JACK AND THE BEANSTALK was brought to theaters in 1952 as a live action feature picture with color, courtesy of Abbott & Costello, who not only starred but produced, with Lou’s older brother Pat coming up with this version of the fable. Nat Curtis wrote the script, five silly songs were concocted by Lester Lee and Bob Russell, Jean Yarbrough directed. It had been done fifty years earlier as a 10-minute silent, yet the fairy tale is as old as beans, going way back, not just to 1734 England and “The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean” but from the very mists of millennia, perhaps as much as 5,000 years. When the goods of the Earth and the lives of ordinary folk were under the thumbs of powerful ogres who wanted everything for themselves. Boy, good thing that greedy nonsense is finished…

Like another musical-comedy fantasy that landed over the rainbow in 1939, this kidder for kiddies starts with characters in the ‘real world’ (the present of 1952) and in sepia tone, switching to the “once upon a time” zone and suitably gaudy color with the cast members in persona-fitting swaps of identity. You don’t have to be older than three to see that kidhearted Lou will inhabit ‘Jack Strong’, clamber up that magical legume ladder, rescue a princess (blonde, natch), redeem his normal doofitude and bring about the fall from a great height of a big, bad, bearded foe-fummer. The all-demanding giant is done to a brute tee by hulk & ½ Buddy Baer, last seen wrestling a Kerr-bound bull in Quo Vadis. Bud, naturally, is up to his usual tricks, this time christened ‘Mr. Dinklepuss’. The songs are goofy, the dancing goofier, the spirit is in the right place for the time-tested saga. Can you remember the first time you saw or were told the story?

Bud & Lou’s 29th outing was pulled off for a cupboard-squeaking $682,580 and then took care of beeswax with a $4,400,000 gross, 71st place for the year. The duo’s other two from ’52 slid further down the chart, Lost In Alaska tagging 82nd, Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd at 111th.

With Dorothy Ford (6’2″ model of the vavoom tree, as the giant’s housekeeper), Shaye Cogan (cutie singer playing the princess), David Stollery (obnoxious smartypants kid), James Alexander (pretty waxy choice for a prince), William Farnum, Arthur Shields (his voice, as ‘Patrick the Harp’), Mel Blanc (voicing some farm animals) and the Johnny Conrad Dancers. 78 minutes.