Dirty Dingus Magee (1970)

the audience applauded

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Writer & director Burt Kennedy concentrated largely on writing and directing westerns, some of them quite hilarious, such as "Support Your Local" and "Support Your Local Gunfighter" during his 44-year Hollywood career. "Dirty Dingus Magee" isn't as funny as the two "Support Your Local" spoofs that Kennedy helmed with James Garner. Part of the problem may be that Frank Sinatra doesn't make as amusing a protagonist as Garner. Furthermore,it isn't as funny as "The Good Guys and the Bad Guys." Considering the remarkable writing talent involved in this snickering horse opera, "Dirty Dingus Magee" should have emerged as far more than a fair-to-middling oater that generates its mirth from inconsistent helpings of satire, double entendre, and lowest common denominator slapstick that never really comes together with the cohesion of the "Support" westerns. Scenarists Tom Waldman of "Inspector Clouseau," Frank Waldman of "The Return of the Pink Panther," and Joseph Heller of "Catch 22" make a formidable troika. They adapted David Markson's novel "The Ballad of Dirty Dingus Magee," and they had to change Markson's 19-year old protagonist so that middle-aged Frank Sinatra would be acceptable in the lead role. Unfortunately, the humor here tends to more miss than hit, and some of it may flies so quickly that it might be noticeable only during subsequent viewings. The best set-piece in this light-hearted sagebrusher takes place when Brigadier General George (John Dehner of "The Left-Handed Gun") orders an emergency retreat drill at a bordello and his half-clad troopers scramble out windows galore to mount their horses. Some of the one-liners are memorable, too. Cathouse madam Belle Nops (Anne Jackson of "The Tiger Makes Out") remarks to one of her girls: "These army drills are hard on the girls." Belle's girl China Poppy (Marya Thomas of "Stay Away, Joe") replies, "Soldiers hard on, too." Occasionally, Kennedy replays one of his better "Support Your Local Sheriff" gags when our hero Dingus Magee struggles to open a strongbox festooned with chains. Magee wedges the box in the crotch of a tree, ties a rope from it to his saddle pommel and then gallops away. Predictably, instead of ripping the strongbox open, Magee is jerked unceremoniously backwards off his horse. Occasionally, Kennedy inserts quick antics, like a cavalry trooper leaving a prostitute who hands him a rooster and tells him to take his "cock" with him. Incidentally, the word dingus is Yiddish for penis.The shallow story concerns an insignificant outlaw with a $10 bounty on his head, Dingus Magee (Frank Sinatra of "Sergeants 3"), who is working at a stagecoach relay station when we first encounter him. A stagecoach stops to let the passengers stretch their legs and get a bite to eat. Magee recognizes his old friend Herkimer 'Hoke' Birdsill (George Kennedy of "Bandolero!"), but Hoke does his best to ignore him. Eventually, Magee shows Hoke where he can urinate without attracting attention. When Hoke turns his back on Magee, our anti-heroic protagonist nudges him with a six-shooter and snatches his derby. All along Hoke has assured Magee that he has only seven dollars in his wallet. As it turns out, Hoke has $400 stashed in his derby hat, and Magee steals it. Later, after the stagecoach pulls into the two-bit town of Yerkey's Hole, Hoke searches frantically for the sheriff and winds up discussing his predicament to Belle Nops, the madam runs the bordello and serves a mayor. Belle appoints Hoke as sheriff, and "Dirty Dingus Magee" depicts the back and forth shenanigans between Magee and Hoke as Hoke captures him and Magee escapes. Magee has a running romance with a young, sex-addicted, Indian maiden, Anna Hot Water (Michele Carey of "El Dorado"), who utters everything in an infantile idiom. For example, she refers to sex as "bim-bam." She addresses our hero as "Ding-goose." When General George threatens to remove his troops because the local Native American population poses no threat to the settlers, Belle and Hoke turn Dingus' escape from Hoke's jail into an Indian uprising.What possessed Frank Sinatra to this silly horse opera remains a mystery. He cavorts about in a toupee that makes him look like the large-eyed war orphan "Dondi" of the Gus Edson and Irwin Hasen comic strip that newspapers carried for thirty years. George Kennedy wears his attire so that he looks like Charlie Chaplin. A collection of seasoned western movie supporting actors, including Jack Elam, Don 'Red' Barry, Henry Jones, Paul Fix, and Harry Carey, Jr., show up for this half-baked hilarity. Lois Nettleton is cast as local schoolmarm Prudence Frost who is a closet nymphomaniac, an inversion of the formulaic schoolmarm in westerns. Kennedy and his scribes stand every western cliché on its head, but "Dirty Dingus Magee" labors for most of its laughs.

