Knock on Wood
The No. 1 Song-and-Dance Clown at his best!
Ventriloquist Jerry Morgan has failed with another love affair. The reason: when the relationship reaches the point when it is time to discuss marriage, his two dolls become mean and jealous. Morgan's dollmaker Papinek is a member of a spy ring who has stolen the secret plans for the top-secret Lafayette airplane. Since Morgan is leaving for Zurich the same night, he decides to hide the secret plan in the heads of the dolls.
Action
Comedy
6.7
33 reviewsRuntime: 103 min.
Budget: N/A
Revenue: N/A
Release Date: 1954-04-06
Director(s): Norman Panama, Melvin Frank
Production: Dena Productions, Paramount Pictures
Languages: English
IMDB: tt0047152
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CinemaSerf★ 6/108/1/2024
With Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly dominating this genre, it's easy to forget that Danny Kaye was actually quite an accomplished dancer and singer - and he demonstrates that quite charismatically in this rather daft spy caper. Here he also reminds us of just how popular ventriloquists were as his "Jerry" character finds himself embroiled in an international espionage ring that involves some top secret blueprints, his dummy's brand new head and the dastardly British industrialist "Langston" (Torin Thatcher). It's this latter man who turns out to want to acquire and sell on the plans - but there is no absence of competitors who are trying to entrap our hapless entertainer. Meantime, he begins to fall for the sceptical "Dr. Ilse" (Mai Zetterling) and she - slightly uncertain as to whether he's a bit screwy or not - soon finds herself equally involved in the increasingly farcical goings on in a fine Zurich hotel. It's all fairly predicable, borderline slapstick, fayre but there's a fair degree of agreeable chemistry between Kaye and Zetterling with both being quite adept on the dance floor and him delivering a couple of cheery, if not entirely memorable, numbers from Sylvia Fine. The production quality lets it down a bit if you happen to know anything about actually living in London, but there's still some humour in the writing that Kaye delivers quite engagingly as we build to a denouement straight out of "Sherlock Holmes" that takes a few pings at the international jet-set en route.