Half a Hero

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."

• comedy