Mulligan and Garrity

Created by Ralph Spence (1890-1940)

"Out go the lights---on go the thrills!
Shrieks! Yells! Roars! Screams! More Shrieks!
MULLIGAN, MULLIGAN,
WHERE THE HELL IS MULLIGAN?"

-- lyrics from the musical

Ralph Spence's 1925 play The Gorilla: A Musical Comedy: A Musical Comedy, was a slight piece of silliness that intentionally lampooned the whole haunted house genre. A killer known only as "The Gorilla" (strangler of men---kidnapper of women!) is the prime suspect in the murder of a wealthy businessman whose daughter hires private detectives MULLIGAN and GARRITY, worrying that her boyfriend may be suspected of the crime.

The bumbling detectives investigate, and eventually most of the suspects end up chasing each other around a creepy old mansion full of trap doors, secret passages and the like until the murderer -- a man in a gorilla suit -- is apprehended.

Any doubts that this was anything but a parody are easliy dispelled by the paly's tagline "Out-bats 'The Bat'! Out-cats 'The Cat and the Canary'! Out-warns 'The Last Warning'."

Parody or not, the play lasted only fifteen performances on Broadway. It fared considerably better in its subsequent run in Chicago, and went on to inspire several films.

The first version was silent and appeared only a few years after the curtains went down on Broadway. Mulligan was played by Fred Kelsey and Garrity by Keystone Cops vet Charles Murray, while the young boyfriend was played by a very young Walter Pidgeon.

It's all played out as scenery-chewing slapstick, making Spence's already ridiculous play even more ridiculous, but audiences must have liked it, because it wouldn't be the last adaptation. It was filmed again in 1930 and in 1939 (with the singin' dancin' Ritz Brothers). There was even partially used as the source for a 1937 Warner Bros. flick called Sh! The Octopus, with the gorilla converted to an octopus.

Throw in some Scooby Snacks and it would be a perfect Scooby Doo episode.

TRIVIA

• Walter Pidgeon also played the young suitor in the 1930 version of The Gorilla.

PLAYS

• THE GORILLA: A MYSTERY COMEDY
  (1925, New York)
  Script by Ralph Spence
  Produced by Donald Gallaher and James W. Elliott's
  Songs include "Mr. Mulligan and Mr. Garrity"
  Original cast:
  Clifford Dempsey as MULLIGAN
  and Frank McCormack as GARRITY
  With Frank Beaston, Joseph Guthrie, Stephen Maley, Harry Southard, George Spelvin, Robert Strange, Frederick Truesdale, Harry A. Ward, Betty Weston
  Chicago cast:
  Lon Hascall, James C. Marlowe, Elizabeth Carmichael, Curtis Cooksey, Edgar Macon; Wilbur Cox, Ralph Theodore, Carl Rose, Thomas Bell & Frederick Wallace

There were only fifteen perfomances on Broadway, but the subsequent run in Chicago fared much better, running from May until September in 1925

FILMS

• THE GORILLA
  (1927, First National Pictures)
  80 minutes
  Based on characters created in The Gorilla: The Musical Comedy by Ralph Spence
  Screenplay by Alfred A. Cohn and Harry McArthur
  Directed by Alfred Santell
  Produced by Alfred Santell
  Starring Fred Kelsey as MULLIGAN
  and Charles Murray as GARRITY,]
  Also starring Walter Pidgeon, Brooks Benedict, Syd Crossley, Alice Day, Claude Gillingwater, Gaston Glass, Aggie Herring
  
  
• THE GORILLA
  (1930, Warner Brothers)
  Based on characters created in The Gorilla: The Musical Comedy by Ralph Spence
  Screenplay by Ralph Spence
  Adapted by B. Harrison Orkow and Herman RubyDirected by Bryan Foy
  Starring Joe Frisco as GARRITYand Harry Gribbon as MULLIGANAlso starring Walter Pidgeon, Lila Lee, Purnell Pratt, Edwin Maxwell, Roscoe Karns, William H. Philbrick
  
  
• SH! THE OCTOPUS
  (1937, Warner Brothers)
  54 minutes
  Based on The Gorilla: A Musical Comedy (1925 play) by Ralph Spence
  and Sh! The Octopus (1928 play) by Ralph Murphy and Donald Gallaher
  Screenplay by George Bricke
  Directed by William McGann
  Produced by Jack L. Warner
  Starring Hugh Herbert as KELLY
  and Allen Jenkins as DEMPSEY
  Also starring Marcia Ralston, John Eldredge, George Rosener

Included here for thoroughness, although not a private eye film. Kelly and Dempsey are NYPD detectives, out of the 49th precinct. Possibly (from what I've been able to gather) the most headscratching and inept of all the films, the haunted house is replaced by a supposedly abandoned warehouse, and the gorilla by, yes, an octopus. Buy hey, it was only a dream, after all!

• THE GORILLA...Buy this DVD
  (1939, 20th Century Fox)
  66 minutes
  Based on The Gorilla: A Musical Comedy (1925 play) by Ralph Spence
  Screenplay by Rian James and Sid Silvers
  Directed by Allan Dwan
  Produced by Harry Joe Brown
  Starring The Ritz Brothers

Click on the link for more info.

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.