Themes: All Washed Up, Fish Out of Water, Alcoholism
Main Cast: Peter O'Toole, Mark Linn-Baker, Jessica Harper, Joseph Bologna, Bill Macy
Release Year: 1982
Country: US
Run Time: 92 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Richard Benjamin's directorial debut is an engaging slice of nostalgia, purportedly based on an incident in life of Mel Brooks. Mark Linn-Baker stars as Benjy Stone, junior writer on the popular 1950s TV comedy/variety series The King Kaiser Show. Kaiser (Joseph Bologna)'s guest star this week is Hollywood matinee idol Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole), a swashbuckling Errol Flynn type, right down to his indiscriminate womanizing and fondness for mass quantities of booze. Stone is assigned to keep the actor out of trouble during rehearsals and deliver him sober to the performance. Becoming fast friends, Stone and Swann alternate baby-sitting responsibilities: Swann takes the young writer to the Stork Club and on an early-morning jaunt through Central Park with a "borrowed" police horse, while Stone takes Swann to his home in the Bronx, where the star is fawned over by Benji's mom (Lainie Kazan) and asked embarrassing questions about his love life by Uncle Morty (Lou Jacobi). Despite a few anxious moments, all goes well until Swann, panicking at the discovery that King Kaiser's show will be telecast live and not on film, walks out just before airtime. Shamed by Benjy into honoring his committment, Swann makes a spectacular, timber-smashing entrance, saving the show and rescuing Kaiser from being rubbed out by a gangster (Cameron Mitchell) whom the comedian has offended. Though it fluctuates between wistful realism and the manic exaggeration of a TV comedy sketch, My Favorite Year holds together quite well, delivering a plentitude of solid laughs. Jessica Harper, usually the star of bizarro films like Inserts and Suspiria, is quite appealing as Benjy Stone's girlfriend; that lady dancing with O'Toole at the Stork Club is 1930s film star Gloria Stuart, later an Oscar nominee for Titanic; the King Kaiser Show wardrobe mistress is played by Selma Diamond, a real-life comedy writer for Sid Caesar. My Favorite Year was converted into an unsuccessful Broadway musical in the early 1990s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
An excellent film from top to bottom, My Favorite Year captures a long-lost time and place to perfection through the use of very clever dialogue, humorous situations, and casting that is nearly as perfect as can be. The story, loosely based on the late career of Errol Flynn, involves a dissolute matinee idol named Alan Swann, played by Peter O'Toole, and his scheduled appearance on a live television variety show à la Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. Told through the eyes of junior writer Mark Linn-Baker, who idolizes Swann, the film is a tour de force for O'Toole that allows him to show off and stretch his comedic skills. Mostly associated with the great epics of his career, it's a delight watching O'Toole play this swashbuckling souse with such aplomb. Joseph Bologna, in the Caesar role, is truly wonderful, as he doesn't resort to stereotyping and has a definite edge to him that would not ordinarily be expected in someone who is more or less a clown. Linn-Baker has the put-upon look of exasperation down to a science, and gets to use it very well in the scenes with his overbearing mother, played by Lainie Kazan. Fans of Kazan from My Big Fat Greek Wedding will be interested in seeing her playing more or less the same role with a different ethnicity. Director Richard Benjamin shows a nice comedic touch in letting the more subtle humor shine through and many of the jokes are almost lost in the surrounding mayhem, but they are all very funny. The rest of the cast is a who's who of comedy character actors, including Bill Macy, Lou Jacobi, and the late great Adolph Green as Bologna's main foil. There are many little subplots that feed into the big climax, which is the live broadcast. The scene where O'Toole realizes that he is going to appear on live television and his subsequent reaction to that information is a classic. ~ Dan Friedman, All Movie Guide
Lainie Kazan - Belle Carroca; Anne de Salvo - Alice Miller; Basil Hoffman - Herb Lee; Lou Jacobi - Uncle Morty; Adolph Green - Leo Silver; Tony di Benedetto - Alfie Bumbacelli; George Wyner - Myron Fein; Selma Diamond - Lil; Cameron Mitchell - Karl Rojeck; Rex Benson - Makeup Man; Corinne Bohrer - Bonnie; Richard Brestoff - Stage Manager; Stanley Brock - Mr. Berkowitz; Philip Bruns - Fed. Marshal Holt; Nick Dimitri - Thug #4; Teresa Ganzel - Dumpling; Martin Garner - Mr. Cantor; Howard George - Artie; Ted Grossman - Marris; Karen Haber - Vivian; Archie Hahn III - Delivery Boy; Fox Harris - Curt; Barbra Horan - Lady Eleanor; Denver Mattson - Thug #1; John Medici - Scalfoni; Jed Mills - Member #1; Jenny Neumann - Connie; George Marshall Ruge - Lord Drummond; Vincent Sardi - Policeman; Pearl Shear - Mrs. Kessler; Gloria Stuart - Mrs. Horn; Richard Warwick - Technical Director; John Welsh - Cubby Brown; Norman Steinberg - Sandy; Phil Adams - Stagehand #1; Richard Butler - Stagehand #2; Priscilla Kovary - Priscilla; Ramon Sison - Rookie Carroca; George Fisher - Thug #2
Credit
May Routh - Costume Designer, William S. Beasley - First Assistant Director, Richard Benjamin - Director, Richard Chew - Editor, Ralph Burns - Composer (Music Score), Charles Rosen - Production Designer, Gerald Hirschfeld - Cinematographer, Art Levinson - Producer, Michael Levy - Producer, Michael Gruskoff - Producer, Donald J. Remacle - Set Designer, Herb Mulligan - Set Designer, Larry Rapaport - Set Designer, Chris Newman - Sound/Sound Designer, Jerry Jost - Sound/Sound Designer, Dennis Palumbo - Screen Story, Norman Steinberg - Screenwriter, Dennis Palumbo - Screenwriter
Benjy Stone (Mark Linn-Baker), the narrator, tells of the summer he met his idol. In the early days of television, Benjy works as a junior comedy writer for a variety show starring Stan "King" Kaiser (Joseph Bologna). As a special upcoming guest, they get the famous (though washed up) movie star Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole). However, when he shows up, they realize that he is a roaring drunk. Kaiser is ready to dump him, until Benjy intervenes and promises to keep him sober during the week leading up to the show.
