Review of A Thousand Clowns (1965) by Steve C — 02 Jan 2017

Murray is an oddball, a nonconformist type. He doesn't have a job. He doesn't want one. He also has a boy kid aged 12, his sister's son, who was left in his care years ago.The boy goes to school and the psychological people affiliated with the school come by for a home visit since Murray has been ignoring the mail sent asking about the boy's home life to assure it is wholesome enough for a child. Nick, the name the boy calls himself, is smart and precocious. Actually, we know he is fine with Murray who is not much worse than a lovable eccentric.

This is a comedy and a rather funny one. A particularly good scene is the home visit scene with the straight playing William Daniels and Barbara Harris getting more than they had bargained for and then some.

While rewatching the movie last night, temporarily a YouTube bootleg of a TCM showing, I found myself thinking about the stakes involved that drive the comedy/dramatic conflict. In a way it is a conflict from a bygone time. Yes Murray doesn't have a job, but he can get one right away if he wants it. And a good high-paying job too, actually a number of them. The job he left was writing for a kid's TV show and he can go back to that anytime he wants to. He just doesn't want to.

In this, the movie reminds me of Keep the Aspidistra Flying a novel from the mid-1930s by George Orwell. It is the story of another refusenik. In that the main guy is a poet constantly obsessed with money after leaving his job writing advertising copy so he could concentrate on being a poet. He can't write poetry because he is constantly worried about money. But like A Thousand Clowns the stakes seem low because he can always go back to the ad job that is sitting there waiting for him.

I wonder what an updated A Thousand Clowns would look like. I mean, what if he was the same old Murray, with his rather familiar anti-work attitudes, got in a huff, had enough, and dashed out of his job, but was unable to land another or had to go into fast food labor or something?

A Thousand Clowns is a very good movie that is just about 10 minutes too long.