The showing of Midas Man at the Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival in Minneapolis this past Thursday evening was preceded by a local Beatles cover band — The Shabby Road Quintet, featuring Adam Levy, John “Strawberry” Fields, Ken Chastain, Joe Carey, and John Eller. The Shabby Road guys are preparing for their November 1 performance of the Beatles’ Revolver at the Dakota. Among the songs they played Thursday were “Taxman,” “Dr. Robert,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” and “She Said She Said.”
The movie tells the story of Beatles manager Brian Epstein. The Beatles’ early success opened to the full flowering of their talent and creativity. It’s all over Revolver. The Shabby Road guys did an excellent job recapturing the lightning, including the twin lead guitars on “And Your Bird Can Sing.” Just to give you some idea, the video of “Sexy Sadie” below is taken from the 2018 tribute to the so-called White Album (also in its entirety) by the 13-piece Shabby Road Orchestra. Brian Epstein might want them to fix up their appearance, but I think he would be pleased with the quality of their performance.
I’ve wondered what would have happened if Brian hadn’t found the Beatles and the Beatles hadn’t experienced their relatively early success and recognition. What if they had gone on to make their living in more mundane occupations? Midas Man made me think back to Preston Sturges’s Christmas in July (1940), which in its own way takes up the the recognition of talent and its effects.
Sturges is best known for The Great McGinty, The Palm Beach Story, The Lady Eve, and Sullivan’s Travels, the last of which received the homage of the Coen brothers in the title of their Depression-era comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou? Here is the trailer of Christmas in July, which Sturges, as usual, both wrote and directed.
The film stars Dick Powell as bookkeeping clerk Jimmy MacDonald. Powell is outstanding. The most striking thing about the film, however, is its hilarious script. The opening five minutes — the whole movie is only 68 minutes long — consist of an intense rooftop conversation between Jimmy and his long-time girlfriend. They want to get married, but they can’t afford it on Jimmy’s paltry salary. The opening dialogue is full of love and hate, yearning and frustration, all hilariously true to life.
The story turns on Jimmy’s entry into a coffee slogan contest whose winner is to receive the life-changing sum of $25,000 (more than $500,000 today). If he wins the contest, he can afford to marry his girlfriend and have a family. Made in 1940, the film powerfully reflects the Depression era in which Sturges wrote the play on which the movie was based. The movie is obviously of historical interest as well. In those days, you see, the need to support yourself constrained the decision to marry and have children.
The slogan that Jimmy enters in the contest is “If you can’t sleep at night, it isn’t the coffee–it’s the bunk!” Jimmy’s enthusiasm for the slogan is another source of humor throughout the movie. By the end of the film, the slogan has become unforgettable.
Jimmy’s co-workers deceive Jimmy into thinking he has won the coffee slogan contest. The deception takes on a life of its own. It leads to the inadvertent deception of the company at which Jimmy labors as a drudge and then the sponsor of the contest itself into believing Jimmy has won the coffee slogan contest. Jimmy’s employer promotes him to head of advertising, where his creative energies are unleashed. In fact, he has a previously unrecognized gift for advertising.
In Christmas in July: The Life and Art of Preston Sturges, Diane Jacobs notes that Christmas in July was the film Sturges turned to work on as soon as he himself achieved success. The theme of the play that Sturges adapted into his screenplay for the film was, Jacobs writes, “the contingency of talent — how you aren’t really good until others recognize you — and how brutally that recognition can be withdrawn. Its happy ending notwithstanding, this is the most cautionary of [Sturges’s] success-against-odds tales, and it is revealing that, when he was finally achieving success himself, it is the story [Sturges] picked to film.”
