The Early Bird
(1965)
(SPOILERS) With his frantic cry of “Mr
Grimsdale!”, perpetual idiot-man-child act and insatiable appetite for
slapstick, Norman Wisdom’s oeuvre is
something of an acquired taste. He elicits similarly divisive response to his
US counterpart Jerry Lewis, in fact. If Wisdom never achieved the full auteur
multi-hyphenate status that made Lewis so beloved by the French (he had to
settle for Albania), he nevertheless actively co-wrote his pictures and
maintained a tried-and-tested line up of collaborators (Edward Chapman, Robert
Asher). The Early Bird comes at the
tail end of his big screen zenith and, in terms of career high points, is
probably equivalent to Lewis’ The Nutty
Professor; both pictures are likely more accessible to viewers generally not
so taken with their respective stars.
Certainly, The Early
Bird was a childhood favourite. I was never so keen on the more mawkish,
sentimental side of the Wisdom persona and, aside from his first Norman Pitkin
outing The Square Peg (in which
Wisdom plays dual roles, and features the classic scene where he confuses a
platoon on parade by barking random orders from the cover of his pothole), I
could take or leave, or just leave, most of them. After this, he would appear
in only a few more movie roles before drifting into TV and cabaret. I hadn’t
realised Wisdom was 50 when he made The
Early Bird, a flattering side effect of his infantile act, I guess.
It’s perhaps an exaggeration to suggest Wisdom with regular
co-writers Jack Davies, Eddie Leslia and Henry Blythe, was getting with the
times, but The Early Bird is the
first of his pictures made in colour, and the first to feature drugs (even as absurdly
as it does) in one of the funniest sequences. Surrealism also abounds, including
a lawnmower run amok that speeds along the bottom of a pond and Pitkin seeing
the head of Mrs Hoskins (Paddie O’Neal) replaced with that of his beloved horse
Nellie. Subsequently, Pitkin takes Nellie to bed, and she puts a leg round her
kindly owner.
There’s a plethora of innuendo here too, from bumbling Mr
Grimsdale carrying on with the fulsome (Hattie Jacques-like) housekeeper (don’t
worry, they tie the knot), to the negligeed woman (Marjie Lawrence) who answers
the door to Norman when he’s delivering the milk (a very funny domestic dispute
in which David Lodge uses Grimsdale’s Dairy’s milk to hurl at his missus; when
Norman keeps ringing the doorbell, the man threatens him “You’ll get a clip round the earhole! This is a peaceful neighbourhood!”),
to Mr Hunter (Jerry Desmonde) requesting his secretary (Imogen Hassall) accompany
him to the vault, which he promptly shuts after them. It never strays completely
into Carry On smut, but it’s more risqué
than Wisdom had hitherto been (back when he covered his fingers with his
nipples during a medical and embarked on tiresome romances).
There’s even an element of social commentary here, not that
it has the cojones to venture into full-on Ealing territory. Norman works for
Grimsdale’s Dairy, which is being pushed out if its little patch (as Norman
says at the climax, “We didn’t care about
making a great fortune. We only had ten streets”) by heartless corporate behemoth
Consolidated Dairies. Consolidated will stoop as low as they need to force
Grimsdale’s out of the game, from breaking milk bottles to poisoning Nellie.
The implication is very much that small is better, a
nostalgia for the old ways when there was community and progress hadn’t crushed
lives in its wake. Hunter pronounces “There’s
no room in this world for small, niggling firms”, at which Austin (Brian
Pringle) the antagonistic Consolidated milkman stealing Norman’s patch, adds “And old-fashioned too”. Later, Hunter
insists, “You can’t impeded the wheels of
progress”.
That Consolidated isn’t brought to book feels like a fairly
accurate prediction of the subsequent fifty years of big business run rampant.
They’re merely embarrassed by Pitkin’s emotive heartstring pulling; chairman
Sir Roger Wedgewood (Richard Vernon) promises Grimsdale’s can have its round
back. Perhaps there’s intentional commentary there, but it seems fairly typical
of Wisdom’s oeuvre that the little victory, number one, should be worried about
rather than the broader implications.
Of course, no one’s watching a Norman Wisdom film for
piercing insights into the state of the nation. It’s the delivery of the comedy
that counts, and The Early Bird
features a series of his finest moments. The opening ten-minute, wordless
sequence, as Pitkin and Mr Grimsdale (and Mrs Hoskins) arise in haphazard and
less-than-successful manner, is a tour de force. Much of this is Wisdom through
and through – getting snagged on doors, falling down stairs, making three cups
of tea in one continuous pouring motion – but what makes it sing, besides the
auteurish conceit of its length, is a new element to his films: composer Ron
Goodwin.
