Abbott and Costello in Lost In Alaska

      Lost in Alaska, directed by the prolific Jean Yarbrough, came out in 1952 when Alaska wasn't yet a state.  The film wasn't shot in Alaska.  Universal Studios in Universal City, California, served in an obviously ersatz way as late 1890s San Francisco and Alaska.  The "snow," with dim lighting sometimes, reminded me of the same piles of white fake snow substance in the World War Two movie that scared the shit out of me when I was a kid, Battleground (1949).  

     Hollywood snow, so dusty-looking, when kicked and settling again to the ground, resembles moon dust disturbed by astronauts as they hop-walk in films from another world.

     1952, another world from 2022, yet, 1952 had its big war, too, in a small country, biggest powers arming and fighting and killing, spawning a Robert Altman film and a long-running TV series about a mobile hospital in Korea. 

     Starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Lost in Alaska is a comedy.  Abbott's voice grates even more than my memory served up to me as the truth, but really, as he aged, and smoked more and more, his voice became buzzsaw-like.  In one film he's aptly named Buzz.

     Here he's named Tom Watson.  Costello is George Bell.  Costello has played a character named Tubby and another named Pomeroy.  I suggest that George Bell is the most ordinary-sounding name I've seen attached to Costello.  He's the ham, the buffoon, logically he usually has a silly name.  Abbott, too, had some wild ones, called for instance Slats McCarthy in Here Come the Co-Eds, he's Flash Fulton in Hit the Ice and Bud Flick in their last film together, Dance With Me, Henry.

     Tom and George go to Alaska, accompanied by a man with two million in gold, Nugget Joe McDermott (Tom Ewell).  George saved Nugget Joe's life when the latter jumped off a pier, heartbroken over his hopeless situation with his girlfriend, Rosette (Mitzi Green).  In spite of knowing the location of the two million in gold, he can't get over Rosette, a singer in a saloon in Alaska.

     Tom and George spend the first third of the movie fearing Nugget Joe will off himself, since he tries a few times.  The funniest shot in the film shows an attempted suicide.  Tom and George enter the bathroom, where Nugget Joe kneels before the tub, head submerged, a flatiron on the bottom of the tub attached to Nugget Joe's neck by a rope.  Tom pulls him out of the water, Nugget Joe stands up suddenly, spinning around to exit the bathroom, the flatiron slapping hard against George's left cheek, an injury unnoticed by Tom, who, in typical Abbott and Costello fashion, is the selfish one, the one always barking orders, never noticing the causes of his partner's problems.

     Tom, Nugget Joe, and George ship off to Alaska.  Tom finds Rita, but she doesn't want him, though she warns him about Jake Stillman (Bruce Cabot, who rescued Fay Wray from King Kong), owner of the casino and hotel.  He sent Tom a forged letter in Rita's name, urging him to come back.  Tom, a rather goofy fellow, made several other prospectors his heirs in his insurance taken out on his two million.  When they see him they start trying to kill him.  This goes on for half the movie.  Every once in a while the prospectors show up and shoot at Nugget Joe, missing always, terrible shots even at close range.  

     Rita, in spite of his two million, doesn't want to marry Nugget Joe.  Jake Stillman wants Rita to marry him and then he'll "take care of the rest," meaning he'll kill Nugget Joe, then she'll get the two million which they'll split.  

     Tom and George agree to meet Nugget Joe and Rita (who warns him of Stillman's plan) as they go to the gold cache and then Tom and George will help them load up a dog sled.  Tom and George on this trip end up getting lost in Alaska.  Abbott even says the film's title, holding up his hands and looking at the white, and nothing but white and gray, horizon of the Universal set. 

     They walk in a montage accompanied by creaking sounds as they struggle in the wind with frigid temperatures making icicles appear on their clothes.  The film gradually creaks to stillness.  George and Tom, two statues gathered after a short while by Eskimos, thawed out with a medicine man's help in an igloo. 

     While George and Tom live with the Eskimos, there's a party on the ice, full orchestra on the soundtrack.  Dancing of some kind, "Native"?  These films never shied away from musical numbers, in this case having Lou Costello sing a duet with Mitzi Green surrounded by muscular Eskimo men dancing to the accompaniment of the orchestra but also to "traditional" percussion instruments made in their treeless home expanse of Hollywood snow.

     Later on there's a shootout, Abbott and Costello holding off Stillman and two of his men.  George catapults fish, scoring a face hit every time.  Stillman and the others use guns.  Abbott throws harpoons.  Eventually the gold goes in the drink, everybody laughs it off, Stillman feels a let-bygones-be-bygones mood, nobody has a problem with his gun violence of fifteen minutes before.  It seemed like a throwaway ending to me, punctuated by a Costello pratfall, an Eskimo boomerang (!) arcing back to knock him flat onto the Hollywood snow.

     I probably last saw this film in the 1970s, when I was about ten.  A Milwaukee TV station showed movies Saturday mornings.  Every Bowery Boys film, every Abbott and Costello film, Laurel and Hardy shorts and features, Chaplin shorts, the Flash Gordon serials.  An education in comedy and space opera escapism.  

     It was good for my comic imagination to see films like Lost in Alaska.  Seeing it again tonight I laughed hard during a few scenes, chuckled during others, but mostly admired the artistry, the timing of these two comedians, both no longer with us, but available to entertain and be seen, shown to others, young people, I hope, for American cinematic comedy in the silent era, going into the fifties, had more than its share of genius performers.  There don't seem to be as many around anymore, unless Seth Rogen is as capable as, for example, Chico Marx, who didn't even like acting, but he was funny without forcing it.

     Assessment: You can't go wrong watching an Abbott and Costello film (many available for viewing on YouTube) if you're in the mood to watch some funny shit done by professional funny men.  Watching an old amusing film cleanses the palate in a way.  We get too used to the way movies and TV are made these days.  The modern ways of fast editing, the way filmmakers seem afraid sometimes to add depth to

characterizations, to their stories, the way filmmakers copy hit films' tropes, repetitions of "formulas" in multiple movies and television programs.

     Hollywood snow, too, is as fake-looking as ever.  

Vic Neptune