Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?

Infobox Film | name = Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?


caption =
director = Anthony Newley
producer = George Fowler Anthony Newley
writer = Anthony Newley Herman Raucher
starring = Anthony Newley Connie Kreski Joan Collins Milton Berle George Jessel Bruce Forsyth
music = Anthony Newley (lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer)
cinematography = Otto Heller
editing = Dorothy Spencer
distributor =
released = 1969
runtime = 107 minutes.
language = English
rating =
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
imdb_id = 0064123

"Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?" is a 1969 musical film directed by and starring Anthony Newley. Newley played the autobiographical title role of Merkin, an internationally successful singer approaching middle age who retells his life story in a series of production numbers on a seashore in front of his two toddler children (played by Newley's actual two children) and aged mother. Merkin focuses on his promiscuous relationships with women, particularly Polyester Poontang (played by Newley's wife Joan Collins) and the adolescent Mercy Humppe (Playboy centerfold Connie Kreski). Merkin is constantly surrounded by a Satan-like procurer, Goodtime Eddie Filth (Milton Berle), and an angelic 'Presence' (George Jessel) who interrupts Merkin's biography with cryptic Borscht Belt-level jokes to denote births and deaths in Merkin's life. Newley periodically steps out of character to complain about his 'Merkin' role with an unseen director (voiced by Newley), two screenwriters, the film's producers and a trio of blase movie critics who are turned off by the story's eroticism and lack of plot.

The film's presentational style anticipated the 1979 Bob Fosse movie "All That Jazz."

In 1970, Newley and his co-writer Herman Raucher won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Best British Original Screenplay. The film's original music was written by Newley with lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer ("Les Misérables"). The film was controversial because it was X rated in its original release, meaning many newspapers in the UK and US would not take advertising for it.

In 2006, it won a readers' poll in the "Chicago Tribune" as The Worst Movie Title Ever. [cite web |url=http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_popmachine/film/index.html|title= Chicago Tribune, 20 March, 2006]

The film was a commercial and generally a critical failure. Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times that Newley "so over extends and overexposes himself that the movie comes to look like an act of professional suicide... The movie is as self-indulgent as a burp. It's also as pretentious as its form... The movie is not so free and loose as it is simply out of control" [cite web |url=http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9E00E1DD153AEE34BC4851DFB5668382679EDE|title= New York Times, 20 March, 1969] although Roger Ebert's review in the Chicago Sun-Times was more mixed and claimed: "It is strange, wonderful, original, and not quite successful. It is just about the first attempt in English to make the sort of personal film Fellini and Godard have been experimenting with In their very different ways. It is not as great as "8½" but it has the same honesty and self-mocking quality." [cite web |url=http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19690528/REVIEWS/905280301/1023|title= Chicago Sun-Times, 28 May, 1969]

Joan Collins later cited the film as contributing to her divorce from Newley.

References