Here's a Head's Up for Phil Silvers fans. On Saturday, as John Hall has reminded me, Turner Classic Movies is running A Thousand and One Nights, a 1945 movie that Mr. Silvers manages to elevate from boring fodder to a special treat. The film stars Evelyn Keyes and Cornel Wilde, but it's Phil you want to see. He just makes every scene he's in soar.
This was one of several pictures he made for Columbia in the forties, which meant he crossed paths with the studio's gruff, unpredictable head, Harry Cohn. In fact, this was apparently the film where the following famous anecdote (not involving Silvers) occurred. Cohn summoned to his office, several writers who'd worked on the screenplay. They were all college-educated men and therefore a special thorn in the paw of Cohn, who'd never finished high school and resented folks with degrees. He asked them accusingly when the film, the script of which was before him, took place. They said it was in some year or other, B.C.
Triumphant that he had caught the college boys in a boneheaded error, Cohn demanded to know why everyone was walking around, talking contemporary slang. He said, "I didn't have the kind of education like you jerks but I know that people didn't walk around in those days saying, 'Yessiree,' all the time! All through this script, you've got people saying, 'Yessiree!'"
The writers all exchanged nervous glances. No one wanted to tell Mr. Cohn that the line in question was, "Yes, sire."
Silvers claimed that he devised the end gag of the film…and I'm going to go ahead and tip it so I can tell this anecdote. Am I forgiven if I put a big SPOILER ALERT up here? Fine.
In the end gag as written, the Phil Silvers character gets a wish and winds up fabulously wealthy and surrounded by comely babes. The script called for him to look into camera and exclaim, "I must have had a heart attack!"
Silvers went to Cohn and explained that there was no joke there; that it was actually less than "no joke," because there's nothing really funny about a heart attack. Instead, Phil proposed the following, which they used. In his ending, his wish transforms him into a soundalike of Frank Sinatra, who was then at the peak of his popularity with swooning females. To really make the joke work, Silvers persuaded Sinatra, who was a friend, to come in and spend an afternoon recording a voice track that he [Silvers] could lip-sync to.
After the film came out and did well, Silvers suggested to Cohn that a bonus was in order for saving the picture. Cohn, to the comedian's amazement, told him in rather earthy terms to drop dead, get out, etc. Silvers was stunned…until a few days later when his brother got a big, unearned check from Columbia. That was just Cohn being clever. Silvers was doing the film on a loan-out from MGM and technically, any bonus he received would have to be reported to that studio, which would probably demand it go to them. Because the money was paid to his brother, Silvers didn't have to tell MGM about it.
When he went by to thank Cohn, Silvers reminded him that Sinatra hadn't been paid a cent and suggested that a piano would be a nice thank-you present, as Frank was in need of a new one. The mercurial Cohn blew up at this, threw Silvers out of his office and never sent Sinatra so much as a harmonica. That was Harry Cohn.
Anyway, it's kind of a fun movie if you don't expect a lot. Look closely and you may notice that one of the extras in the harem scenes is Shelley Winters. That is, if you can tear your eyes off Phil Silvers for two seconds. Boy, he was good.