BAD MOVIE SHORT: THE MEANEST MAN IN THE WORLD (1954)

The United Fund

THE MEANEST MAN IN THE WORLD (1954) – This heavy-handed United Fund short was probably effective in its day. Back then people may have felt they were being too callous by openly laughing at the antics in this public service message.

Our central character, “Jim”, comes home late at night after a marathon work day. He startles his wife, who, in typical 50’s fashion sleeps in a separate bed. In fact he startles her SO much you get the impression she had a man on the side who may have left her bed a little too close to Jim’s homecoming for comfort.

Jim’s got even bigger problems, though. Money is tight, so tight that Jim tells his still-paniced wife that this year they won’t be able to afford their usual contribution to the United Fund. Our hero then falls asleep, while the disgusted narrator of this ham-fisted production sneers at his alleged callousness.

Now the real fun begins. This joyously tasteless  production tries to equate being unable to afford a United Fund contribution to monumental acts of deliberate cruelty. Jim’s dream counterpart stalks up to a hospital and viciously KICKS THE CRUTCHES out from under a poor crippled boy, then STANDS THERE LAUGHING HYSTERICALLY while looking down at his fallen victim.

Other patients, in wheelchairs and sporting other signs of injuries, look on with what they must have felt were expressions of horror on their faces. Instead, though, they seem strangely unaffected by what they’ve just witnessed. If they had calmly muttered “seen it before” and yawned it would be showing the same level of concern.

Jim, like a proto-Freddy Krueger, now shows up at the Salvation Army, where he gleefully strips clothing off the backs of the needy and disdainfully throws those clothes to the floor in another unintentionally hilarious display of cruelty.

Jimbo moves on to a day nursery for children from homes where both parents must work. He contemptuously regards the children while they eat breakfast, no doubt reproaching them in his mind for not going out and finding jobs, then steps forward and literally SWATS a glass of milk from the hands of one little girl in mid-drink. She and the other children seem to take it in stride, though, making the viewer laugh some more and wonder what kind of treatment these unfortunate kids endure on a regular basis at the day nursery if they can handle this outrageous behavior in such a blase manner.

The Jimster hovers menacingly over the little girl for a few moments, looking like he’s just DARING her to try to do something about what he did to her. Then he moves on to an orphanage, where it’s nighttime all of a sudden and the children are all sleeping. Jim the Dream Demon barges right in, flashlight in hand, and wakes the slumbering urchins up by hammering a sign on the wall.

The roused orphans gather around Jim and read the sign he’s nailing to the wall. It says “All children without parents must get out and shift for themselves. This place is closed!” The plucky orphans are as emotionless about this as Jim’s other Vulcan victims, although one (oddly smiling) little girl tugs beseechingly at Jim’s suit-coat, giving him the opportunity to regally smack her hand away before he stalks off.

Rising to new heights Jimbo moves on to the site of devastation from a tornado in Oklahoma. Disgusted at the wimpy doctors and nurses dispensing medical care to severely injured survivors our protagonist knocks medical supplies and charts out of the hands of some of the medical staff. He’s just getting started though, and in the most surreally tasteless scene in the whole short he grabs a pair of scissors and literally SNIPS THE I.V. LINE OF AN UNCONSCIOUS PATIENT! 

While the viewer is convinced they must be imagining this whole astonishing thing by now Jim follows this up by grandly washing the patient’s blood from his hands Pontius Pilate-style in a nearby bucket.

Jim glides along to a doctor’s office to unwind and get a few laughs from a doctor telling his patient and the patient’s wife that the man is dying from cancer. Jim, apparently regretting the lack of an accompanying laugh track, provides his own chuckles, smiling even more broadly as the M.D. tells his unseen patient that he could have been saved if not for decreased contributions to the United Fund. The smile vanishes when the camera pans around to reveal, to the surprise of no one, that the unseen “patient” is Jim himself.

Jim wakes up, but thankfully isn’t screaming  “NOOOOOOOOO” like people usually do on the screen. He repents, recalling all the mayhem inflicted by his astral alter ego in quick flashback scenes. The recollection of knocking the milk from the little girl’s hand is ineptly shown via A BAD TAKE from the scene, one in which the milk goes flying and splatters the camera lens. 

Thoroughly chastened, Jim realizes (in the twisted view of this short) that not donating to the United Fund means he “might as well” have been committing the atrocities he did in his dreams. He and his wife, called only “honey” throughout the short, surrender to the ham-fisted guilt trip inflicted by the producers of this short and decide to make their annual contribution to the United Fund no matter HOW tough times are.

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