SGT BILKO - THE GIFT OF LAUGHTER
Cheering up in a pandemic of gloom - The Bilko solution.
How do we keep cheerful in a cheerless world? The arts of course are tonic of tonics but dipping into the offers on digital theatre, so much of it dissects the human condition; as it should be of course but more often than not melancholy rules. There are joyous offerings out there – a wonderful filmed ‘Funny Girl’ and an exquisite performance of Noel Coward’s ‘Present Laughter’.
But for pure unalloyed joy, I want to take you back before Covid; actually closer to the deadly Asian Flu of 1957. My choice made from 1955 to ’59, makes no reference to that epidemic or indeed any other real world woe. There is no cold warrior worry, no A-Bomb anxiety nor any concerns for the ownership of the Suez Canal. What I offer you is pure joy, pure comedy that exists outside the bounds of anything reflecting its times. The game was laughter pure and anything but simple. Timeless laughter which is past and present is a rare flower.
My choice then for the present of pure laughter is a boxed set of the Sergeant Bilko series made between 1955 and the last year of the Fifties. Avoid the Steve Martin remake of a few years back. It was a very pale imitation. For the old TV show, Its eponymous star, the conniving gambler Ernie Bilko was played with masterful comic timing by the blessed Phil Silvers. He has the rapid-fire delivery of a vaudeville performer, which indeed he had been. He is master of a platoon full of the most unsoldierly soldiers worn down by the constant fleecing of their payroll by their master sergeant and his never-ending supply of get rich quick (for him) wheezes. Bilko’s regular nemesis is the army camp’s Colonel Hall played with exquisite avuncular long sufferance by Paul Ford. The episodes pack simple but overlapping plots into their 24 minutes, the pace is furious, wisecracking with energy. The setting is the fictitious army base at Fort Baxter, Missouri. Yet the scripts are pure New York – not surprising when they are from the pens of America’s finest comedy geniuses of the time including Neil Simon and the show’s creator Nat Hiken. The latter was hailed at the time as television’s master of comedy, a tireless perfectionist who burnt himself into an early death in 1968.
Hiken’s stamp is over every one of the 120 or so episodes telecast for CBS. Bilko is not just an avalanche of wickedly funny and clever sight and verbal gags, but is a masterpiece of TV choreography. Even those who may be too cool to enjoy this 50s barmy army would have to admire the way Hiken as director, engineered a whole platoon (some of whom were outrageously wide such as the lovable slob Private Doberman) into what was then a 12 inch screen. Each shot, each scene and sub scene is lovingly crafted to make maximum use of the screen’s narrow palette. Unlike British TV at the time, this is not filmed theatre, nor a cut-down version of a wide-screen movie. Hiken had the prescience to know that this televisual medium was something new and challenging. Compare the British equivalent, ‘The Army Game’ with its static camera work, shaky theatrical sets and slow, textually dominated scripts. Bilko, by comparison, is fast paced, packed with visual gags, telling close ups and medium shots which place each actor on exactly the right spot to create a never-ending cascade of stage pictures. The 15 or so men under Bilko’s charge move like some balletic crab when their sergeant suggests yet another method for getting them to part with their army dollars. Entrances and exits are timed with exquisite microsecond accuracy.
The plots are absurd and the viewer is invited to suspend all disbelief. This is a cartoon world where Bilko can conceal a racehorse on the army camp and inveigle his men to hide the evidence of equine presence by tricking them into eating a ton of raw oats. The whole cast was made in comedy heaven: Bilko two sidekicks Corporals Barbella and Henshaw are always in on the scam; so are his fellow sergeants who know that Bilko will always outsmart them into losing their wallets to him. A gambling den in the mess can be transformed back to an innocent eatery the second a suspicious officer arrives at the door.
The claustrophobia of the army set and uniforms give the Bilko world a truly timeless dimension. None of it seems to be of the 1950s (there are even black soldiers in his platoon – unheard of on national TV back then). Only occasionally do we catch a glimpse outside Fort Baxter and see 1950s America with its gas guzzlers and women in wide frocks. The revelation often comes as a shock as most episodes feel as if they were recorded last week.
Aside from the comedic sharpness, the endearing thing about Bilko is the underlying warmth and humanity on display. Though you know you will lose your last cent to Ernie’s latest dodge, he has a warmth and affection for the men who love him back despite of everything. Hall is the cuddliest of colonels and nothing like a military man – the perfectly comedic innocent foil for Ernie’s merry mischief. Bilko knows how to play on his fellows’ weak spots including absurd flattery (such as always ‘mistaking’ the colonel’s late middle-aged wife for Marilyn Monroe).
Of all the wonderful plots in the series, my favourite is the episode when the gods on Mount Olympus decide to confer on Bilko the gift of making every wish come true - but only for 24 hours. We see Bilko inadvertently getting everything right but he doesn’t realise he’s been gifted the winning streak until half an hour before midnight when his powers will cease. The Cinderella race to find anything lucrative to bet on as America sleeps is pure imaginative bliss and as good as any from a Grant-Hepburn screwball comedy of the early 1940s.
Go then and order this exquisite box set, watch it little and often (this treatment for lockdown blues is not suitable for box set binges). Memories of the legion of comic moments in each episode will infuse into your bloodstream, enough mirthful medication to last at least a day. A box set should last you through the pandemic, cheering your soul and offering the greatest antidote to virus fears – the gift of laughter.
