Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 74

70

Popular Culture Review

or permits. ‘"Kennedy was in Europe/’ Downey recalled, “so nobody was too tight
with the security. We ran around shooting whatever we could with impunity, and
even threw Taylor in with some real U.S. generals, who didn’t like what Taylor
was doing at all, and they eventually kicked us out.” The hour -long film cost a
mere $3,000 to final print.
Critical response was enthusiastic. Brendan Gill in The Neyv Yorker raved
that “ .. .Mr. Downey clearly prefers a lot of near misses to a few direct hits, and in
the course of his wild tale about the tribulations of a newly elected President of the
United Status (sic) he takes bold swipes at, among other targets, the Catholic Church,
the civil-rights movement, international diplomacy. Time, God, shoe-fetishism,
psychiatry, the South, the North, the East, and the West. I laughed all around the
compass.. .the funniest movie I’ve seen in months.. .Taylor Mead looks like a cross
between a zombie and a kewpie and speaks as if his mind and mouth were full of
marshmallow” (as qtd. in Filmmakers's Cooperative Catalogue No. 4, 45-46).
But despite the glowing reviews, the film didn’t make any money. To
make ends meet, Downey matter-of-factly accepted a commission to direct a 16mm
“porno” feature for producer Barnard L. Sackett, entitled The Sweet Smell o f Sex
(1965). The title was an obvious play on The Sweet Smell o f Success, and Downey
seized upon the assignment to make a satire of the entire pom industry, much to
the producer’s displeasure. “I actually did Sweet Smell o f Sex to pay for the birth of
my son [actor Robert Downey, Jr.], because when my daughter was bom it was
tough; it was in Bellevue, and because of the film, I was able to put his mother
[Elsie Downey] in a decent hospital, and that’s what that was really about.” The
film played 42"‘* Street “grind house” theatres in a 35mm blow-up format, but
Downey was understandably indifferent to the film’s fate.
Bouncing back fi*om this detour, Downey made his breakthrough feature.
Chafed Elbows, in 1966. The plot, according to Downey’s brief synopsis, deals
with a “man who marries his mother, they go on welfare, and it all breaks into a
musical.” The film starred George Morgan as Walter Dinsmore, a hapless sadsack
whose sole dream is to live on welfare, while Downey’s first wife, Elsie, played all
the female roles. Produced for less than $25,000, the film was composed mostly of
stills shot on a 35mm Oxberry printer, with live action 16mm footage interspersed
to keep the narrative moving. The film was an even bigger hit than Babo 73, and
ran for months at Manhattan’s Gate Theatre. Rhapsodized Jules Feififer, “on the
basis of Chafed Elbows, the one film of his that I’ve seen, there’s good reason to
believe that Bob Downey at the tender age of 28 is already the funniest filmmaker
in America.” Other reviews were equally enthusiastic; Archer Winsten in the Post
called the film “freewheeling, hard swinging and wild,” while even the staid Bosley
Crowther praised the film’s “lively acid wit” in the Times (as qtd. in Filmmakers's
Cooperative Catalogue No. 4, 46).