[Quick Summary: Benny's unsuspecting dad and girlfriend face chaos when the town wants to popularize his unexpected Medal of Honor ceremony.]
TWO THOUGHTS:
1) SOMETIMES THREE COMEDY WRITERS ARE BETTER THAN ONE.
If you can believe IMDB, silent film comedy gag writer Jack Wagner got this idea during WWII but couldn't interest anyone.
So he enlisted his friend John Steinbeck to write the script and gin up interest.*
The script was also shaped by writer Frank Butler, also no comedy slouch.**
2) WHY DOES THIS SLAPSTICK GIRL FIGHT LAND WELL?
I would strongly recommend this script to comedy writers who are looking for slapstick comedy that comes out of character.
I think it was because Wagner and Butler were silent film writers that they naturally went the extra mile to find inventive ways to SHOW and not rely on dialogue.***
For example, I really liked clever use of payback (from a good setup-payoff) and unpredictability in the scene below.
Note:
- Lolita is loyal to Benny, though he hasn't written in 9 months.
- Joe pines for Lolita, Benny's girlfriend. He buys her a new dress for a dance.
- Lolita rejects the dress, but she is secretly attracted to Joe.
- Joe goes to a bar to sulk and meets Toodles, who says SHE is engaged to Benny.
- Joe gives Toodles the new dress and takes her to the party. (setup)
- Lolita sees Joe with Toodles, who wears HER dress. (setup)
- This is an inventive way for Joe to get his payback (payoff), as you'll see below.
What happens now happens fast: Toodles, boiling now, rushes Lolita back against the table, grabs up a beer bottle, and swings it savagely at Lolita's head. Lolita ducks, Toodles makes another wing at her, but Joe, stepping in, wrenches the bottle from her hand, turns and tosses it over the veranda rail. Simultaneously, and with a berserk yelp of fury, Toodles snatches up a large earthen-ware pot of chili-and-beans, raises it high and inverts in neatly over Joe's head, jams it well down over his ears, then straight arms him clear over the rail of the veranda. --But even as Joe's heels vanish, Lolita pins a terrific haymaker on Toodles' jaw and knocks her spinning through one of the doors into the pavilion - glass, frame and all. [I did not expect the beer bottle or haymaker!]
Six feet below the veranda rail, the pot wedged firmly over his head, Joe rises into a sitting position. The faces of Lolita, Charlie, and the others, appear over the rail staring down. They get one look at the "potted" Joe and burst into a roar of laughter. [Payoff is the reaction shot.]
Joe tries to get the pot off, but fails. Panic seizes him. He gets up, lunges forward --smack into one of the veranda pillars. The impact shatters the jar, and bangs him down again into a sitting position --his head and face a solid, indistinguishable mass of chili and beans. --There is another roar of laughter from the veranda. But Lolita is running down the steps toward the hapless Joe. [More payoff with the jar shattering, face full of chili.]
WHAT I'VE LEARNED: I thought this girl fight was constructed well: Good setup. Good payoff. Good character motivation (both mad at each other and Joe). Unexpected use of props.
A Medal for Benny (1945)
by Frank Butler
Additional dialogue by Jack Wagner
Adapted from a story by Jack Wagner & John Steinbeck
* It worked. Plus an Oscar nomination for them both.
** Butler wrote comedies for Bing Cosby and Bob Hope (Road to Moracco). He won an Oscar for Going My Way.
*** Read the script for a funny scene with farm animals let loose in a bank.
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