JIMMY THE BELLHOP MOVIE

Just when you think the movie’s forgotten her, she steps out of a limosine accompanied by the great Agnes Moorhead, who’s function in the film is to be Agnes Moorhead. Is it a romance? With a title like Her Highness and the Bellboy, you’d think it must be, and you’d think you know how the story’s got to go, especially with its poster of Walker and Lamarr in classic pose–“A Royal Command to Love!”. It’s part of the delicate blend of genres, but what is the movie’s primary genre? Is it a comedy? Yes, in the Aristotelian sense it’s funny with many comic touches, but it’s basically serious, even though the whole thing is featherweight.

JIMMY THE BELLHOP MOVIE

In fact, there are two stories read aloud in the movie, and one of them triggers the movie’s other astonishing setpiece, a musical dream sequence! This movie isn’t technically a musical, although there are several scenes where people sing. What a vision of courage and sweetness, and the movie’s hardly started. It’s a good story and Jimmy reads it well, and a heart-warming feeling of narrative is generated not only by the story but the growing audience of spellbound listeners. In an almost astounding gesture for any Hollywood movie, Jimmy simply reads the entire story aloud from beginning to end.

The fairy-tale motif, introduced early, has an extraordinary early apotheosis when the trio is relaxing on the roof of their apartment building and Albert persuades Jimmy to read an obviously frequently-heard story out of a book of Grimm’s Tales. Every other fade-out is a close-up of her laughing or crying or smiling through tears. How’s that for an invented Hollywood malady? Although she’s billed third, Allyson almost dominates the movie. The doc says she’ll be fine as long as somebody loves her enough. She doesn’t have the use of her legs for some mysterious reaon having to do with an unhappy childhood. Someone who crosses that line in this movie is Leslie (June Allyson), Jimmy’s friend or girlfriend or something. In the end, he strikes you as one thin line away from pathetic loneliness.

His childlike nature is revealed in his happiest moments, when he gets to throw punches or when he listens to fairy tales with rapt attention.

(He was only in films a few years and died of alcoholism in 1946.) Albert rashly greets every woman with “Hi, babe!” and it doesn’t seem to get him anywhere. Ragland was a character actor who here plays his defining character: a charming tough-softie awash in malapropisms. We’re actually told that Albert will drift into a life of crime unless Jimmy watches over him. Jimmy (Robert Walker) is a bellboy who looks out for his friend Albert (Rags Ragland), a grinning, big-eared lug one step above Lenny in Of Mice and Men. Then the story shifts to New York (cue the overview of skyscrapers) and a look at a bunch of good-natured characters. Opening like a storybook with words and narration, the opening shot is a beautifully unreal fairy-tale castle that allows us a brief glimpse of a glittering Hedy Lamarr. Her Highness and the Bellboy quietly casts a spell.

Jimmy the bellhop