Someone — are you reading this, Leonard? — oughta write a book called something like Flawed Masterpieces, all about films that came thisclose to being great. As good an example as any was a movie I found myself watching on satellite-via-TiVo this AM — The Comic, a 1969 comedy/tragedy written by Aaron Ruben and Carl Reiner and directed by the latter. In it, Dick Van Dyke plays an arrogant, unsympathetic silent comedian named Billy Bright, whose story combines elements from the lives of Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton, with a wee bit of Harry Langdon tossed in. Mickey Rooney plays his sidekick and some of the scenes from Billy's later life (like the talk show appearance depicted above) actually play out like Mr. Rooney's last few decades. Wouldn't surprise me at all if Mssrs. Van Dyke, Reiner and Ruben were well aware they were basing scenes on Rooney while he performed in the film, oblivious to this.
The film has a stellar cast that included Michele Lee, Cornel Wilde, Pert Kelton and Nina Wayne, among others. The best joke belonged to a character actor named Ed Peck who managed to turn up at one time or another in every situation comedy of the sixties, and quite a few movies. He usually played some serious authority figure — a general or a cop — who turns out to be a cross-dresser or who gets a pie in the face. In The Comic, it was a pie. (One memorable exception: On an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, he played Buddy Sorrell's rabbi…but in another episode, he played a serious Army Captain who revealed that, deep down, he wanted to be a choreographer. That was the typical Ed Peck role.) He passed away in '92 and since then, Hollywood has lacked a good actor who can play an intense, all-business FBI agent who later turns up in drag.
Those of you who are into Cartoon Voices or Industrial-Strength Trivia take note of the following: Paul Frees can be heard dubbing at least four parts in the film, and June Foray dubs one or two lines for the little boy playing Billy Bright's son. Also, the venerable Silent Movie Theater (subject of this article) is the backdrop for one poignant scene.
That The Comic was not a hit, I can well understand. I seem to recall it playing less than one week in the first-run theaters of Westwood. I think I saw it on a Friday, recommended it to a friend on Saturday and when he tried to go the following Tuesday, it had been replaced by something else. The hero is unlikable in many of the wrong ways and the narrative places him pretty much in free-fall with few surprises en route to his inevitable end. Van Dyke is superb in the comedy scenes; not quite as wonderful when made-up, at times unconvincingly, as an old man. Still, enough treasures abound to make it all well worth an occasional viewing.