Talk About Cinema

First, a bit of background history about Abbott and Costello during this time. Shortly after filming Hit the Ice , Lou Costello came down with a serious bout of rheumatic fever, which kept him confined to bed for over 6 months and shortly after recovering his infant son accidentally drowned in the family pool. This was the first Abbott and Costello movie to be released after both of these tragedies (although it was filmed after MGM’s Lost in a Harem ), so it’s very surprising to see that he actually gives such a lively performance. Despite this, though, the film as a whole is not good. Eddie Harrington (Abbott) and Albert Mansfield (Costello) are two plumbers who mistakenly receive an invitation to a high society gathering hosted by Mrs. Winthrop (Margaret Irving), who will be displaying a valuable painting called “The Plunger.” While there, they discover that a loan shark (Thomas Gomez) whom they’ve been acquainted with is planning to steal the painting and it is up to them to stop ...

After several years of having their cartoon characters appear in records produced by Capitol Records, Warner Bros. for some reason decided to switch to licensing their characters to Little Golden Records, another company that made children’s records featuring popular cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse and Popeye. There are quite a few differences between how Capitol and Golden handled using the Warner Bros. characters, with the most notable being that Golden, rather than actually telling a story with occasional song breaks, instead released records usually only containing one song. It is because of this that I am talking about the Golden series as a whole in this post, rather than briefly talking about each record individually as I had for the Capitol Records posts. The songs are pretty average for the most part. The songwriting isn’t necessarily awful, but it doesn’t really feel like something that you would hear in a Warner Bros. cartoon. Compare, for example, Golden’s version...

After two films that attempted to go in a different direction for Abbott and Costello, Hit the Ice returned to the more standard formula of trying to force other musical acts in Universal’s unnecessary attempt to liven things up. Fortunately, Hit the Ice is just good enough to recommend for at least one viewing. Abbott and Costello are Flash Fulton and Tubby McCoy, aspiring newspaper photographers who inadvertently get caught up in a bank robbing scheme and take the fall for it. In an attempt to clear their name, they follow the real crooks to a ski resort where the head crook is posing as a sick patient and attempt to blackmail them with pictures they took at the crime scene. Only one problem: they didn’t actually capture the robbers’ faces in their photograph. Hit the Ice is actually a bit misleading, as the beginning leads you to believe that it isn’t really a musical at all. Then, suddenly, you get three songs almost back-to-back-to-back; and, no, none of the songs rise abov...

Zenobia is an interesting film to talk about as it marks the only feature to star Oliver Hardy without Stan Laurel. Although he did play supporting roles in films before his teaming with Laurel and even a couple after, this was the only time that he received top billing on his own. The reason behind the making of this film was not because of any desire for Hardy to make it as a solo, but rather as a result of a contract dispute. Laurel and Hardy had separate contracts under producer Hal Roach and after a series of disputes, Roach decided to end Laurel’s contract but keep Hardy’s. In an attempt to recapture the success of his most famous comedy team, Roach decided to have Hardy team up with former silent film star Harry Langdon, and Zenobia was supposed to be the first in a series of Langdon and Hardy series, although the contract dispute was soon cleared up and Laurel and Hardy were reunited. How does Zenobia hold up, though? Let’s find out. Hardy plays Henry Tibbett, a well-known...

It Ain’t Hay is probably the most unique Abbott and Costello film so far. It’s based off of a story by popular short story writer Damon Runyon called Princess O’Hara , and there’s a community-driven atmosphere to it, as it does stress the importance of the high standing of the characters in the town that they live in. Does it work for Abbott and Costello? For the most part, yes. Wilbur Hoolihan (Costello) is a taxi driver who is friends with Grover Mockridge (Abbott), King O’Hara (Cecil Kellaway), his daughter Princess (Patsy O’Connor), and their horse Finnegan. After Wilbur accidentally kills Finnegan by feeding him candy, Grover and Wilbur inadvertently steal a famous race horse named Tea Biscuit in an attempt to make it up to them, and so they have to find a way to return the horse without anyone noticing. Surprisingly, the one major problem with this is the initial set-up. It’s one of those films that kind of throws you into it. For example, Grover and Wilbur have this friend ...

Although A Sailor-Made Man was Harold Lloyd’s first feature film, it was Grandma’s Boy that really cemented him as a feature film star. Today, the film is praised for helping to decide how a feature film comedy should be approached, along with Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid , and resulted in Lloyd permanently moving into features. Lloyd plays a 19-year-old living with his grandmother (Anna Townsend). Unable to stand up for himself against a rival (Charles Stevenson), all seems lost to him, until his grandmother gives him a magic charm that will keep him from being harmed, and he gets a chance to prove himself by capturing a wanted criminal (Dick Sutherland). Grandma’s Boy is a much different experience than the earlier A Sailor-Made Man . That’s not to say A Sailor-Made Man is bad; it moves at a good pace and is full of funny gags. However, Grandma’s Boy stands out by doing more than could really be accomplished in a short comedy; it’s emotional in more ways than one. Starting wi...

For Who Done It? , Universal decided to try something different for Abbott and Costello; they decided not to include any songs at all and reduced the roles of the romantic interests. This resulted in one of Abbott and Costello’s best films. Chick Larkin (Abbott) and Mervyn Milgrim (Costello) are two soda jerks at a radio station who aspire to be radio mystery writers. When the network president is murdered, they decide to solve the murder themselves as a possible way of getting noticed by the station. However, when the real detectives show up, they accuse Chick and Mervyn of being the murderers and it is up to writer Jimmy Turner (Patric Knowles) and producer Jane Little (Louise Allbritton) to prove their innocence. Although the movie does open up with some brief exposition from the other characters, afterwards the focus is mainly on Abbott and Costello and they take advantage of every opportunity. The minute they turn up on screen, we get a hilarious scene of Costello freaking out...