As Benjy watches out for Swann (or at least tries to keep up with him), they learn a lot about each other, including the fact that they both have family they try to hide from the rest of the world. In Benjy's case, it's his Jewish mother (Lainie Kazan), who is married to a Filipino former bantamweightboxer, Rookie Carroca (Ramon Sison), and Benjy's embarrassing relatives, such as uncouth Uncle Morty (Lou Jacobi). For Swann, it is his young daughter Tess, who has been raised entirely by her mother, one of his many ex-wives. He stays away, but admires her from afar and continues to secretly keep tabs on her.
Meanwhile, Kaiser is threatened by corrupt union boss Karl Rojeck (Cameron Mitchell), who doesn't appreciate being parodied on the show. "Accidents" start happening during rehearsals when Kaiser refuses to stop performing the "Boss Hijack" sketches.
In a subplot, Benjy tries, clumsily and overenthusiastically, to win the affections of co-worker K. C. Downing (Jessica Harper). Swann advises him on the right approach.
On show night, Swann suffers a panic attack when he realizes that millions will be watching him live. (He is accustomed to getting many takes to get his lines right, crying—with a line which brought the house down when O'Toole appeared and showed a clip on The Tonight Show—"I'm not an actor, I'm a movie star!"). Swann gets drunk, but is confronted by Benjy, who angrily tells him that he always thought of Swann as the swashbuckling hero he saw on the big screen. As Benjy puts it, "Nobody's that good an actor!"
At this point, Rojeck's men show up and begin beating up Kaiser during the live broadcast of the show (with the audience thinking that it is part of the comedy sketch). Swann grabs a rope and swings into action (dressed as a Musketeer for a later skit), saving Kaiser in front of an appreciative if still clueless audience.
Benjy narrates the epilogue, relating that Swann, his confidence bolstered, finally gets up the nerve to visit his daughter the next day. But first Swann stands in front of a still applauding audience, taking a bow.
Relationship to real life
Mel Brooks, executive producer of the film, was a writer for the Sid Caesar variety program Your Show of Shows, early in his career. Movie swashbuckler Errol Flynn was a guest on one episode, and this real-life occurrence inspired Dennis Palumbo's largely fictional screenplay. Swann was obviously based on Flynn, while Benjy Stone is loosely based on both Brooks and Woody Allen, who also wrote for Caesar.
According to Brooks, the character of Rookie Carroca also was based on a real person, a Filipino sailor in the U. S. Navy who was his neighbor in Brooklyn. Much like Alan Brady on The Dick Van Dyke Show, King Kaiser represented Sid Caesar ("Kaiser" is the German equivalent of the Roman title Caesar). Selma Diamond, another former Your Show of Shows writer (who inspired Rose Marie's Sally Rogers character on The Dick Van Dyke Show), appears as a costume mistress.
Other writers from Your Show of Shows had already made their own use of their experiences. The comic play Laughter on the 23rd Floor by Neil Simon included thinly disguised versions of Sid Caesar and his staff, as did The Dick Van Dyke Show, which was created by Brooks' friend and colleague Carl Reiner (who would later star in Van Dyke's show as Alan Brady).
Brooks acknowledges that most of the movie's plot was fabricated. He says that Flynn's appearance on Your Show of Shows was uneventful, that none of the writers got much of a chance to talk to Flynn, let alone become his friend or take him home to dinner.
The film was the first directing effort for actor Richard Benjamin.
Trivia
In the episode of The Simpsons, "The Latest Gun In the West", former Western star Buck McCoy's drunken appearance on "The Krusty The Clown Show" is reminiscent of a scene in this film.
