Cinema: Morse Makes the Scene

Honeymoon Hotel. Comedian Robert Morse looks like Arthur Godfrey Jr. and makes more faces than a rubber totem pole. He scored big on Broadway in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and then somebody apparently told him how to succeed in pictures without really trying: never put the part before the Morse. Up to a point the formula works. But what the heck. Being a success in this picture is like being head flea on a dead dog.

The story, which transpires at a Caribbean resort amid plastic palmettos and other touches of tropical realism, can best be described as follows: zzzzzzz. The players are equally interesting. Nancy Kwan, who claims to be a genuine Eurasian, looks like an American chorine with Scotch-taped eyelids. Jill St. John, who considers herself a comedienne, puts up a good front. Robert Goulet, whose talent is for singing, doesn’t sing. And Keenan Wynn, who has probably been in worse pictures, looks as if he can’t remember when.

Only Morse seems to feel an obligation to act. Since his lines are unspeakable, he mumbles them inaudibly and distracts the customers by giggling, wriggling, itching, twitching, wearing a wig, dancing a jig, and crossing his eyes till he practically looks out of his ears. People who did not see him on Broadway will probably think he is just a somewhat shorter, somewhat quieter Jerry Lewis. People who did will wonder what makes him tic, and wistfully murmur: ” Autre temps, autre Morse.”