Come Blow Your Horn

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Come Blow Your Horn was Neil Simon's first play, premiered in the US in 1961. The play follows Alan and Buddy Baker, brothers who have decided to leave home and experience the good life. In the beginning of the play, Alan is the typical lady's man, and his younger brother is the twenty one year old virgin who has decided to run away from home, and leave the family's waxed fruit business. As the play progresses, Alan finds out that Connie, one of the ladies that he is sleeping with, is "the girl" and without her in his life, he falls apart. Buddy, however has taken his brother's place in life, becoming the ladies man, while his brother sits around and mopes over the loss of Connie, the girl of his dreams. The play was made into a movie, with a screenplay by Norman Lear, starring Frank Sinatra, Lee J Cobb, and Barbara Rush. The play had a London production in 1962 at the Prince of Wales Theatre.

An offstage character in the play is Felix Ungar, later one of the protagonists of Simon's The Odd Couple.

[edit] External links

• Come Blow Your Horn at The Internet Broadway Database
• Come Blow Your Horn at the Internet Movie Database

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This movie has appeal at different levels, and most would find it entertaining. It will not stand up to the scrutiny that many movies could withstand, yet it offers fun viewing. Frank Sinatra is certainly in his element playing the part of Alan, the consummate '60s bachelor, living the high life and brother to the newly turned 21 year old Buddy, who idolizes him. He has a great job, seemingly ironclad, working for the family business, and treats it as such, immersed in self-indulgence. Among Alan's interests is Connie. She is the one girl who will not sleep with him. We learn that they have dated for only 6 months, and that she has resisted his advances. At one point she refers to his attempts to consummate their relationship sans banns, as "campaign promises." His response, "Yea, but I lost the election," further indicates this, proving her virtue to him, in pursuit of the higher goal: marriage. Connie's moral position is juxtaposed with that of Alan both from a male/female standpoint as well as the societal shift to more liberal lifestyles only a scant few years later, embodied in the Hippies' "free love" lifestyle. We see Alan evolve into a responsible, socially acceptable businessman with the abandonment of his care-free and sometimes care-less adolescent-esque behavior. This occurs as he recognizes that his future happiness includes Connie, and what she represents. This seems to indicate that the return to the traditional values of the more conservative prior generation as clearly identified in his parents, might not be so bad, for both his public and private lives. Subsequent to their marriage, symbolizing his embrace of more traditional values, we see him produce top-flight production for the family business, and previously sought but unattained acceptance by his father. Amidst the fun and entertainment this movie offers, we can see the challenged social values of the '50s by the more liberal '60s, and the eternal questioning of the younger generation of its predecessor.