And though it is Jack Benny’s birthday, and I am developing a longish piece about Benny’s movies, the precipitating cause of this post is that February 14 ALSO happens to be the birthday of Eva Novak (1898-1988) who is third-billed to Benny in his very early comedy The Medicine Man (1930). Novak’s career encompassed over 100 films, though her true heyday as a star had been in the silent era. She started off at L-KO in 1917 appearing in silent comedies with the likes of Hughie Mack. Through the 20s she was in lots of Tom Mix westerns, as well as the original 1923 version of Boston Blackie, and such like. In the talkie era she rapidly got busted down to bit player. A lot of her later films were with the John Ford stock company.
But her birthday and Benny’s seemed to dictate that I pay particular attention to The Medicine Man (1930), and I’d long wanted to see it anyhow. My aim is to see all of Benny’s movies, for most of them have become obscure and hard to see. There was that attraction, and of course the medicine show theme, which is another interest of mine. At all events, the true star of the films is Betty Bronson, my favorite Peter Pan, who is not only the most appealing actor in the picture, but it’s basically her character’s story.
Bronson plays the daughter of a cruel store owner, played by E. Alyn Warren (who also has a post coming up). Warren was a veteran of Tod Browning films. He often played stereotyped Chinese villains, in things like Harold Lloyd’s The Cat’s Paw (1934). And he played Ulysses S. Grant in D.W. Griffith’s 1930 Abraham Lincoln. That strikes me as funny, because I specifically thought of that movie as I watched this one. Shot in the early days of talkies, both pictures share a bizarre, uncanny quality, where everyone speaks far too slowly and there are long silences. Shot by low-budget Tiffany Studios, this one also suffers from scenes where you actually witness actors go up on their lines, miss cues, and talk over one another. Of course, this just makes it strange and weird, and I love movie experiences like that, whatever the reason. Guy Maddin seeks these effects on purpose. Ed Wood used to get them by accident.
Benny plays a medicine show huckster who brings his show to town, falls for the girl, and eventually sweeps her off her feet and takes her away from her misery. I’d like to be able to claim that Benny transcends the film’s shortcomings, but not so. This was long before Benny had developed his well-known radio and screen persona. He WAS a comedian at the time, but light years away from what we think of as BENNY. As in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, that in itself is illuminating, a glimpse of what a run-of-the-mill vaudeville comedian was like at the time. Harsh? I DEFY you to claim Benny, whom I adore, is in any way extraordinary in this film. To begin with, he is miscast. A medicine show huckster is outgoing, fast talking, manipulative. W.C. Fields, Frank Morgan, Jack Oakie, Groucho Marx — those guys are plausible medicine men. Here, Benny is as slow-moving as the molasses in that general store. Some of the jokes are weak and need to be aggressively sold, but he swallows them. And the middle-aged Benny’s efforts to charm the teenage-looking Bronson come off as creepy and predatory. Although, who knows how he swings? He is, after all, wearing lots of lipstick.
The film’s main positive attribute is the window it offers to the experience of a genuine medicine show or something like it, in particular an Indian medicine show. (Coincidentally, today is also Pawnee Bill’s birthday!) We get to see a real street parade when the show comes to town. Tom Dugan and George E. Stone play a vaudeville comedy team who are marginally funnier than Benny is. There is also an uncredited fire eater in a devil costume, and several other guys wearing Plains Indian gear, though these are just presented as set decoration almost, they don’t have proper characters.
Though she is third-billed, Novack’s character is surprisingly small. She plays a Scandinavian farm girl who Benny “loved and left” in the last town, and who inconveniently shows up in the current burg looking for him. They pay her off and away she goes. Are we supposed to be happy that Benny marries Bronson, then? Well, anything’s better than working in that store where her father beats her, I guess.
Painful though it is, The Medicine Man is not painfully long, just over an hour. I caught it on youtube. I’ll probably watch it again, but next time I’ll probably take a few pulls of Doctor Harvey’s Tonic to fortify me.
For more on show biz history, please consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.
(Travalanche) 
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