Reviews

I have also looked for a video of this for years and found it recently at the Forgotten Films web site. (Unfortunately, as of 2008 they seem to have gone out of business) The quality of the print is only fair. It is recorded at EP speed, but clear enough to enjoy the fun. Benny is very droll and Kay Francis looks like she's having a lot of fun. Edmund Gwenn turns in an almost madcap performance as well. Also look for Anne Baxter playing the ingénue. I think this is funnier than the Charlie Ruggles version, though the latter comes pretty close. I recommend the video only with the caveat mentioned above - at least it's a way to view the film. It's about time Fox Movie Channel or TCM finally aired this little stage gem on television, and whoever has the rights to it cleans it up and makes it available .

What an oddly compelling film this is. Using the usual array of Westerns clichés, Enright directs an excellent cast with a light touch of noir. The RKO production team enhances the scenes and the takes - I don't think I've ever seen a bad guy knock out a saloon window in a gunfight then poke the gun through a cobweb while firing! This was Randolph Scott's bread and butter, though like Joel McCrea, he could pull on some mighty acting chops when needed. Add Robert Ryan (steely-eyed wooden evil), George "Gabby" Hayes (His old self subdued as a banker), Anne Jeffries, Robert Armstrong and a strong supporting cast, decent production values and the ability to take each cliché just a step more personally, and you've got a pretty engaging film - Western or no.

Clyde Bruckman borrows the premise of this short from Buster Keaton's "Seven Chances," recently tepidly remade as "The Bachelor." In the original, Buster has 24-hours to get married in order to inherit a large sum of money. In this version, musical teacher Prof. Shemp has only 7 hours (After all, it is a short!). This is one of the better Stooges shorts due to the storyline and wonderful routines (Including the telephone booth scene with Moe & Shemp, reminiscent of Laurel & Hardy's "Berth Marks" and the Marx Brothers famous stateroom scene in "Night At The Opera - here the boys hold their own in their variation of this routine). I'm not a huge Stooges fan, but this one should be noted by any student of comedy as one of their very best since the early 30s shorts.

I found this short to be one of those overlooked films that contain wonderful moments within a kind of standardized slapstick format. Lupino Lane was a highly regarded English Music Hall performer known for his physical ability to accent his material. Here he is on his honeymoon with wife Helen in Morocco. While he's off painting, the local sheik (Wallace Lupino) takes a shining to Helen and decides to make her his new favorite. Meanwhile Lupino has gotten entangled with the sheik's guards and the rest of the film is essentially an extended chase sequence with interludes in the harem room with the sheik's number one wife (Violet). For students of physical comedy, there is one outstanding feat performed by Lane - in the midst of a chase he leaps onto the shoulders of a guard standing under an archway; leaping from shoulder to arch, he literally runs upside down around the arch and back down to the ground -- twice! This little short is worth watching just for that alone.

I disagree that this is the worst Laurel & Hardy film, but it is not their best either. The plot is simple and tedious with uninspired music, but the moments with Stan & Ollie still sparkle with crisp routines and character relationships. Stan's magic tricks are a real delight and Ollie's conflict with Mae Busch are classic. If you want the worst - check out "Utopia" - that's sadness personified.

Billy West, a Chaplin imitator in these early King Bee films, takes on Charlie's role of the villain (see "Making A Living" or "Mabel at the Wheel") while Hardy plays the plump ingenue (remarkably well - in the tradition of Fatty Arbuckle at Sennett). West is quite good in his Chaplin roles in my opinion, and this is one of Hardy's best performances in his early career - more subdued for the most part than his over the top villains of this period.

Chase is at his most amiable in this short, which features Oliver Hardy playing a milqutoast son of an heiress. Leo McCarey directs with a smooth and deft hand, blending light comedy with touches of slapstick. This is one of my favorite Chase comedies, a comedian far too overlooked.

I thoroughly recommend this 70 minute feature which showcases Raymond Griffith as a Southern spy attempting to thwart a gold shipment to the North from Nevada. His style of acting is quite sophisticated, reminding me of an American Max Linder. He plays comedy and pathos with delicious layers of understatement followed by bravado. He is truly a forgotten actor in the great tradition of American comedy. How fun it would have been to have seen him in a Lubitsch film.