The Court Jester

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The Court Jester
The Court Jester DVD cover
Directed by	Melvin Frank Norman Panama
Produced by	Melvin Frank Norman Panama
Written by	Melvin Frank Norman Panama
Starring	Danny Kaye Glynis Johns Basil Rathbone Angela Lansbury
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	January 27, 1956
Running time	101 min.
Language	English
Budget	$4,000,000 US
IMDb profile

The Court Jester is a 1956 comedy film starring Danny Kaye, Glynis Johns, Basil Rathbone, and Angela Lansbury. The movie is co-written, co-directed, and co-produced by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama. The film was released by Paramount Pictures in the VistaVision widescreen format.

Danny Kaye received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor - Comedy/Musical.

Made for a cost of $4 million in the fall of 1955, it was the most expensive comedy film produced at the time.^[1][2] The motion picture bombed at the box-office on its release, bringing in only $2.2 million in receipts the following winter and spring of 1956.^[3] Since then, it has become a television matinee favorite. The film contains the famous exchange: "The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true!" (mainly between Kaye and Mildred Natwick as Griselda).

In 2004, The Court Jester was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Songs 3 Trivia 4 External links 5 References

[edit] Synopsis

Ostensibly set in medieval England, the plot nominally concerns the struggle to restore the rightful heir, a child, to the throne, the King and all his family having been murdered or otherwise disposed of. Kaye plays Hubert Hawkins, an ex-carnival entertainer ("a jester, unemployed, is nobody's fool"), who becomes minstrel to the Black Fox, a Robin Hood-type character (who actually makes only a few minor appearances in the film), played by Edward Ashley.

In the introductory scene—a musical song and dance—the audience is led to believe that Kaye is playing the part of the Black Fox, with his assistants, a band of dwarves (Hawkins' pals from the carnival), all in identical costumes. It is only after the end of this production that the real Black Fox appears, and suggests that Hawkins should stay out of his wardrobe, having been previously warned. Kaye responds that he is only trying to improve the morale of the troops.

Hawkins is given a serious task to perform; when the location of their camp becomes known to the King, he must escort the rightful heir to the throne, the baby that bears the royal birthmark—a purple pimpernel—and Maid Jean (Glynis Johns), the Black Fox's right-hand woman (and presumably his daughter) and object of Hawkins' affections, to safety. To achieve this, he disguises himself as an asthmatic old man (supposedly the grandfather of the maiden). After safely eluding the king's forces, Hawkins and Jean are forced to stay in a hut during a thunderstorm, where a new development presents itself; the existence of a secret underground tunnel leading from the forest to the castle. If it were opened, the Black Fox's forces could launch a surprise attack on the usurping King, but there's a problem: it only opens with a key that the king has in his possession.

Unexpectedly, a golden opportunity comes to them: a stranger enters the hut to seek shelter, who introduces himself as the king's new talented and multilingual jester, Giacomo, "King of Jesters and Jester of Kings". Hawkins and Jean realize the potential; Jean (Hawkins proves to be reluctant) knocks the jester out, and Hawkins assumes his identity. As Jean later attempts to transport the royal heir to a safe haven, however, she and the hidden infant are picked up by the king's soldiers, who roam the countryside for fair maidens as playgirls for an upcoming tournament, and taken to the castle themselves.

Much hilarity ensues as Hawkins infiltrates the evil King Roderick's castle. In this guise, he contrives to worm his way into the King's confidence and - quite by accident - introduces Jean to the king, who takes a fancy to her; exploiting this attention, Jean gets the key which opens the tunnel door and paves the way for a daring invasion of the castle. However, the Princess Gwendoline (Angela Lansbury) has taken a fancy to the new jester herself: angry about a possible arranged marriage even though her servant, the witch Griselda (Natwick), had told her stories of romantic love and promised such a future for her, the Princess threatens to kill Griselda, who, failing to hypnotize the Princess with her evil eye, then witnesses Hawkins' arrival and proclaims him to be Gwendoline's romantic suitor. She then goes off to put Hawkins under a spell instead. Once hypnotized, Hawkins can be brought in and out of a trance at will by a snap of the fingers, and Griselda sends him to court the Princess. While under this trance, he also takes on the role of assassin-for-hire to the evil Lord Ravenhurst (Basil Rathbone) and his henchmen, who had in fact hired the original Giacomo for this purpose.

When the King discovers that his daughter has fallen in love with the jester, Hawkins is first thrown in jail. However, in the meantime Ravenhurst and his fellows have learned that Hawkins is an impostor and suspect that he is the Black Fox himself. They decide to exploit this to help their plans, and upon Ravenhurst's suggestion Hawkins is swiftly promoted to Knight with the intent that he can be legitimately challenged to a joust by the Princess's suitor, Sir Griswold of Mackalwane ("The Grim and Grisly Gruesome Griswold"), and killed. The challenges of knighthood are made easy for him (he is given no chance not to succeed). He is warned of the plot, but while trying to escape, he finds himself walking into the ranks of knights marching to his own investiture. A slow, stately, time-honored ritual, the knighting ritual is accelerated to breakneck speed in one of the more memorable scenes of the film.

