He Laughed Last (1956) Frankie Laine, Lucy Marlow, Anthony Dexter

77 min | Comedy, Crime | August 1956 (USA)
5.7 Your rating: -/10 Ratings: 5.7/10 from 76 users
Reviews: 4 user
Considering the temporal context, this movie starts out like a film noir, but it's not -- it's in beautiful Technicolor, worthy of a musical of that era. But it's not that, either. Crooner Frankie Laine singing a couple of songs -- "Danny Boy" sung twice, plus another song fragment introducing the opening nightclub scene -- does not a musical make.

If you know Frankie Laine only by his top 40 hits, from "That's My Desire" in 1947 to "You Gave Me a Mountain" in 1969, you may be surprised to find that he was also a competent actor. His nuanced facial expressions in the scene with his character's newspaper buddy which leads into the flashback which consumes most of the movie pleasantly surprised at least this viewer.

This was Blake Edwards' second movie as a director, and the Blake Edwards style is already in evidence. (I haven't seen his first, "Bring Your Smile Along," also with Laine, so I can't comment on it.) What's the Blake Edwards style? It's one of those things that's undefinable (at least by me), but if you're familiar with his body of work, it's recognizable.

As for the movie itself, it's a pleasant pastime, especially in Technicolor; and the interplay between the engaging leads, Richard Long as a cop and Lucy Marlow as his fiancée, a chanteuse turned mob boss, makes for some mildly intriguing comedic conflict.


Director: Blake Edwards
Writers: Blake Edwards (screenplay), Blake Edwards (story), 1 more credit »
Stars: Frankie Laine, Lucy Marlow, Anthony Dexter