Walken plays: Tom - the best goddamn tap dancing, stripping pimp you've ever seen
Synopsis: Pennies From Heaven is a musical that takes its Depression setting to heart. It's a bleak, nearly relentlessly downbeat neo-noir tale of Steve Martin's grim asshole of a sheet music salesman and the impossibly sweet and innocent schoolteacher (Bernadette Peters) he coerces into an affair, and how they both press pause on the shittiness of their lives through escaping into popular music. And then, once Martin invariably dumps Peters to go back to his wife, who should she stumble across? Why, if it isn't Christopher Walken's loveable pimp, who is very ready to, as his Cole Porter number prompts, "Misbehave."
Walken's really only in the movie for his one dance number and a couple of bridging scenes, but hoo boy does he make an impression. He's seductive enough to sway the winsome Bernadette Peters into a sordid life as a hooker yet callously self-absorbed enough to brutally order her abortion without a moment's contemplation, and he uncorks a tap dance interlude so stunning that Fred Astaire himself allegedly called Walken to congratulate him. It's a bummer that director Herbert Ross' creative choice had his actors lip synching over the vocals of the original 1930s tracks, as we can only imagine how much Walken himself warbling would improve the scene, but it's pretty jaw-dropping as is - and probably fulfills your lifetime quota of watching Christopher Walken grab boobies (that's a quota everyone has, right?).
His ecstatic, bobble-headed "WOW" at the end is what the meaning of life is all about.
Wacky Walken dialogue: More singing than lines here, though his little chuckle while interjecting (in his own voice) "Too damn good". Really, the most meaningful subtext comes when he unleashes the Walken death-stare as he sings/lip-synchs the following, and we're reminded how sinister and dangerous he is:
When Adam won Eve's handHe wouldn't stand for teasin'.
He didn't care about those apples out of season.
And then, before you know it, we're back to the silliness of watching him cavort around and strip for us, but the veiled threat lingers. Yeesh.
Would you misbehave with this man? Oh, don't even kid yourself.
DOES HE DANCE: Oh baby. He doesn't do much else, and it's gloriously sufficient.
Overall Walken-o-meter: 10/10 cowbells. This is the definitive Walken role: a brief, phenomenally memorable diversion from the narrative that's quirky, stylish, playful, sinister, outrageously talented, and gone before you know it. He couldn't be any more Walken here if his eyes literally bored a hole in your skull, and little tap dancing cowbells with floofy hair came tumbling out. He's sure to haunt your dreams and nightmares alike here; your life will never be the same.
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