Knock on Wood (1954 film)

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Knock on Wood
Promotional movie poster for the film
Directed by	Melvin Frank Norman Panama
Produced by	Melvin Frank Norman Panama
Written by	Melvin Frank Norman Panama
Starring	Danny Kaye Mai Zetterling Torin Thatcher David Burns Leon Askin
Music by	Sylvia Fine
Cinematography	Daniel L. Fapp
Editing by	Alma Macrorie
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	April 14, 1954 June 2, 1954 September 8, 1954 October 15, 1954
Running time	103 min.
Country	U.S.A.
Language	English
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

For other uses, see Knock on Wood (disambiguation).

Knock on Wood is a 1954 comedy film starring Danny Kaye and Mai Zetterling. Other actors in the film include Torin Thatcher, David Burns, and Leon Askin. The film was written and directed by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, with songs by Kaye's wife, Sylvia Fine.

[edit] Plot

Jerry Morgan (Kaye) is a ventriloquist who is having trouble with love: just when his relationship with a woman gets around to marriage, his dummy turns jealous and spoils everything. At last Jerry is convinced to see a psychiatrist, Ilse Nordstrom (Zetterling), who tries to discover the source of his problem. The two of them eventually fall in love.

At the same time, Jerry becomes unwittingly intertwined with spies. This aspect of the plot produces the most hilarious scenes in the film as he is trying to elude them, such as the scene in which Jerry, impersonating a British car salesman, tries to demonstrate a new convertible with loads of bells and whistles, and the incomparable comic highlight near the end, when he finds himself on stage in the middle of the performance of an exotic ballet.

[edit] Trivia

As in Kaye's later film The Court Jester (likewise written and directed by Frank and Panama), the dialogue includes linguistic play, here involving particularly the names of the dummies ("Clarence" and Terrence") and the Slavic names of the spies.
The title song was an adaptation of "Everbody Thinks I'm Crazy" from the 1941 cartoon debut of Woody Woodpecker. It can be found along with Danny Kaye's rendition of "The Woody Woodpecker Song" on the album, "The Best of Danny Kaye" [Spectrum, 2000].
"Knock on Wood" is also the title of a song in another film, Casablanca, with music by M.K. Jerome and lyrics by Jack Scholl. It is performed by Dooley Wilson ("Sam") and orchestra.