In 1966, my father and I went to a movie at the Crest Theater, which was on Westwood Boulevard just south of Wilshire. I forget what the movie was but the trailer was for a film called Penelope starring Natalie Wood, Dick Shawn, Peter Falk and Jonathan Winters. I, of course, instantly noticed that it was a reunion of three of the leads from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. What interested my father was that Jonathan Winters was in it. (He may also have been interested in the scenes in the trailer that had Ms. Wood running around in her underwear. Come to think of it, so was his son. I was fourteen and I was interested in any woman running around in her underwear. If it was Natalie Wood, so much the better. But when you're fourteen, you're not that fussy.)
My father thought Jonathan Winters was the funniest human being on the planet — a not-uncommon opinion, then or now. "We'll have to see that," he said to me. A week or two later, we were back at the Crest seeing that. My recollection is that, underwear scenes aside, neither one of us liked the movie much. You got the feeling that a lot more thought had gone into Natalie Wood's wardrobe — she seemed to go through about ninety-seven outfits in 97 minutes — than into the script.
We especially disliked the paucity of Mr. Winters. Though billed as a star, he was in the film for what seemed like about two minutes. It was probably more than that but I'll bet it wasn't a lot more than that. Four minutes, tops. It was certainly not an appearance commensurate with his billing. His name on the marquee of the Crest was just as large as Natalie's. What's more, about half of his performance was obviously done by a stuntman…and most of it had been in that trailer. If you'd seen the Coming Attractions, you'd pretty much seen Jonathan's contribution to Penelope.
On the way out that evening, my father felt swindled and it wasn't because the movie wasn't very good. It was because he felt it had been misrepresented. A man who I guess was the manager of the Crest said to us at the door, "Hope you'll come back soon," and my father blurted out his dissatisfaction. He pointed to the marquee and said, "We came to see Jonathan Winters. You shouldn't have his name up there if he's only in the movie for three minutes."
Immediately, the manager whipped out four free passes, almost like he'd had them ready for us. "Please accept these with my sincere apologies," he said. Then he turned to an employee and said, "Go get the letters for the front and the ladder. I want to change something." Sure enough, the next day when we happened to drive down Westwood, the name of Jonathan Winters was no longer on the Crest marquee. Dick Shawn's was in its place.
I'm sure this all sounds trivial today but I remember the incident vividly. It was the first time I was ever acutely aware that you ought to speak up when things aren't right…and not just because you might get something (like free passes) out of it. You do it because few things that oughta be fixed ever get fixed if no one says anything.
It is, of course, possible to overdo this. I broke up with one lady friend because she seemed to go through life, finding fault everywhere and demanding that the world be corrected to her liking. It got very tiresome, especially when I found myself fixing things that really didn't need to be fixed, just so she'd stop telling me they did. A lot of people criticize because they like the attention it gives them and the feeling of power to make others jump through hoops to please them. There have been times in my life when my biggest complaint has been people with complaints. Still, it's just as wrong, if not more so, to suffer in silence.
So that's the memory I associate with the movie Penelope, which I haven't seen since '66. In fact, I can't recall ever seeing that it was running on TV or available on home video…but it's on Turner Classic Movies this Friday evening and I'm setting a TiVo. This is not a recommendation that you do likewise since I barely remember anything about it except for how quickly Jonathan Winters disappeared and that I didn't like anything except Ms. Wood's undies. Then again, how bad can a movie with Dick Shawn, Peter Falk and (briefly) Jonathan Winters be? Plus, it also has Lou Jacobi and Carl Ballantine…so right there, you have five of my favorite comic actors.
Still, tape or TiVo it at your own risk, especially if you want to see what Ms. Wood is and isn't wearing in it. I'm just watching to see if it's any better than I remember…and also, I want to run a stopwatch on Jonathan Winters's screen time. I have the feeling you could use it to time a boiled egg.