User Reviews

Chic Sales and. Spencer Charters wander the streets of their town, selling the pies their wives bake. When the competitors meet on the street, Sales spins a vision of a partnership that will control most of American industry in this amusing short subject.

Sales' main shtick in the movies was to make himself up in old-man make-up and play a comic, countrified geezer, often maundering about his service during the Civil War. His presence among the sophisticated stars of MGM may seem odd, but they certainly had a fair number of low-class stars, particularly at the behest of Thalberg. Here's a chance to see Sales, still countrified, but playing his own age of 50. He would die a year later.

Great American Pie Company, The (1935)

*** (out of 4)

Charles "Chic" Sale plays a timid, weak man who fears his wife especially when she sends him out to sell pies when there's another man in town also doing it. Chic, being hungry, fools this man into giving him some pies while he tells about his plan for a big pie company that could make them millions. There's really not too much to this film or story but I was entertained throughout. This was my first time seeing Sale and I'm certainly interested in seeing more, which is always a good thing. What I noticed most about the film is how Sale really doesn't use slapstick or anything like that but instead he just digs down into his characters slow wit and delivers plenty of nice, mild laughs. The film, for the most part, is just dialogue driven as Sale talks about how to start this business, which takes a good five minutes but it's well written and delivered. Director Grinde is best remembered for his future films with Boris Karloff including THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG.

Two country men discuss the prospect of forming a partnership to sell their home-made pies, at a time during the Great Depression when some men were selling apples on the street.

Since the pies are only 10 cents each, they're hardly discussing big business--even though they talk of merging their pie business. All the while, one of them is sampling the other's pies and then pulling a fast one (money-wise) on his friend.

Their argument starts out with "This town ain't big enough for both of us," which leads to talk of their merging and calling it "The Great American Pie Company, Inc." This may have played well at the time, but it's hard to work up any real enthusiasm as a worthwhile short subject.

I saw this on TCM in the USA.

Chic plays a poor man who sells the pies his wife bakes for ten cent apiece. Although tired, hungry and in no mood for conflict, his wife sends him out to sell pies and to confront their one competitor about business. Chic reads a self-help pamphlet and decides to talk his competitor into a merger. The two "businessmen" sit down to discuss the merger, and from that point forward, the short is basically two running jokes. One... although the two men are merely vendors who peddle their pies out of a toy wagon and handbasket, they discuss their business as if it were a huge corporation poised to monopolize the industry by buying farms, mills and railroads. And two... Chic finds ways to eat his competitors pies without paying for them.

The comedy is virtually all verbal, and after the opening scene, it becomes a two man play as the two men sit under a tree and discuss business. I don't know when the first belch on screen occurred, but this short has a couple of belches thrown in as jokes at the end.

Chic is in good form, but this short is only mildly amusing...