Talk About Cinema

Today’s subject is Wheeler and Woolsey, a comedy duo from the 1930s who made their film debut in Rio Rita and who eventually became headliners themselves, remaining so until Robert Woolsey became ill and died in 1938. I’m actually not all that familiar with their work; as a matter of fact, Cockeyed Cavaliers is their only film that I’ve actually seen all the way through, though I’ve seen it a few times and found myself enjoying it every time. Wheeler and Woolsey are on the run after Wheeler stole from the Duke. Joining them is Mary Ann (Dorothy Lee), who is set to be engaged to the Duke and is passing herself off as a boy in order to get away from him. The three eventually find themselves at the Duke’s castle, where they are mistaken for physicians sent by the king. The best way I can describe this duo, at least based off of this movie, is Laurel and Hardy meets the Marx Brothers. Wheeler seems to be echoing the childish and dumb Stan Laurel with his performance while Woolsey is ...

The last Abbott and Costello service comedy we’ll be seeing for a while, Keep ‘Em Flying deals with the U.S. Army Air Corps this time around.   Buck Privates  is a passable effort that’s funny but suffers from a very tedious love story, while  In the Navy  is a mostly solid effort that occasionally dragged a bit with its song sequences. Keep ‘Em Flying sort of falls in the middle. Dick Foran is Jinx Roberts, an egotistical stunt pilot who enlists in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a pilot along with his friends Blackie (Abbott) and Heathcliff (Costello), who join as ground crewmen. Roberts falls in love with USO hostess Linda Joyce (Carol Bruce) and befriends her brother Jim (Charles Lang). He tries to help Jim learn how to fly solo, but runs into a major obstacle: his commanding officer (William Gargan) is a former colleague who he is no longer on good terms with due to an incident years earlier. As some of you may know, I was not too fond of Foran in  Private...

Welcome to the third and final part of my look into the Looney Tunes records made for Capitol Records. This covers the records made from 1953 to 1955, which was the last year that Capitol would use the Warner Bros. characters. So let’s get straight into it. Rabbit Seasoning (1953) Despite the title, this has no relation to the 1952 cartoon of the same name. Instead, this record is about Bugs helping a hunting dog out by pretending to play dead and letting the dog capture him so his owner, Elmer Fudd, won’t kill either of them. This is a pretty standard record, with nothing really special about it. The one major problem I have is with the ending. Bugs decides to steal Elmer’s car and leave him stranded, but he leaves the dog he was helping with Elmer. Considering how bad Elmer’s temper was earlier, he could have taken it out on the dog and for all we know, Bugs may have ended up getting the dog killed, making his act of kindness entirely pointless! Personally, this is not one I’d r...

First, a quick update. As promised, I am sticking to my every other week schedule for the Abbott and Costello reviews, which means that the Keep ‘Em Flying will be released next Saturday, while tomorrow I’ll be releasing the third part of my “Looney Tunes at Capitol Records” series. Before I post that, though, there’s another cartoon record that I recently listened to that I’m interested in talking about: Yogi Bear and the Three Stooges Meet the Mad, Mad, Mad Dr. No-No . Just the idea of these characters meeting is very odd; were there really that many people dying to have the three idiots who couldn’t hold down a job meet the bear with an unhealthy addiction to picnic baskets? Now, of course, the probable reason for this happening at all was because both the Three Stooges and Yogi Bear were popular throughout the 1960s. This may be the most commercial recording the Stooges ever made. In addition to relying on the novelty of the Three Stooges and Yogi meeting each other, there also ...

Yes, I’ve finally returned to working on the Abbott and Costello reviews. For now, I’ve decided that every other week will be an Abbott and Costello review while in between will be a random review. With that said, let’s move on to the next Abbott and Costello film, Hold That Ghost . Abbott and Costello are Chuck Murray and Ferdie Jones, two gas station attendants who aspire to more in life. After getting tangled up with a gangster in his final hours, they find themselves the heirs to all his fortunes, which are located at the gangster’s abandoned tavern. At the tavern they’re joined by radio actress Camille Brewster (Joan Davis), Dr. Jackson (Richard Carlson), Charlie Smith (Mark Lawrence), and Norma Lind (Evelyn Ankers). It then becomes a night of frights and terrors as they discover the place might be haunted. Hold That Ghost is a very different change of pace from the previous two films, in that this one is a scare comedy rather than a service comedy and it works very well beca...