Thrice Told Tales: Just Some Gigolos

(Bedtime Story, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Hustle)

Most of us have kinds of films we enjoy and others we’d rather avoid. My wife can do without horror films. I like to be scared by a movie. Some people love musicals and others find themselves checking out when someone breaks into song for no apparent reason. But there is one kind of film I like we can all agree is the very worst: Sex comedies from the 1960’s.

As these things go, 1964’s Bedtime Story is better than most. It does feature an attractive and talented cast: Marlon Brando, David Niven, and Shirley Jones. This doesn’t mean it’s good, but the screenplay by Stanley Shapiro did provide the basis for an excellent remake – and that is what we look at in Thrice Told Tales, stories made as films at least three times. Bedtime Story became Dirty Rotten Scoundrels which became The Hustle. (It will be necessary for this post to have plot spoilers. If you haven’t seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, you might want to bookmark and wait to read until after you’ve seen that very funny film. The other two…nothing is going to spoil those films that the cast and crew haven’t spoiled.)

The storyline in all three films is the same. A posh con artist lives in a beautiful town on the French Riviera bilking tourists. A lowlife comes to town threatening business. (In all three films, this line is used, “A poacher who shoots at rabbits can scare the big game away.”)

The established con artist, in cahoots with the local chief of police, has the newcomer arrested and pretends to save the lowlife from years in prison. After departing town, the lowlife meets a former mark of the posh con and learns the true story. The lowlife returns to town and demands to be taught by the posh con or ruin the posh con’s business. So the two work together, the posh con wooing a rich mark, who is then scared away by the lowlife pretending to be a mentally challenged sibling. But when the posh con doesn’t share the profits, the two cons are feuding again.

They agree there isn’t room in the town for the both of them, so they make a wager: whoever can take the agreed-upon amount from the newest mark coming to town wins. The loser will leave town. (After this point, the films diverge a bit.)

As you may have guessed, in Bedtime Story David Niven plays the established posh con, Lawrence Jameson. For years he has perfected the game of playing an exiled prince trying to raise money to save the oppressed people in his homeland. (Obviously, a predecessor to the Nigerian prince internet scam.) He works with the local constable and casino employees to find his marks, ensuring the women he targets can afford to lose the money he takes from them.

Marlon Brando plays Col. Freddy Benson, a newly discharged soldier who has been content getting free meals from women with stories of needing money for his sick nana. When he meets Niven, he takes him for a henpecked husband who would be shocked by the idea of living off the wealth of women. (In all three films, the posh con tries to appear shocked and says, “I’m really not in your class.”)

When the two decide to settle their difference with a wager, they choose Janet Walker (Shirley Jones), the young American Soap Queen. Freddy decides to hit her sympathy, pretending to be an emotionally traumatized paraplegic who needs money to get therapy to walk again. Lawrence pretends to be the doctor who can help him.

As their opposing cons proceed, they learn that Janet isn’t a rich heiress but rather the winner of a trip to Europe through a soap company contest. To pay for Freddy’s operation, she has her father sell all of her worldly goods. As they realize they can’t make any money from Janet, they wager on Janet’s virtue instead.

In the end, Freddy truly falls in love with Janet and decides to go straight and return with her to America. Lawrence acknowledges that Freddy made the better choice but decides to continue to endure the “misery” of living off the wealth of beautiful, rich tourists.

The film was a moderate hit in its time. Brando is a decent comedian and earns some laughs. Niven is suave, and Jones is charming, but I find the film rather unsatisfying because these two scoundrels, Freddy and Lawrence, never get retribution for their fiendish ways. Freddy gets the girl (but what kind of marriage will it be with a deceptive beginning?) and Lawrence can continue his cons.

The writers of the remake came up with a plot twist to make a much better film, 1988’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Directed by Frank Oz (yes, the Frank Oz who played Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear, as well as Master Yoda), this version also has a strong cast, featuring Michael Caine, Steve Martin, and Glenne Headly.

