ENTER LAUGHING (1967)

In 1938 Brooklyn, young David Kolowitz (Reni Santoni) works as an assistant to a machinist. He dreams of being an actor even though he lives with his parents who want to send him to pharmacy school. His idol is Ronald Colman and we see David doing an interior monologue in Colman's tones in front of a mirror, and, misquoting from Lost Horizon, dreaming of a Shangri-La "with naked ladies." He answers an ad looking for acting apprentices for a somewhat shabby acting company run by Harrison Marlowe (Jose Ferrer), an actor whose prime is long past. His audition for the play, an old-fashioned drawing room melodrama, doesn't go well (he speaks stage directions as if they were lines of dialogue and overacts wildly), but Marlowe's daughter Angela (Elaine May), the star of the show, takes a shine to the handsome boy and talks her father into giving him the part, though instead of getting paid, he has to pay Marlowe for learning on the job. In the two days before he is to go on, his life gets very complicated as he deals with his disapproving mother, his girlfriend who is feeling neglected, and his boss who is worried that he’s becoming undependable. David's mother tries to guilt him into quitting the play just before opening night, but after more complications, he gets his moment in the spotlight, with friends and parents in the audience. 

This is Carl Reiner's first film as a director; it's based on a play that was based on Reiner's semi-autobiographical novel. Though it has a few problems, I found it to be a very likeable coming-of-age comedy. Despite an opening card that reads "1938," it feels much more like the 1950s, despite references to actors of the era (Colman, Paul Muni, Jean Harlow). In fact one character, the sexy Miss B. (Nancy Kovack) has a decidedly 60s hairdo. Santoni is good-looking and personable, and does a nice job by underacting slightly (except when his character is overacting, most memorably in his audition scene when he goes through a very funny repertoire of overblown laughs for his "enter laughing" scene). Shelley Winters is fine as the Jewish mother--she resists exaggeration--and Elaine May (pictured with Santoni) is just as good, though the character sort of vanishes for much of the last half-hour when it seems like she should be front and center. Ferrer is OK in a role that could have used a smidge more energy, though he gets one of the best lines; while watching David act, he mumbles, "Thank God I'm an alcoholic." Michael J. Pollard, Don Rickles, Richard Deacon and Jack Gilford provide solid support. David Opatoshu practically sleepwalks through his role as David's father, and Janet Margolin does what she can with the underwritten part of the girlfriend. Santoni has had a long career as a character actor on TV, but I'm sorry that his comic gifts weren't put to better use in the movies--he’s just right here. Despite a few pacing problems that bog down the middle, this is a sweet movie. (Not long before I watched this, Carl Reiner passed away, and a month later, Santoni did as well.) [TCM]