karloff and Lorre, who became friends on the set of “You’ll Find Out,” would appear together in the 1963 Roger Corman films “The Raven” and “The Comedy of Terrors.”
As for Kyser, he would retire in 1951 and became active as a Christian Scientist until his death in 1985 at the age of 79.
Susan King was a film/TV/theater writer at the Los Angeles Times for 26 years specializing in Classic Hollywood.
コメント