Caine, of course, plays Lawrence, the sophisticated swindler. Steve Martin plays Freddy, the novice grifter. One of the highlights of the film is when the two team up, pretending to be brothers. Lawrence proposes to rich women and then introduces them to his brother (also a “prince”) Ruprecht. Martin’s Ruprecht is a marvelous comic creation. It can be awkward to get laughs playing a mentally challenged character, but it works here. I will never stop laughing at Ruprecht sitting at the table with an eyepatch when the woman asks, “Why is there a cork on his fork?”

“To protect himself and others,” Lawrence answers as Ruprecht attempts to jab his covered eye with the covered fork.

The plot of this film eventually diverges greatly from its predecessor. Glenne Headly, as the object of the con men’s wager, initially plays her as an awkward, naive innocent. She wins the affection of both Lawrence and Freddy. The brilliant twist (spoiler) is that we learn that she is a con artist as well, as she bilks both men for all she can get (chiefly the $50,000 to pay for Freddy’s “procedure”).

In a coda at the end of the film, Janet returns to the still shell-shocked Freddy and Lawrence, recruiting them as assistants in a con of her own. It’s very funny and satisfying conclusion to a wonderful comedy.

This is how ideally film remakes should happen. A writer and a director take a film that had potential but didn’t quite work and remake it into something worthy.

And some geniuses looked at Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and thought, “Funny film. But what if the leads were… WOMEN?”

So, in 2019, The Hustle, starring Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson, and Alex Sharp, came out.

A big part of the story in the first two films was the idea that men conning women to make their living was a low and repellent thing to do. It was playing off the ideals of chivalry, the societal norms that taught it was important for men to protect the fairer sex. The sales pitch of both films was, “These guys are awful!”

The women in The Hustle are taking advantage of men richer and/or more powerful than themselves. Which makes them immediately more sympathetic, very much opposed to the central ideas of the first films. As a gender switch film, it’s more thoughtful and less pointless than 2016’s Ghostbusters, but that’s the lowest of bars.

Anne Hathaway plays Josephine Chesterfield, the established, sophisticated con artist. Hathaway is well cast; her beauty would certainly work to her advantage as a con artist, and it’s easy to believe she’d be clever enough for any scheme. Her business relationship with the chief of police of the town is mutually beneficial, as in the other films, but this time there’s a strong insinuation that there’s a romantic element to their relationship.

Rebel Wilson plays Penny Rust, as the crass con – and she’s so much more crass than Brando or Martin’s take on the role. Her initial con is a catfish scam, where she posts a picture of a beautiful woman on dating sites. When the victim sees her (and is obviously disappointed), she says the picture is of her sister who needs money for breast enhancement surgery (she claims the photo’s been enhanced already) When she meets a former mark of Josephine’s on a plane, she persuades him to join him in the Mile High Club.

Alex Sharp (who I have only seen in this film), plays Thomas Westerburg, a tech whiz who invented the app YaBurnt. The nature of the app, which helps someone ghost former friends and followers, would suggest that a jerk invented the thing, but we are supposed to believe he is a very kind, innocent, naive young man. He seems to be based on Mark Zuckerburg, with all that same Silicon Valley Charm.

The plot twist of their mark being a con artist is retained in this film, so in the end the con women are outsmarted by a man. So if they were looking for any “You Go, Girl” messaging, the movie failed.

The previous two films had the cinematic advantage of three attractive leads who could present a convincing love triangle, an important part of both of their plots. I’m trying not to be mean, but only Anne Hathaway is attractive in any traditional sense, and her character may not be interested in men. Therefore, this film throws away that love triangle plot point. Wilson and Sharp’s characters may be attracted to each other (or it’s all part of their cons) but most in the audience will be repelled by their personalities.

The film ends with the same coda of the return of the greater con artists, a la Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but adds two pointless codas after that, including a flashback to Wilson’s character as Hortense (Ruprecht in the two other films; Hortense is just repulsive and not at all funny, so the movie leaves the worst possible taste in viewers’ mouths).

So, the remake of Bedtime Story in the form of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was a very good idea. The remake of DRS in the form of The Hustle was a very bad idea.

(This edition of Thrice Told Tales is part of an ongoing series. The most recent entry was a post on A Christmas Carol.)