The Problematics: ‘What’s Up, Tiger Lily,’ Where Woody Allen Eats an Apple During a Striptease (!)

Woody Allen. Why the very name elicits…well, these days, among ever-widening circles, it elicits anger, disapprobation, shame, indignation, that sort of thing. Before that, of course, Allen was largely revered as a venerable American arthouse filmmaker. And before that, as a comic genius, of devastating verbal wit and disarming neurotic persona. It was that Allen who concocted one of the odder cinematic curios of the 1960s, a movie titled What’s Up, Tiger Lily?

The idea for the 1966 comedy, which will always remain (possibly to Allen’s eternal chagrin, given how he dismisses it in interviews) the filmmaker’s directorial debut, was one that would eventually provide at least indirect inspiration for riffing-on-or-over-the-movies comedy concoctions like Mystery Science Theater 3000. American International Pictures was already well-versed in acquiring, re-editing, and redubbing overseas movies, Frankensteining them into something presumably palatable to pre-grindhouse audiences. (For example, 1965’s Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, cobbled together from a couple of Soviet sci-fi films with some U.S. scenes directed by Curtis Harrington.) The simple difference here was that Allen, then a hot commodity on the talk show TV circuit and popular enough as a standup he could fill college auditoriums and such, would concoct a soundtrack that would lampoon a movie. Allen’s voice isn’t heard too frequently on the soundtrack; much of the funny talk is given to fellow comic Mickey Rose.

The movie being dubbed was a Japanese espionage potboiler, part of a series, called Kagi no Kagi. The kickoff jokes set the tone, defined by varying strains of low-hanging racialist japery — what they used to call “ethnic humor.” The clearly Japanese lead spy, named Jiro Kitami in the original, is renamed “Phil Moscowitz,” who refers to himself as an “amiable zany.” So you’ve got a Jewish joke and a Japanese joke rolled into one.

The quality that truly animates What’s Up, Tiger Lily? is absurdity, a persistent form of non-sequitur that yields ridiculous juxtapositions. Hence, the thing the varied spies and thieves are after in Tiger Lily is a recipe for the world’s greatest egg salad. A salad so good “you could plotz,” says one of the players in the mission. “Moscowitz” is rendered such a simpleton that when shown a map and told that it’s the “home” of an infamous gangster, he breathlessly replies, “you mean he lives in that piece of paper?” He’s also endlessly horny, panting like a maniac in the presence of two female foils, played by Akiko Wakabayashi and Mie Hama — both of whom would later appear, albeit not in tandem, in the ultra-problematic James-Bond-in-Japan movie You Only Live Twice (1967).

I first experienced the movie on television when I was about 10 (this would be 1969) and thought it was the most hilarious thing I’d ever seen.

Or at least the first half or so was the most hilarious thing I’d ever seen. When this movie runs out of steam, it practically dies, and the business with the male and female hands playing out an erotic pas-de-deux in silhouette in front of a frozen frame is vivid testimony to just how desperately Allen’s ideas dried up. Aside from the wraparounds featuring Allen explaining the movie, there’s also a good deal of padding, including footage of folk-rock band The Lovin’ Spoonful (intercut with Japanese kids dancing in a nightclub) in a cameo not conceived by Allen.

To return to the hilarity that possessed my ten-year-old-self, I didn’t even understand all the jokes; For instance the bit where Mia Hama, here recast in the role of “Teri Yaki” (what’d I tell you about the persistent racialist humor?)  demands of Phil Moscowitz, “Name three presidents.” “Roosevelt…Jefferson…” Moskowitz stammers, then Teri opens the bath towel that’s her only garment at this point. Moskowitz raises his eyebrows and blurts “Lincoln?” Took me almost another ten years to figure out that one. The movie stayed with me, sometimes to my discomfort. As it happens, this was my first glimpse of the Japanese actor Tatsuya Mihashi, who mugs rather egregiously in the role of “Phil Moskowitz.” But he had his serious side, which he displayed in films directed by masters like Akira Kurosawa and Kon Ichikawa. Well do I remember seeing Kurosawa’s amazing 1960 urban crime epic The Bad Sleep Well for the first time and chortling a bit at Mihashi’s entrance: “PHIL MOSCOWITZ is in this?”

So how problematic is it in our current atmosphere? Speaking strictly from where I sit — well, where I’m sitting is in the position of an older cis-white heterosexual male who’s not Japanese or Jewish or a woman, so where I sit is not particularly pertinent to this case I guess. But for what it’s worth…

The dubbed material is, I think, so thoroughly steeped in the aforementioned absurdity that it’s difficult to work up a truly vehement huff about it. Even when Louise Lasser (the comic actor who was Allen’s wife at the time) puts the words “God I’m such a piece” into Akiko Wakabayashi’s mouth while the actress does side-swivels in a red bikini. Viewers less inclined to cut the humor any contextual slack will not be moved to yuck it up, however.

And many contemporary viewers of all positions will likely gag at the Allen-starring intro and outro of the movie. In which he works his somehow smug nebbish persona ultra-hard. “Like all people with timid personalities, his arrogance is unlimited,” Orson Welles once said of Allen. The arrogance is arguably funny in the fake-interview intro, in which Allen explains his methods. It is made most manifest in the movie’s end credits sequence, in which Allen lounges on a couch, munching on an apple, while statuesque, busty China Lee, a onetime Playboy playmate of the month and then the wife of topical comedian Mort Sahl, whom Allen revered, slithers out of a skin-tight dress and then some particularly complicated items of lingerie. The end credits roll slowly, reading at one point “If you are reading this instead of looking at the girl, then see your psychiatrist, or go to a good eye doctor.” After which an eye test is displayed, ar ar ar.

The business ends with Allen addressing the audience: “I promised I’d put her in the film. Somewhere.” (Weirdly enough, here his voice is dubbed, with someone else’s.) This casting-couch joke was thought by many to be nudge-nudge-wink-wink innocuous back in the day, believe it or not.

Veteran critic Glenn Kenny reviews‎ new releases at RogerEbert.com, the New York Times, and, as befits someone of his advanced age, the AARP magazine. He blogs, very occasionally, at Some Came Running and tweets, mostly in jest, at @glenn__kenny. He is the author of the acclaimed 2020 book Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas, published by Hanover Square Press.

Where to watch What's Up Tiger Lily