Immediately upon being knighted, Hawkins is challenged to a duel to the death by Griswold, who appears to truly love the princess. Help is given to Hawkins in the form of a poisonous potion made by Griselda, but Sir Griswold is also told of it by a courtier who overhears of the plot. In a scene full of tongue twisting English, both combatants approach the King, each trying desperately to remember which cup contains the poison, with the result that the king decides to abandon the ritual of drinking a toast before the joust and get straight on to the fight. But a storm is rising, and Hawkins' armor, struck by lightning, has become magnetized. Griswold is pulled from his horse by his morning star which sticks to Hubert's shield, and Hubert wins the joust.

The switch with the poisoned drink builds to the following dialogue exchange:

Hawkins: I've got it! The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true! Right?

Griselda: Right! -- but there's been a change: they broke the chalice from the palace...

Hawkins: They broke the chalice from the palace?

Griselda: ...and replaced it. With a flagon.

Hawkins: A flagon?

Griselda: With the figure of a dragon.

Hawkins: Flagon with a dragon.

Griselda: Right.

Hawkins: ...but did you put the pellet with the poison in the vessel with the pestle?

Griselda: No! The pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon! The vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true!

Hawkins: The pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon, the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true.

Griselda: Just remember that!

In the forest, the Black Fox and his men prepare to sneak inside the castle, but then the secret passage collapses, leaving only an opening "barely enough for a child." The Black Fox immediately summons Hawkins' dwarf friends to attack the castle first and open the drawbridge so that the rebels can assault from the countryside.

Meanwhile, Ravenhurst learns that the royal heir is also inside the castle, and as Hawkins is declared victor, he is immediately arrested as the Black Fox. As he and Jean are to stand trial, however, the rebels attack the castle. When Hubert must defeat the villainous Ravenhurst at swordplay, he is again entranced by Griselda into thinking that he is a great swordsman. A hilarious scene ensues in which he duels with Ravenhurst while alternating between two personalities: the true Hawkins, who is extremely cowardly and a clumsy fighter, and the entranced version, who has the skill and demeanour of a master swordsman. The spell can be reversed and re-implemented every time someone snaps their fingers; thus, since both Hawkins and Ravenhurst snap their fingers to illustrate every point they make, Hawkins changes between the two very frequently. Eventually, however, with the help of Maid Jean, a catapult and several of his dwarf friends, Hawkins (literally) overthrows Ravenhurst.

As the usurpers of the throne are defeated by the Black Fox and his army of dwarves, the rightful King is finally revealed by his distinctive birthmark and acknowledged by good and bad alike. Hawkins embraces Jean and leads the entire cast in one last chorus of Life Could Not Better Be; also, Gwendoline and Griswold can be seen in the crowd holding hands.

[edit] Songs

• "I Live to Love" (words by Sammy Cahn, music by Sylvia Fine, deleted from the film but included on the sound track album)
• "Life Could Not Better Be" (words and music by Sammy Cahn & Sylvia Fine)
• "Maladjusted Jester" (words and music by Sylvia Fine)
• "My Heart Knows a Lovely Song" (words and music by Sammy Cahn & Sylvia Fine)
• "(You'll Never) Outfox the Fox" (words by Sammy Cahn, music by Sylvia Fine)
• "Pass the Basket" (words by Sammy Cahn, music by Sylvia Fine)
• "Where Walks My True Love?" (words by Sammy Cahn, music by Sylvia Fine)

Note: Sylvia Fine was Danny Kaye's wife.

[edit] Trivia

• Basil Rathbone, a world-class fencer called "the best in Hollywood", said that Danny Kaye, who had never fenced before, was as good as he was with only three weeks of practice; Kaye was a natural. "With his quick reflexes and his extraordinary sense of mime, which enabled him to imitate easily anything seen once, Kaye could outfence Rathbone after a few weeks of instruction." [1]
• According to Danny Kaye's daughter Dena, when people spotted Danny in public, they would often approach him and recite the "Pellet with the poison" speech.
• The "purple pimpernel" is a reference to the classic story and film The Scarlet Pimpernel.
• The film contains so many similarities to The Adventures of Robin Hood to the extent that it can be considered a parody (if not at times a remake) of that film. Similarities include the casting of Basil Rathbone (playing a part almost identical to Sir Guy of Gisbourne) and Mildred Natwick, who bears a striking resemblance to Una O'Connor. Sets and costumes also evoke the 1938 production as do some of the fight scenes (Danny Kaye overturns a table and later duels with Rathbone across the castle).
• In the science fiction series Star Trek: Enterprise, The Court Jester is among the 50,000 films found in the movie database aboard the starship Enterprise. ("Doctor's Orders")
• In a 2006 appearance as a guest critic on the television show Ebert & Roeper, Fred Willard credited The Court Jester with inspiring him to become a comedic actor.
• The film's most famous phrase, "The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle, the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true" was among the 400 classic movie phrases nominated by the AFI for their AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes, the only quote from a Danny Kaye movie to make it to the nominated list.
• The song "Never outfox the fox" is used daily on the Chris Evans Drive Time show on Radio 2. It introduces a feature where Evans' sidekick, Rebecca Pike, tries to answer any general knowledge questions the listeners send in to try and "outfox" her.

[edit] External links

• The Court Jester at the Internet Movie Database
• http://TheVesselWithThePestle.com

[edit] References