The Magnificent Dope

A refreshing, funny film about a different kind of American dream - laziness.

Dwight Dawson (Don Ameche), peddling his success classes, launches a contest to find the laziest man in America. The plan is to turn the winner into an aggressive, driven success through his class and draw thousands of enrollees. The winner is Tad Page, beautifully portrayed by Henry Fonda. He's a happy man who feels that, though he's not rich, he has everything - he just wants the prize money to buy a fire engine for his town. He has no interest in taking Dawson's class. Then he falls in love - with Dawson's girlfriend (Lynn Bari).

This is a delightful movie about a man who has the true secret of life and is able to impart it to many he meets. As the original post indicated, it's a great life lesson and something to think about.

The cast - Fonda, Ameche, Bari, Edward Everett Horton, are just great. The birthday party, during which Ameche and Horton try to keep Tad from realizing that Bari is Ameche's girlfriend - was especially funny. Highly recommended.

The city of New York is home to millions of people who desire to become successful in business. Thus a man like Dwight Dawson (Don Ameche) believes he can teach any candidate how to succeed in business without really trying. Dawson is worried however that his school is lacking students and therefore needs to increase his student body count by offering a $500.00 prize and a free 8 week course to the Laziest man in the country. He hopes by transforming a failure into a go-getting success, his school will flourish. His contest selects Thadeus Winship Page (Henry Fonda) who is selected, but has no ambition to change who or what he is, that is until he meets and falls in love with Dawsons' assistant, Lynn Bari (Claire Harris) who along with Horace Hunter (Edward Everett Horton) strive to make him unhappy with himself. The original story originated with Joseph Schrank and is further directed by Walter Lange who combine to creates a wonderful film that is fun for the entire family. Indeed, audiences reacted well to the movie, so much so, both Fonda and Ameche launched their careers with it. In the end, the entire cast should be credited with this milestone. Excellent viewing. ****

A rather run-of-the-mill Twentieth Century Fox film from 1942 directed with his usual competence by Fox staff director Walter Lang, worth watching if only to be reminded that young Henry Fonda was as excellent a comic actor as he was a dramatic one. Here, he plays the country bumpkin, a fall guy from Vermont who gets taken by city slickers: slick Don Ameche in the Donald Trump role and his cynical sidekick Edward Everett Horton. This was Lynn Bari's big chance, and although she is extremely attractive and thoroughly professional in everything she does, she isn't very convincing as the cold-hearted femme fatale who falls for the good guy with a heart of gold, a role that Barbara Stanwyck did so believably with Fonda a year earlier in Preston Sturges' classic, The Lady Eve, and Jean Arthur played twice for Frank Capra. Lynn Bari, thoroughly reliable, went on working for another twenty five years in less demanding roles. Only goes to prove that some actors, good as they were, just didn't have that rare undefinable something called star quality. As this film shows, Fonda had it from the beginning.

Yet he is, in this movie, a charming and sly country vs city tale. Fonda is the title character. He is chosen as a prime loser who can take Don Ameche's positive thinking course: If he can come through it, the cynical Ameche and his sidekicks reason, anyone can. And others will try.

Edward Everett Horton is one of these sidekicks, as is Bari, his mink-wearing secretary.

Fonda is from rural Vermont and teaches everyone in New York a thing or two himself. He wins over a famous financier, who promptly retires to enjoy life. He shows all and sundry how to relax. And he pines for Bari.

It's a cute idea, which twists and turns several times before its ending. The premise resembles a far less cynical and cruel "Curtain Call" -- which is an infinitely better, less conflicted, movie.

If The Magnificent Dope had been made over at Paramount it would have been a musical film for Bing Crosby. Of course Bing would never have played the kind of rube that Henry Fonda was in this film, but the premise is something he used in a whole lot of his films. Remember he had the idea of only having to work on holidays in Holiday Inn which came out the same year. A couple of musical numbers would have been nice for this film also.

But this wasn't the kind of stuff Henry Fonda wanted to do though he does do a fine job in portraying a Mr. Deeds like bumpkin. Against his better judgment in 1940 he signed a studio contract with 20th Century Fox to get the part of Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. For the next few years whenever Fonda made a good film it was when Darryl Zanuck loaned him out for The Lady Eve at Paramount and The Male Animal at Warner Brothers.

Don Ameche with assistance from Lynn Bari and Edward Everett Horton runs a Dale Carnegie like assertiveness training course which has been on the skids of late. Lynn Bari gets the idea to have a contest to find the laziest man around and turn him into an ambitious go getter. Ameche likes the idea and they come up with Fonda who also happens to be from Vermont as Longfellow Deeds was.

Without saying the idea has results that Ameche and company never expected. The Magnificent Dope is lightweight stuff, but pleasant enough entertainment.

In fact Don Ameche was also getting tired of the roles he was getting at Fox as well. Both Fonda and Ameche were taking second place to Zanuck's house favorite, Tyrone Power.

Maybe The Magnificent Dope could have used a song or two though.