Otto Preminger's Skidoo, 1968

Cesar Romero and Arnold Stang look on as Jackie Gleason smacks Frankie Avalon

It was just awful. A big budget comedy made by a bullying director with no sense of humor.

I had heard different things about it---that it was a popular and critical failure when it came out but that people had reassessed it. And I found the idea of Jackie Gleason with a gun appealing for some reason.

The plot was rather disjointed. Jackie Gleason is a retired mafia hitman living with his wife, (Carol Channing), and hanging around with a former mob associate (Arnold Stang). He is upset that his daughter is hanging around with hippies. Cesar Romero and Frankie Avalon bring him a message from the mob boss known as "God" (Groucho Marx) who wants him to come out of retirement to murder Mickey Rooney who is in prison and will testify about the mafia before a congressional committee.

Gleason eventually agrees to do it.

Carol Channing disrobes in Frankie Avalon's bachelor pad.

47-year-old Carol Channing appears in underwear that's not entirely opaque. She invited the hippies to stay at their house with her and Gleason. Both Channing and her daughter are trying to find Jackie Gleason who has slipped into prison to kill Rooney.

In prison, Gleason borrows his new cellmate's stationary, licks the envelope and is then told it's laced with LSD.

 

Roger Ebert once observed that no good movie has ever been made with a hot air balloon and this is no exception.

With Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin, and George Raft who, along with Cesar Romero and Preminger himself, had been special guest villains on Batman.

With Slim Pickins as a prison switchboard operator, Peter Lawford as a congressional committee chair. Harry Nilsson, who did the music, as a prison guard.

Carol Channing sings "Skidoo"

At one point it turns into a musical as Carol Channing sings the movie theme song, "Skidoo" as hippies raid a boat that, in real life, was owned by John Wayne.

Groucho Marx smoking marijuana.

Groucho seemed to be in pretty good shape but his talents were wasted in the role. He reportedly dropped acid in preparation for it and found it a pleasant experience so at least he got that out of it.

With Michael Constatine (the principal from Room 222) as a serial rapist sharing a cell with Jackie Gleason. They had the good taste to leave him behind when they escape.

Hippie dialog by Rob Reiner (uncredited).

Preminger was known for abusing and bullying actors. He did this to Groucho Marx and Jackie Gleason threatened him if he tried it on him.

But it was just awful. Not one funny thing. They murder Arnold Stang. There were hippie women wearing nothing but bikini bottoms and body paint in the presence of hippie children, which they couldn't film today. I hope Cesar Romero wasn't there when Gleason referred to a hippie as a "faggot".