JACK AND THE BEANSTALK (1952)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

"Oh, Mother! When am I gonna prove I'm a man?"-- Jack, just before cutting down the giant-bearing beanstalk.

Despite this film's inclusion of a talking harp, a goose that lays golden eggs, and a (human-sized) giant, all the overt fantasies are just products of a sleeper's imagination, though inevitably they're a great deal more structured than any real dreams.

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK was one of a handful of films that Bud Abbott and Lou Costello released from an independent company while still appearing in MGM features. BEANSTALK doesn't seem to be a favorite with A&C enthusiasts, but I find it more inventive than a lot of their mundane forties works. 

The film is transparently modeled on the 1939 WIZARD OF OZ. Not only is the color portion of the film bookended by black-and-white framing sequences, most of the main characters introduced in the frame-story mirror characters in the dream of Jack Strong (Costello). Nearly no time is spent on Costello's Jack or Abbott's Dinkle; they merely exist to set up the journey into dreamland. After Jack and Dinkle have encountered the negligible "real world" characters played by Buddy Baer, Dorothy Ford, Shaye Cogan and James Alexander, Dinkle lands Jack a job babysitting for an obnoxious child (David Stollery). While attempting to put the boy to sleep by reading "Jack and the Beanstalk" (the Costello character's favorite fairy tale, indicating that he's a big kid himself), Jack falls asleep himself, and dreams an A&C version of the fairy tale.

Dinkle, rechristened "Dinklepuss" in the dream, follows the usual Bud Abbott pattern, trying to get the Costello-character to do all the work in their partnership. Folktale-Jack seems to know a few of the tropes of his story in advance. Told by his mother to sell the family cow to Butcher Dinkelpuss, Jack refuses mere gold and insists on payment in magic beans. Dinkelpuss gives Jack ordinary beans, yet as if infused by the boyish fellow's naive belief, following the usual planting the beans grow into a huge beanstalk. Though Jack's mother says something about how the giant slew Jack's father, the dimbulb hero doesn't decide to climb the stalk until he hears news that the giant has stolen Princess Eloise. (How the giant gets from his cloud-kingdom to Earth is never mentioned.) Jack, who sings about his desire to prove himself, decides to rescue the princess, while Dinkelpuss goes along in the hope of stealing the giant's treasures.

I should note that none of the antics in the giant's cloud-kingdom resemble anything in WIZARD OF OZ, except that we see Baer as the hulking giant, Ford as his very tall (but still human) housekeeper, and Cogan and Alexander playing respectively the princess and a prince of a neighboring country, whose purpose is to provide the film with a romantic B-story. Though there's no romance between the giant and his housekeeper "Polly," it's interesting that Jack, who flirts with Polly as soon as he meets her, immediately irritates the giant by mouthing off. For his part, aside from collecting treasures, the giant's only passion is his stomach, and he makes several references to eating people. 

Dinkle and Jack are put to work as servants, but they plot to escape with both of the royal prisoners and with the giant's treasures. This leads to various slapstick situations until the big escape begins, and of course the wimpy Jack is left to fend off the raging giant as best he can. Then Jack escapes, cuts down the beanstalk when the giant follows, and proves his manhood-- just before the dream ends and the dreamer returns to the mundane world, though he ends the film cavorting around as if he were still his triumphant dream-self.

BEANSTALK is like most A&C films, a patchwork of routines involving slapstick and wordplay, albeit aimed at a young audience. I'm not sure how many kids in 1952 would have gotten anything of the movie's various musical numbers, so that too may be something the producers put in just as an expectation of the period. Most of the songs are forgettable, though there are some pleasantly gruesome lines in the closing tune, "He Never Looked Better in His Life," after the giant has plunged to his death.  (One might call it the roadshow version of "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead.") Buddy Baer, being so much bigger than Lou Costello, provides a nice air of menace before the long end-sequence with the giant chasing Jack around (admittedly for a little too long). The slapstick is better than the verbal jokes, with the standout being a "masochistic tango" danced between shorty Jack and 6'2" Polly, as she exploits her height to knock him around, to poke him in the eye, and to "accidentally" bang him with her elbows. This was an update of a similar routine from 1941's HOLD THAT GHOST, but I thought the version in BEANSTALK was funnier.