Billie Bird

Several shady and shallow people try to profit, one after the other, from a physically deformed teenager whose face looks like a snout of a rodent and who lives hidden in a city garbage dump, alone and miserable. A physically deformed and somewhat feral teenager whose face looks like the snout of a rodent lives in solitude and misery in a city dump. Two rednecks come across his lair and kidnap him. They inform the papers about their find in case someone might want to see or interview the "Ratboy". Only Nikki, a middle-aged fired window dresser pretending to be a reporter shows up. She wants to profit off of the child as well, so she calls the cops who arrest the rednecks and she takes the child with her to her flat. She and her two dummy brothers try to think of a way to profit on the boy, but he tends to get easily agitated and depressed and no one wants anything to do with him except possibly hurt him emotionally or even physically. —Anonymous

Conservative young lawyer Paul Bratter marries the vivacious Corie Banks. Their highly passionate relationship descends into discord when they rent their first apartment - a rundown five-flight NYC walk-up with eccentric neighbors. New Yorkers Paul Bratter and Corie Bratter née Banks have just gotten married. He is a stuffed shirt just starting his career as a lawyer. She is an independent-minded free spirit who prides herself on doing the illogical purely out of a sense of adventure, such acts as walking through Washington Square Park barefoot when it's 17°F outside. Their 6-day honeymoon at the Plaza Hotel shows that they can get to know each other easily in the biblical sense. But they will see if they can get to know each other in their real life when they move into their first apartment, a cozy (in other words, small), slightly-broken-down top-floor unit in a five-story walk-up. While Corie joyfully bounds up and down the stairs, Paul, always winded after a long day, hates needing to walk up the six flights (including the stairs that comprise the outside front stoop. Beyond the issues with the apartment itself, Paul and Corie must deal with an odd assortment of neighbors, most specifically eccentric senior Victor Velasco, who lives in the unusual attic and considers himself a dirty old man. Corie, worried about her single strait-laced mother Ethel Banks, wants to set her up with Victor. Without Corie or Paul truly realizing it, Ethel and Victor as a twosome is as illogical as Corie and Paul. What happens between Ethel and Victor may predict whether Corie and Paul's marriage can last in the long run. —Huggo Paul Bratter, a conservative young lawyer, marries a vivacious young woman, Corrie. Their highly-passionate relationship descends into comical discord in a five-flight walk-up New York City apartment. When Corie meets one of the neighbors, an older single man, she wonders if her lonely mother would be interested in meeting him. —Jim Cobb Combines love and laughs. Paul Bratter is a newly-married lawyer. Corie Bratter is a newly-married woman whose main goal in life is to have fun, and to have it with Paul. Together they learn how to live and love in an apartment that's laughably small in New York and located on the fifth floor of a building with no elevator. Corie's mother has some of the funniest lines. —Kathy Moore <kathy.moore@ericsson.com> Paul Bratter is Mister Straight. Corie is his new wife, who dedicates her life to the pursuit of fun. As the ecstasy of the honeymoon gives way to the reality of setting up housekeeping in a five-flight walk-up, the harmony of marriage turns to comical discord. The mother-in-law complains meekly. The middle-aged Lothario upstairs flirts. Joy turns to anguish. There is little doubt that the young people will kiss and make up by the end of the picture, just as there's little doubt that mother and the neighbor will find each other. —Anonymous

Magazine writer copes with modern life in the suburbs, stressing about the expenses. Then his editor assigns an article calling the suburbs the slums of tomorrow. His research yields interesting conclusions. Audiences always roared with delight when Red Skelton went one-on-one with post-war life in The Yellow Cab Man, The Fuller Brush Man and other films. In Half a Hero, the legendary comic took on a slice of 20th-century Americana that still resonates today: the suburbs. Red plays Ben Dobson, a magazine writer whose boss approves of Ben because he lives in a cramped Manhattan apartment instead of "the slums of tomorrow": the 'burbs. So, of course, when Ben movies his family to a sprawling housing development, he struggles (hilariously_ to keep the fact a secret. Jean Hagen, a year after her iconic portrayal of the itsy-voiced screen siren in Singin' in the Rain, plays Ben's long-suffering wife, and singer Polly Bergen makes a guest appearance with a torrid nightclub-scene rendition of "Love." —Anonymous