Review of Come Blow Your Horn

"Come blow your horn" marks the start of Mr Sinatra's descent into self-parody .He was at least ten years too old for the part of a perennial bachelor grooming his younger brother into a carbon-copy of himself.Even in 1955 for "The Tender Trap" he looked vaguely disturbing as he pursued the much younger Debbie Reynolds.You almost expected him to break into "Have some Madeira m'dear" and twirl the ends of his metaphorical moustache.By 1963 his style of ageing hipster,tight trousered Italian shod charm was wearing a bit thin.All the women in his movie world were large-breasted bouffant-haired long-legged airheads,the men cool wise-cracking "in with the in-crowd" kind of guys,but not quite as cool and wise-cracking as Mr Sinatra himself of course. Neil Simon's plays have a peculiarly American popularity in much the same way that the late Terence Rattigan's had an appeal for a mainly British audiences.The arcane social practices of his middle class characters are often as mysterious to us as Mr Rattigan's must be to a U.S. audience. "Come blow your horn" features Miss Molly Picon and Mr Lee J.Cobb as a bickering angst ridden Jewish couple(is there any other kind on Broadway ?)with Mr Sinatra and Mr Tony Bill as their two sons.A harsh critic might rail at the casting of Mr Sinatra as a middle-aged single Jew,but hey,this is Broadway,right? Mr Bill is fine in a small furry animal kind of way,perhaps a marmoset or lemur,unused to appearing in daylight.Mr Sinatra is Las Vegas smart,like a third-rate lounge act,existing in a state of permanent priapism,no wonder his mother worries about him.An assortment of "broads" move to and fro within their orbit,the less fortunate ones catching their eye.Mr Dan Blocker,lately "Hoss" in "Bonanza",steals the movie by being the only recognisably human character.He is far better than the film deserves as a cuckolded husband. When I saw this film at the "Carlton" cinema in Forest Gate,East London over 40 years ago,the world was much more easily amused.When the opening shot of Mr Sinatra's parents' house came up on the screen,the appearance of the word "Yonkers" was greeted with gales of laughter.In order to achieve the same effect today Mr Sinatra would have to blow away several " 'ho's" with a large calibre shotgun,whilst chomping on a cigar and screaming "Die Motherfxxxxxxx" before soaking their still twitching bodies in petrol and setting fire to them.They could call it "Come blow up the 'hood"