Subtitled “Remembering New Orleans in the 1950s,” Ricky Graham’s When Ya Smiling is just like what he might have composed for a 1958 high school event. The adoring audience exactly duplicated one made up of relatives and friends of those onstage and back of it. The not-surprisingly uncredited set has wooden house fronts on each side with a nondescript center that has to take on many locales in reality and hero Paulie’s imagination. He (Tucker Godbold, with amazing staying power as a cornball) looks 30 but is 10 and will soon be having a birthday.
Tucker’s an avid TV and movie fan, so most of the scenes have him imagining and acting out, with friends and family, bits of plots and typical roles of famous people. They run the gamut from Judy Garland and Jimmy Stewart to clowns to Dorothy Lamour and Sigmund Freud. Tucker’s big ambition is to go to Rock City, but Dad seems bent on only the state park.
Somehow, this involves seasons of TV-like dramas that try to imitate Rod Serling’s, “American Bandstand,” and later a “Cream Cheese Ice Cream” Thanksgiving. I think that says it all--including the other scenes that stretch out to two and a half hours. I should note there’s only one Equity actor, Jessie Terrebonne, who is typecast as Miss Lu, Anna Clare, a Stripper, and Lana Turner in all but a few of her roles.
