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Together
Again
Genre: Comedy
Date: 1944
Directed by: Charles "King"
Vidor
Starring: Charles Boyer, Irene Dunne, Charles Coburn
Alfalfa portrays: A flirtatious, philosophizing
elevator operator
Alfalfa's screen time: 52 seconds
Lines of dialogue spoken by Alfalfa: 11
Alfalfa plays an elevator
operator who appears briefly in an early scene from this Irene Dunne/Charles
Boyer romantic comedy.
Dunne
is a small-town mayor (a radical notion in 1944!) who hires artist
Boyer to sculpt a bust of her dead husband. We see Alfalfa in a
scene where Dunne is rushing to an appointment at Boyer's office-building
studio to discuss the commission. After finding her floor, Dunne
enters the elevator.
Dunne:
Fifteen, please.
Alfalfa
wolf-whistles his approval of Dunne's looks. He then closes the
door and as the elevator begins its ascent, Dunne checks herself
out in the elevator mirror.
Alfalfa [smiling broadly]: New hat?
Dunne: Yes, practically.
Alfalfa: Cute as heck...it does things for ya'! Makes
a guy wanna do things for ya, too.
Dunne [nervously]: Well...
Alfalfa: Don't get sore...women are just like actors. Actors
beef because people bother them for their autographs. But it's a
sad day when nobody asks them anymore. See?
Dunne: You're quite a philosopher, aren't you?
Alfalfa: You work in an artists' building, ya' get to know
dames.
As the elevator reaches Dunne's floor, she hurriedly exits and as
she ealks down the corridor, Alfalfa can't resist a parting line.
He calls out to Dunne.
Alfalfa: Hey lady! Your stockin's crooked!
We see Dunne continuing down the corridor without making the suggested
adjustment. We then see a final shot of Alfalfa.
Alfalfa [to no one in particular]: You gota relieve
the monotony of this job some way!
Alfalfa's exchange has an interesting twist to it for the obvious
reference to how actors feel deflated when people stop asking them
for their autographs, a problem that Alfalfa himself was presumably
experiencing at the time this film was released (Alfalfa was about
eighteen). In fact, his appearance has sort of an "inside joke"
feel to it, especially when Alfalfa seems to deliver his last line
of dialogue almost directly to the audience. It almost seems that
the casting of Alfalfa was designed to elicit a "hey, wasn't
that—?" reaction from contemporary film audiences. Other
than the sly significance of the dialogue, this appearance is typical
of Alfalfa's "service sector" period of his late teens
and early twenties where he frequently played bellhops, busboys,
and messengers. Alfalfa's dialogue is also delivered in a pedantic,
somewhat wooden fashion in this outing.
Modern-day viewers will probably consider that the progressiveness
of Dunne serving as a mayor is negated by such conventions—
common in mid-forties Hollywood—
as Alfalfa's unchallenged wolf whistle, and his "dames"
nomenclature.
Charles
"King" Vidor would go on to direct such classics as "Gilda"
and "A Farewell To Arms". Herbert J. Biberman, who wrote
the story for "Together Again", would later become one
of the famed "Hollywood Ten" who were blacklisted in the
fifties.
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