It’s no overstatement to say Goodwin’s score makes The Early Bird (it’s a great shame it’s
not available to buy); it’s as singular and memorable as his work on the
Margaret Rutherford Miss Marples. The opening sequence in particular perfectly
accentuates the rising and falling with action, lending the proceedings an
infectious rhythm (even down to Pitkin and Mr Grimsdale yawning in unison at
each other).
Elsewhere, there’s a western parody song as Pitkin and Austion
confront each other on an empty street (probably an inspiration for The Goodies’ Bunfight at the O.K. Tearooms) and, best of all, Pitkin’s
impersonation of a vicar during Hunter’s round of golf. He attempts to instruct Hunter, “You’ve got to be taught what is right, and
what is wrong” to the accompaniment of a particularly groovy section of
Goodwin organ.
I’ve seen the golf scene come in for criticism as superfluous,
but it’s a note perfect piece of comedy, particularly aided by the wearied
tones of John Le Mesurier as Hunter’s golf partner. The key is in the responses
of this pair to Norman’s irrepressible brand of anarchy. And, the notion of a
vicar behaving like an irresponsible child is irresistible.
The golf course sequence is beaten for laughs only by the
aforementioned apple-eating scene, which is just bat shit crazy. It must have
left a permanent impression on untold tens of thousands of young minds in the
endless round of Saturday afternoon matinee showings The Early Bird has seen on British TV over the past half century.
Norman and Mr Grimsdale both eat one of Nellie’s drugged
apples, “coming up” while watching a belly dancer gyrating on television; there’s
an unmistakable psychedelic spin here, amid the more obvious gags (Grimsdale
puts his glasses on upside down, and inevitably sees the TV image upside down).
This reaches a warped crescendo when Norman, entering Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion territory, retreats to a
corner of the room assaulted by visions of his horse, the threats of Mr Hunter,
and the Mrs Hoskins accursed clacking knitting needles.
Subsequently, Frank Thornton cameos as a drunken doctor
(more lechery here, as he’s about to have his way with a couple of lovelies at
a party) who instructs Norman, of Nellie, to “put her to bed with a hot water bottle… and give her a sleeping pill”.
I have to admit, however, that by the time the grand climax arrives, with
Pitkin causing mayhem in the Consolidated Dairies building (the exterior
realised with a nifty matte painting) dressed as a fire chief, I grow a little
fatigued by it all (likewise, Pitkin attempting to fill milk bottles from a
dirty great urn just tests the patience). There’s a nice running gag with Peter
Jeffrey’s fire chief continually falling down a lift shaft, but the
free-for-all abandon is less satisfying than the clearly structured lunacy that
precedes it.
Wisdom’s also better in scenes with foils than indulging
himself on his own. So his coughing fit on the golf course is so effective for
the reactions of Le Mesurier and Desmonde, while his mistaken marriage
proposal, in which Mrs Hoskins’ bawling induces a likewise response in Pitkin,
is hilarious.
Pringle’s wily rival milkman is perfect at pointing out
Pitkin’s immeasurable denseness, and lends his already sharp dialogue the
blessing of superb delivery (his account of cats “Frustrated beyond measure, they go stark staring mad, and smash the
bottles” or confession “What makes a
man want to break bottles? Headaches. Blinding headaches”; even with
Desmonde, Pringles’s reading of “You
mean, something in its food to confuse it mentally?” when discussing
nobbling Nellie is scene stealing mastery).
Desmonde, here in his last big screen appearance, was a
thorn in Pitkin’s side (or rather, vice versa) in several of Wisdom’s earlier
pictures, and he’s the perfect face of irate entitlement, undermined by someone
mentally and socially his inferior.
The Early Bird , which can currently be found on YouTube, was
the end of an era for Wisdom; it was his last Pitkin, and his last appearance
with Chapman. It came at a point where he had come out of a dispute with Rank
regarding greater control over his projects. Arguably, wanting to change his
formula was essential given he was no longer a spring chicken, but he’d
collaborate with the studio in only one further starring role (and by the end
of the decade he’d be putting the final nail in his big screen coffin when he
ignominiously threw himself into free love picture What’s Good for the Goose). As such The Early Bird might be the most successful distillation of what
Wisdom could do when he was given a (relatively) freehand, tweaking the formula
rather than ditching it completely.
