Dr. Strangefilm Case #003: Bill And Coo

08.11.09 | Dr. Strangefilm | From The Files Of Dr. Strangefilm...Print this Post

Say what you will about the Academy Awards--and a lot has certainly been said over their 80-plus year history--but by and large they have done a fairly good job of honoring the best talent that Tinseltown has presented on the screen. Oh, sure, there have been overlooked stars from Marilyn Monroe and Richard Burton to John Travolta and Johnny Depp, but most of the biggest names have taken at least one Oscar home: Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Bill and Coo, Kate Winslet...

What's that? You've never heard of Bill and Coo?  Well, the pair were the eponymous stars of a 1948 feature film that earned its producer, Hollywood documentarian Ken Murray, an honorary Academy Award for its "novel and entertaining use of" the movie medium. The entertaining part of that claim is one we'll look into shortly, but no one can argue with "novel." After all, how many feature-length dramas have ever been shot on a 30- by 15-foot set with an all-bird cast?

Yes, Bill and Coo is an all-avian romp set in the typical small town of Chirpendale, where lovebirds, parakeets, ducklings, owls, and other fine feathered folk go about their daily routine. There are birds pushing ice cream carts, birds going to school, birds riding in streetcars...well, you get the idea. Also, since Mother Nature's plumage is never good enough for Hollywood, the cast are also wearing tiny little hats, bowties, and other accessories. Right in the center of all this ornithological oddness is our title couple, hard-working taxi driver (well, taxi pusher) Bill and his beloved Coo.

Luckily, two things arrive in Chirpendale to break up the monotony. The first is a traveling circus that not only features pinioned performers on the high wire and trapeze, but also birds riding on guinea pigs (!) and dressed like cowboys and Indians. The other is the evil "Black Menace," a giant crow who flies over the town and threatens to attack the decent nest-building citizenry. Any thoughts of racial overtones with this second subplot would be hard to disprove, seeing as how 1941's Dumbo had already set the decade's tone for film depictions of minorities as members of the bird family (Why do you think they were called "Jim Crow" laws?). It's the industrious Bill who comes up with a plan to save the town, just in time for his wedding to Coo (can't have any egg-laying out of wedlock, after all).

Much like an earlier case (see The Terror of Tiny Town), Bill and Coo is a novelty that might have been better served as a 20-minute short. Sure, seeing a bird walk across a tightrope with a flaming stick in its beak is rather impressive, but it becomes a little hard for anyone this side of Robert "Birdman of Alactraz" Stroud to sit through the films' relatively brief one-hour running time.

Perhaps the most fascinating tidbit about the film is that its director/co-writer, Dean Riesner, would go on to pen or help write some of Clint Eastwood's biggest '70s hits, including Play Misty for Me, Dirty Harry, and High Plains Drifter. Now picture a pistol-packin' parrot in an all-bird version of  Dirty Harry. That would be something!