CAPER GOON

PAPER MOON (1973)
dir: Peter Bogdanovich

CAPER GOON
MAD #164, January 1974
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

Moses Prey (Ryan O'Neal) is a con artist in Kansas whose main scam is he looks at the obituaries section of local papers, goes to the homes of the deceased, and tells the widowed spouses who answer the door he's a salesman they ordered a bible from. The widow, feeling guilty about it all, pays Moses for it. As he's making his rounds, he meets Addie Loggins (Tatum O'Neal), daughter of a woman who just died, hears she is to be taken to her family, is heading to a train station nearby, and offers to take her there.

MAD's used the joke “after searching far and wide for the perfect actor, I finally found the one-- my own child” before, so the hype about 'nepo-babies' is nothing new. If truth be told, you may as well go all the way back to John Quincy Adams.

Addie's mother was struck down in a hit and run. Moses needs to make a stop before dropping Addie off which involves stopping by where the man who struck down Addie's mother works and blackmailing him. She overhears that Moses has done this, feels the money is hers, and won't go until she gets it back, which is impossible now that he's spent it fixing up his car.

Moses is stuck with Addie, and tries to make the best of it. She has a habit of smoking while listening to the radio. (Imagine any movie with a 9-year-old smoking today, even if it's set in the depression.) He brings her along on his bible scam, which she figures out while forced to sit in the car alone, and comes out to join in on it.

Addie turns out to be as skilled a con artist as Moses and they team up. He teaches her other scams, like confusing a cashier so they end up giving more back in change.

Moses meets Trixie Delight (Madeline Kahn), an exotic dancer and her servant Imogene (P.J.Johnson) at a carnival, and offers them a ride. He's obviously trying to get in her pants, and has even spent all the money from his and Addie's cons to by a new car to impress her.

Addie knows Trixie will eventually leave Moses and Imogene knows she's promiscuous, so Addie and Imogene come up with a scheme to set Trixie up with the desk clerk at the hotel where they're all staying (Burton Gilliam), so Moses will catch them in the act and be the one to leave her. At the next hotel Moses and Addie are staying, they spot a bootlegger. She eavesdrops on him and finds out where he stores his liquor, Moses goes there later and steals it, then sells it back to the man. The man's brother is sheriff of the town (John Hillerman), arrests them, they escape, and he and his men chase them. If they cross state lines, there's nothing the sheriff can do.

They need to get rid of their car quick so they're not caught, and trade it for a broken-down truck from the first family they see (In the movie, it's a bunch of hillbillies, including a typecast Randy Quaid). Not shown: The police catch up to them. They can't arrest Moses but they beat him up. Addie has her money now, their partnership is over, and he takes her to her family as intended. The movie ends with her not going.

That last panel is taken from a picture of the infantilized Carroll Baker on the poster for Baby Doll

There was a short lived TV series based on the movie with Jodie Foster in the Tatum O'Neal role.