Operation Mad Ball (1957)

A comedy written during Blake Edwards earlier period, directed by Richard Quine; both had worked earlier with Jack Lemmon in My Sister Eileen.  Lemmon's Oscar for Mister Roberts established him as a lead in a number of things all at once, with this film positioning him as a mastermind in charge of a lot of very familiar faces, most very young by the standards they would later become known.

Dick York turns up in Bewitched of course; lovers of The Producers will recognise William Hickey as the drunk at the bar, plus a host of other small roles; James Darren is a young punk whose music career hasn't really gotten started; L.Q. Jones is later a staple character of westerns, notably Hang 'Em High and The Wild Bunch... and Ernie Kovacs is at the height of his short career, cut off by a road accident. He'd work with Lemmon again in Bell, Book and Candle, where the two have excellent chemistry together. There are others besides, including a slightly uncomfortable (by modern standards) cameo by Mickey Rooney, who would appear even more uncomfortably in a later Blake Edwards film, Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Is Operation Mad Ball "good"?  Well, it depends on one's sense of humour. It's 1957, so a lot of the jokes revolve around the usual subjects, people looking dumb, women, misunderstandings... but on the whole, the film is definitely an intellectual pursuit rather than the farce of Edward's later work, particular the egregious later Clouseau films or The Great Race, also with Lemmon. Here the set-ups are familiar to those who experienced that last year of military service in Europe following the end of the war, when this film takes place. Though a military hospital filled with servicemen and nurses, there are no wounded, no strife, no danger... just a lot of unfortunate people forced to go on observing military code dividing enlisted men from dating officer nurses. As such, it's a conscious effort to circumvent rules, conventions and military discipline... which supplies lots of opportunities for humour.

There are a number of clever scams and schemes put in play, some great characterisations, irony, plenty of innuendo and some truly definitive vaudeville bits too; they're all played well, or rather cleverly and with excellent timing, so honestly, yes, in a dry and pleasant way, it's funny.

There's no direct line between this and the later M*A*S*H, but there are some elements where this earlier film or comedy style has influenced the later concept. Still, the connections are tenuous; Altman realised that a military hospital set-up was good for comedy also; whether this film gave him the idea, or he had it on his own, there's no way of knowing.