Turner Classic Movies ran The Sunshine Boys the other day — a pleasant movie, though one with dialogue that almost cries to be put back on stage where it originated. Watching it on TV, I am way too cautious of pauses where a live audience would be howling. We all dislike artificial laugh tracks but I wish some DVDs came with the sound of a real audience on an alternate audio channel. (Incidentally, note that Matthau is almost bald in the film but has his usual hair in the Hirschfeld drawing on the poster. One suspects that someone decided it was more important for Walter Matthau to be recognizable in the advertising than for the key art to reflect the movie. He also had more hair in many of the publicity photos.
One thing which bothered me a bit was not in the movie but in the introduction that film historian Robert Osborne taped for Turner Classic Movies. Here's part of what he said…
The Sunshine Boys is an adaptation of a play by Neil Simon, which Simon had loosely based on the lives of two real vaudeville comics. Smith and Dale were famous for being great partners on stage, but cantankerous rivals off stage. George Burns and Walter Matthau play their counterparts in this film, although initially there was talk that Bob Hope and Bing Crosby might be cast in the movie version, but Neil Simon was never crazy about that idea. Then Walter Matthau was signed for it along with Jack Benny, but then he died suddenly so Red Skelton was asked to take over that part. Skelton said no, not because he didn't like the part but because the money he was offered was only a fraction of what he could make on stage in Las Vegas. Well, at that point, George Burns was asked to play it, and he did. Won the Oscar for it, and he began a whole new magnificent career for him — a movie star at last.
Leaving aside the awkward syntax which seems to say that Matthau died instead of Benny, this is wrong. According to Simon's autobiography — and everything else I've read — the offer from Hope was declined (Neil wanted Jews) and then auditions yielded the cast of Red Skelton and Jack Benny. Skelton bowed out for a much sillier reason than money: He didn't want to do a movie in which he had to say things like "bastard" and "son of a bitch." This is the same Red Skelton who told me the joke about the Pope and the midget hooker. Matthau replaced Skelton, and then Jack Benny died. Shortly before his death, when he knew he was failing, Benny told people that he hoped his dearest pal in the world, George Burns, would take over his role in Sunshine Boys — and Burns did.
Robert Osborne is a good reporter and a nice man, but he got confused on this one. He booted the most charming part of the story — that Benny "willed" the role to his best friend. That's what rejuvenated Burns's career, and it's probably the nicest part of The Sunshine Boys. Even if it isn't in the film.