The Sunshine Boys
Cantankerous Comedy | 111 Minutes | 1975 | United States
(3/4)
Director: Herbert Ross | Producer: Ray Stark | Screenplay: Neil Simon | Based on: The Sunshine Boys by Neil Simon | Starring: Walter Matthau, George Burns, Richard Benjamin, Lee Meredith | Music: Irwin Fisch | Cinematography: David M. Walsh
In The Sunshine Boys a pair of ageing and increasingly frail former comedians, Al Lewis and Willy Clark (George Burns and Walter Matthau), are brought together eleven years after their acrimonious separation in order to star one more time in a special for ABC. Veterans of the vaudeville circuit, their career together spanned forty-three years and six appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show; still beloved by the older generation, the vice president of ABC assures that any history of comedy could not possibly be complete without them; the only problem is that they loathe each other, Willy because Al used to spit on his ‘T”s and jab his finger, Al because when he decided to leave show business, Willy called him a ‘son of a bitch bastard’, and the two haven’t spoken since.
Willy, who wasn’t ready to retire, still seeks work through his nephew Ben Clark (Richard Benjamin), who also serves as his agent, endlessly put-upon and admirably persistent but increasingly more than a little stressed out. Willy arrives late to auditions, quarrels with the director, and forgets his lines through a mouthful of potato chips. Otherwise Willy spends his time between his cluttered Broadway apartment, the local deli, and the Friars Club. He plays cards, reads the obit section of Variety, and chows down chicken salads and sandwiches still bearing his name. In the process he seeks to hang on to some semblance of decorum, the fame and independence which Al has long given up. Al lives a more carefree life with his daughter out in New Jersey, and can scarcely remember the pleasures of a chicken salad.
From his first appearance on the screen and probably on the stage too, Walter Matthau always seemed not only wise but old beyond his years, with drooping jowls, weathered face and wrinkles. Yet even when he was actually old, even when his 6 foot 3 frame had inevitably hunched and bended, he maintained a great head of hair and a certain spryness. At the time of The Sunshine Boys he was in his mid fifties playing a 73 year old with a considerably receded hairline, and it takes the audience a while to get used to the impression: he’s fantastic when eating, otherwise perhaps a touch sprightly. As Willy Clark he is proud and cantankerous and, it turns out, open to brief moments of sentiment. Willy knows from his years of experience that some words are funny, and some words are not, and that words which are funny are words like ‘Alka-Seltzer’, ‘cupcake’, and ‘pickle’, words with a ‘k’ in the middle. He bemoans Al’s personality but holds him in the highest regard as a performer.
While Walter Matthau was in the full flush of his career, The Sunshine Boys provided George Burns with a second wind: after The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, he’d spent most of the 1960s and early 1970s producing or touring theatres and nightclubs, largely off-screen and out of the national limelight. He was recommended for the role of Al Lewis by his close friend, the cancer-stricken Jack Benny: having last starred on film in the 1930s, Burns joked that it was 36 years since he had worked for MGM, and they must have liked him, since they were having him back. Smooth and refined in real life, as Al he bears his scalp and looks out beady-eyed behind his thick glasses, canny and quietly observant.
If The Sunshine Boys sounds like high time with old friends, be assured that it’s excruciating as it is humorous: by the end of the first forty minutes, we’ve heard every line at least twice, as these stubborn old comics are now hard of hearing. Yet with each other they remain glib, swiftly falling into old habits, a repertoire that has never let off even if its put-downs and contrivances cause hidden anguish. The chemistry between Matthau and Burns is believable and compelling, their boisterousness and forgetfulness and wilfulness and sniping by turns anchored for the audience by Benjamin. When the much hyped and under-rehearsed doctor sketch finally makes the stage, the payoff is thrilling. It is cut short of course by the comic duo’s ceaseless bickering, and if you’re waiting for a touching reconciliation – better make plans for assisted living.
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