MovieChat Forums > One, Two, Three (1961) Discussion > One Of My All Time Favorite Comedies

One Of My All Time Favorite Comedies

posted 16 years ago by moviemaniac2002
4 replies | jump to latest

What a script...what a movie...try to remember a comedy like this where almost every line of dialogue is quotable and laugh out loud funny. I always thought this movie came closest to duplicating the classic Marx Brothers movies with its rapid fire dialogue, and joking contempt for all governments and authority figures.

Some favorite moments -
Red Buttons briefly mocking Cagney's signature speech pattern and gestures.

Cagney asking about the men's room attendent's family crest - "What is it, two cakes of soap on a field of paper towels?"

Cagney to "Schlemmer" - "You're back in the S.S.- Smaller Salary"

Cagney threatening Horst Bucholz with of course, his classic weapon of
choice - a grapefruit.

Cagney's borrowing his fellow gangster Edward G.Robinson's classic -"Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Little Rico?"

Leon Askin's response after Cagney remarks that the Cubans stuck him
with pretty crummy cigars..."That's okay...we sent them pretty crummy rockets"

Askin: "Send papers with blonde lady...in triplicate."
Cagney: "You want the papers in triplicate or the blonde in triplicate?"
Askin: "See what you can do..."

I could go on and on...this movie has always been on my top ten of all time and I couldn't go a year without watching the DVD at least twice.

[–] flnyira 16 years ago

I agree one hundred percent!! a brilliant comedy, fast and furious, with Cagney at the very top of his game, a great way for him to go to retirement (for 20 years), one of the strongest performances of his career. I never tire of watching this movie and laugh hard at almost every line, even though I know them all by heart. I love the "Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" "torture" sequence particularly!

[–] jrs-8 16 years ago

I love this movie too. Let's not forget the classic final shot of the Pepsi bottle.

[–] Noir-It-All 16 years ago

I believe that Joan Crawford was behind that. Joan was the widow of Alfred Steele, the marketing genius behind Pepsi's rise in the fifties. She heard that the Coca Cola product was getting a lot of promotion in the picture. So, she made a phone call, hence the memorable bottle at the end.

"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne

[–] IkuharaKunihiko 8 years ago

An absolutely insane movie! And terribly underrated!

I suppose that after Some Like it Hot (1959) and Apartment (1960), Wilder picked up all the awards possible, so they decided to "take it down a notch", by giving him less credit for One, Two, Three (1961), which stayed in the shadow of those two movies.