The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945)

Film: The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945)

Stars: Jack Benny, Alexis Smith, Allyn Joslyn, Guy Kibbee

Director: Raoul Walsh

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Jack Benny click here to learn more about Mr. Benny (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to finish our look at Jack Benny this month with what would end up being his last role as a leading man in movies, and one of the film's that Benny himself would make infamous.  The Horn Blows at Midnight was once again a Warner Brothers movie from Benny, and had the actor, then in the heyday of his radio stardom, playing an angel tasked with signaling the end of the world with a trumpet horn on earth.  The movie had the bad timing of being released just eight days after Franklin Delano Roosevelt unexpectedly died, at the tail end of World War II, and as a result a farce about the end of the world seemed, at the very least, in poor taste.  The movie was a huge flop, and basically after that Benny gave up on his film career, only appearing in movies in cameos for the remainder of his career, instead shifting his focus entirely to radio, and soon, television.  The Horn Blows at Midnight, though, would become a standard punchline in Benny's act for the remainder of his career, frequently getting disparaged by the comedian...but I was curious when I realized the terrible position that it played in his career if it was one of those "lost gems" or if this was worthy of Benny's ridicule.  Let's find out, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie, as I said above, is about Athaneal (Benny), who initially is a struggling trumpet player who snoozes off during a radio show he's in the orchestra for (the whole movie is a dream sequence) and imagines he's an angel tasked with bringing about the end of the planet.  He's madly in love with a harp player named Elizabeth (Smith), who believes in him when no one else does. It turns out she is right...when Athaneal misses the midnight deadline to end the world (he's saving a woman from committing suicide, a mortal sin) he becomes a "fallen angel," and only Elizabeth can find a way to help him get another chance to "end the world."  Things get complicated when two other fallen angels, as well as two con artists, try to stop them from ending Earth because they, well, don't want to die.  In the end, Athaneal wakes up from his dream, and starts to devote himself more fully to his present life as a trumpet player.

The movie is about as silly as it sounds.  The plot is nonsense, and occasionally feels a bit repetitive (we literally do the "falling off the building" bit for at least ten minutes of the movies 78 minute run time).  That being said, taken out of the context of President Roosevelt's death, it's kind of fun in a stupid way.  Benny is charming as a foolish angel, and lands pretty much all of the physical comedy bits, the highlight of which is him being thrown into a gigantic cup of coffee suspended over the Manhattan streets below.  It's dumb, and they didn't need the dream framing device, but it's cute & a nice movie to watch when you want to turn off your brain a bit & just laugh.

As I said, though, Benny would be done with films after this, only taking bit parts in things like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and would instead become one of the pioneering earliest figures in television.  His show would become one of the earliest spots that many movie stars appeared on his show-both Marilyn Monroe & Humphrey Bogart made rare TV appearances on his program during its peak years.  Benny would have one of the longest-running shows of his era, ending in 1965, by which time only Lucille Ball & Ed Sullivan were still on regular television from the earliest days of Benny's career.  Benny would continue to do television specials and would become a headliner in Vegas, but failing health caught up with him & would die of pancreatic cancer in 1974 at the age of 80.  Next month, we're going to talk about an actress who was, like Benny, a one-time Warner Brothers contract player who gained a newfound respect in television in the 1950's.  Unlike Benny, though, she was generally considered to be a very good actor in her day...and even got an Oscar nomination to prove it.