Dirty Dingus Magee is no classic western by any means. It is a ho hum comedy/western that lacks any appeal for Mr. Sinatra who plays a comedic run of the mill hobo thief. For most of the film he is wearing nothing more than a red single piece long john underwear and a really, really, I mean really bad teenager toupee that reminds me of Moe from the original Three Stooges. I guess the producers spent more on casting Sinatra in the lead role and ran out of money for a wardrobe designer?George Kennedy plays a hapless sap that keeps getting sucked in to Dirty Dingus Magee's schemes to make them both richer and richer. Of course there is a string of horny ladies from the local cathouse, as well as the good looking actresses Lois Nettleton and Michele Carey who seem to be just dying to get into bed with these two over the hill actors Frank Sinatra and George Kennedy? Why are they so hot for lust with Dirty Dingus Magee and Hoke Birdsill? Well because that is probably the way Sinatra and Kennedy insisted the script be written to boost their aging egos. This is a lousy western/comedy lacking any interest what so ever. Sinatra realized there was little interest in his screen appearances anymore from his hey days with earlier classic fine films like Pal Joey and Oceans 11 and so he only appeared in front of the camera four (4) more times spanning over the next 17 years.Sinatra was always a good looking, lean, suave and smooth singing crooner who had natural charisma. Unlike actors such as Sean Connery or even John Wayne who continued throughout their acting careers to hold their audiences attention and fascination, Sinatra as Dirty Dingus Magee was a total bomb. I am glad I watched it because I felt it is like when you drive by a bad car accident, you don't really want to see the carnage but human nature dictates you just have to take a look. And so I did with DDM, I watched it and I can only rate it a 3 out of 10 for good picture quality and nothing else.

I consider myself well educated, articulate, literate. So loving this movie is a bit embarrassing. It is silly, adolescent, a little creepy (How old all the "leading men" are! And how young and voluptuous and willing the women!) But I loved this movie. I laughed all through it.Frank Sinatra is somehow simultaneously wide-eyed and leering as Dingus Magee. He never once gives any indication that he isn't taking this seriously. He plays it like a professional actor! And he does it well.George Kennedy is as professional. He knows that when you play a clown, you must never, ever be clownish. He gives a good, solid, straight performance of a ridiculous character. And when he is sworn in as the sheriff, the oath he takes made me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe for a while! Anne Jackson is always worth watching. Her turn as the mayor(madam) of Yerkey's Hole is delightful. She comes as close as anyone to winking at the camera, but she manages to maintain professionalism, and gives the movie her inestimable good work.Then there's the stunning Michelle Carey as (I am not making this up) Anna Hot Water. You now have her name. Need I say more? I have sometimes wondered if it was a law in Hollywood that you couldn't make a western comedy without Henry Jones and John Dehner. Throw Jack Elam in and you have a winner.Suggestive? Throughout? Profane? Never. No blatant sex, no nudity, no gore, the only violence is comic.Silly, stupid, a plot a 13-year-old boy would love.Yep. I really enjoyed this movie!

Burt Kennedy who gave us so many good westerns spoofs comes up a wee bit short of good with Dirty Dingus Magee. Not that it doesn't have a few funny moments, but the cast just doesn't quite get with the spirit of the things the way they did in such films as The Rounders and Support Your Local Sheriff.For one thing Frank Sinatra looks like he's waiting for Dino and Sammy to come on the scene. Old Blue Eyes in the meanwhile is just going through the motions of a performance. Which consists of him acting just like a human version of the Road Runner.Wile E. Coyote in this case is George Kennedy who never played such a goofy role on screen before or since. Sinatra spends the entire 91 minutes of Dirty Dingus Magee consistently making a fool out of poor Kennedy.Best performances in the film belong to the women, to Anne Jackson for one of the brassiest bordello madams ever done on screen and to Lois Nettleton as the nymphomaniac school teacher, Prudence Frost. Yes, the name is part of the gag.But when that gag becomes the best one in the film, you've got a problem.