In a sketch performed in front of a nightclub audience that provides scattered laughs throughout, a drunk in top hat gets thrown out by a bar proprietor along with a ladder the drunk brought in. He constantly tries to get his roommate Richard to open the door to no avail. He also climbs the nearly closed ladder for no particular reason. The end. A couple of things to mention: IMDb lists Stepin Fetchit as playing Richard but he doesn't appear here, and despite the title of this short, no song of the same name is performed which is what I expected when I discovered this on Internet Archive. So on that note, what I just watched was a complete waste of time for me with nothing funny to recommend here.
3 Reviews
Dusty Fletcher's comedy sketch, minus the song
FieCrier18 January 2008
I saw this short on DVD as included in the box set Musicals Classics 50 Movie Pack Collection, which also has "Answer to Open the Door Richard," with which some of the information here is confused.
In "Open the Door Richard," Dusty Fletcher plays a drunk in top hat and large shoes who performs for a dinner audience. Another man plays a barman or restaurateur who has kicked him out on the street. Dusty shares his woes and tries to get home, knocking on the arch of the stage as though it were a door, peppering his stand-up (or lay-down) routine with shouts of "open the door, Richard!"
It's enjoyable, but between the actor's slurred speech and the relatively poor print, it's hard to make out all the lines.
There's also a song by this name, and I thought this short would contain it, but it does not. "Answer to Open the Door Richard" is probably a response to the song rather than the sketch. In that, a band plays a song in which they call Richard on the phone, and Richard answers in sleepy song that he won't open the door.
In "Open the Door Richard," Dusty Fletcher plays a drunk in top hat and large shoes who performs for a dinner audience. Another man plays a barman or restaurateur who has kicked him out on the street. Dusty shares his woes and tries to get home, knocking on the arch of the stage as though it were a door, peppering his stand-up (or lay-down) routine with shouts of "open the door, Richard!"
It's enjoyable, but between the actor's slurred speech and the relatively poor print, it's hard to make out all the lines.
There's also a song by this name, and I thought this short would contain it, but it does not. "Answer to Open the Door Richard" is probably a response to the song rather than the sketch. In that, a band plays a song in which they call Richard on the phone, and Richard answers in sleepy song that he won't open the door.
I know this is NOT politically correct....but it's STILL very funny despite its many limitations.
planktonrules12 January 2012
I see this film has a very, very, very low current score of 3.3. I can understand this, as the film suffers on two accounts. First, it is terribly politically incorrect and surely must offend a lot of folks. Second, the production values are minimal--and the only set appears to be a TINY dinner theater or nightclub and an itty-bitty stage with a cheap curtain behind it. But, still, I liked this film.
This short stars the king of bad black stereotypes, Stepin Fetchit. Here, he is older and his routine is very different from his 1930s style--and that's an improvement. He's still representing most everything bad about black stereotypes except that he's much more clever and actually funny. All alone, Fetchit delivers an often funny one-man act where he pretends to be a no-good drunk arriving home very late and wakes up the neighborhood in the process. You just have to see it to believe it and see that it is quite funny--and Fetchit clearly had talent. It's just too bad he was given so much negative material throughout his career.
This short stars the king of bad black stereotypes, Stepin Fetchit. Here, he is older and his routine is very different from his 1930s style--and that's an improvement. He's still representing most everything bad about black stereotypes except that he's much more clever and actually funny. All alone, Fetchit delivers an often funny one-man act where he pretends to be a no-good drunk arriving home very late and wakes up the neighborhood in the process. You just have to see it to believe it and see that it is quite funny--and Fetchit clearly had talent. It's just too bad he was given so much negative material throughout his career.
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