Favorite Frank Morgan receives a starring role as yet another lovable flimflam man in The Wild Man of Borneo (1941). From a 1920s play by Marc Connelly and Herman J. Mankiewicz, Waldo Salt and John McClain's screenplay celebrates a bygone heyday of carnivals and traveling show tricksters. Seeking to retire but dead broke, medicine show veteran Daniel Thompson (Morgan) takes his estranged daughter Mary (Mary Howard) to New York, where he hopes he can scare up a new racket. Conning a room in an actors' boardinghouse from landlady Bernice Marshall (Billie Burke), Daniel is soon claiming that he has acting experience and is playing an important role on the stage. Actually, an old pal (Walter Catlett) offers Daniel a job in his freakish sideshow, playing "The Wild Man of Borneo" in a fur costume and blackface makeup. Meanwhile, Mary falls in love with the handsome Ed (a young Dan Dailey) who has invented his own movie camera. The old sharpie Daniel soon discovers a new calling: movie actor. The colorful cast includes a gallery of distinctive personalities: Donald Meek, Marjorie Main, Bonita Granville and Phil Silvers. Did producer Joseph Mankiewicz intend this odd comedy as an 'origin story' for the motion picture business?

By Glenn Erickson