Hank Henry (1906–1981) was one of the last working comedians who started in and largely stayed in the realm of burlesque. At one point, he was reportedly teamed, Abbott & Costello style, with the handsome, popular straightman, Robert Alda. Robert's son Alan later became quite well known as an actor. Henry also shared stages with the real Abbott and Costello as well as Jackie Gleason, Phil Silvers, Red Buttons and many more.
As burlesque died its inevitable death, those who didn't graduate to the Gleason-Silvers level settled in one of the few places where their art form continued to thrive: Las Vegas. For years, Hank Henry was a superstar there — and only there — in revues, mostly at the old Silver Slipper casino. Some press clippings from the sixties call him the longest-running headliner in town…a position now shared by Penn & Teller.
When Hank Henry held the title, it was an honest but tough way to make a buck. Six nights a week (occasionally, seven) they'd do shows…sometimes four a night. And the four might well be spaced at 9 PM, 11 PM, 1 AM and at 2:30 AM. That's right: I said 2:30 AM. These days, very little entertainment is offered in Vegas or anywhere after Midnight but Hank Henry would be onstage at the Silver Slipper with a batch of stooges and semi-naked women until like four in the morning…with often, no cover charge, no minimum and free admission.
This has been floating around for a while on the Internet: An ad for The Bela Lugosi Revue, a show at the Silver Slipper starring Mr. Lugosi and Hank Henry plus the usual array of indecently-clad ladies along with Terre Sheehan, "The Girl in the Champagne Glass." If I'd been her manager, I'd have changed her name to Olive. Sad to say, this was probably not the most embarrassing thing Bela did in his later years when he needed money.
But this post is about Hank Henry, who was one of those comedians people raved about. One of his many fans was Johnny Carson. In the days when Johnny would take two weeks off from The Tonight Show and play Vegas, he could often be found at one of Henry's 1 AM or 2:30 AM shows. Johnny once described him as "Rodney Dangerfield before there was Rodney Dangerfield."
An even better fan was Frank Sinatra who loved Hank, brought the whole Rat Pack to see him and even gave Hank roles in many of his films. You can see Hank Henry, usually playing a not-too-bright mobster in The Joker Is Wild, Pal Joey, Ocean's 11, Sergeants 3, Robin and the 7 Hoods and a few films that didn't star Ol' Blue Eyes.
But the greatest record of Hank Henry's work may be the 1960 movie he starred in, Not Tonite, Henry!, also sometimes spelled as Not Tonight, Henry! Earlier that year, Russ Meyer had released The Immoral Mr. Teas — the first in a wave of "nudie" films and featuring at least one of the same pairs of breasts. N.T.H. was the same kind of film with a slightly higher budget and a slightly wittier script. Note the use of the word "slightly."
It's a stupid film in a stupid genre with a stupid storyline full of stupid reasons for women (probably all strippers or burlesque stars) to be naked and it's about as arousing as watching your electric Ronco Food Dehydrator turn chunks of fresh pineapple into styrofoam. But the sheer "period" inanity of it is amusing and two performers — neither of them naked women — bring some value.
One, of course, is Hank Henry. The guy was funny. If someone had given him a network sitcom with a decent script, he could have been William Bendix or Ozzie Nelson. Throughout the film, he does these long-suffering looks into camera which almost made me think he was asking the audience to take pity on him for being in this movie.
And the other standout is the narrator. The credits say "Narrated by Larry Burrell" and Mr. Burrell was an occasional newsman who often played newsmen or reporters on TV shows. But it's not his voice in the movie, which kind of has two narrators. There's a serious gent who is not Larry Burrell. He in turn introduces the eminent authority on male/female relations, "Dr. Finster," who also is not Larry Burrell.
Both announcers are Paul Frees. And as Dr. Finster, he babbles on for over an hour in the same voice he would begin using months later as Professor Ludwig Von Drake, occasional host of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color on NBC. If you love Paul Frees and that voice, he's a far greater reason to watch this movie than any stripper with her shirt off. And if you respect the vast voiceover skills of Mr. Frees from cartoons and real movies, you'll be more impressed with how he handles the most fatuous copy he was ever forced — at gunpoint, perhaps — to read into a microphone.
I had always heard about this film and I remember it being plugged in Playboy when I was officially too young to be looking at Playboy. The nekkid women in stills from this movie didn't intrigue me even then — too impersonal, too much like mannequins — but I was curious about Hank Henry. And I certainly didn't know that the narrator sounded like every great historical figure who had been visited by Mr. Peabody and Sherman.
I am not recommending the quality of this movie for there is little. I am also not endorsing the way it depicts women, which is mostly as statues to be admired from afar…and that's about all they're good for in Henry's world. I am not even praising the film transfer of the DVD of it I bought off Amazon. A few minutes in, I was wondering why they hadn't made this movie in color and then I realized they had. The print I was watching was just too faded.
But I bought it because I had a $5 gift certificate for Amazon and I stumbled across this movie which I've been curious about since about age thirteen…and it was $6.98. I figured it was worth two bucks to retire that curiosity forever. I think I more than got my money's worth but if you don't have a $5 gift certificate for Amazon, you might feel otherwise. Here's a link in case you're over eighteen but your sense of humor is still thirteen. At the very least, it's interesting to see a movie that couldn't, shouldn't or wouldn't be made today.