Mill Creek comedy classics #8: "All Over Town" (1937)

Oh, happy day! Olsen and Johnson are back for more in All Over Town.

The flick: All Over Town (Republic, 1937) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 5.1

Director: James W. Horne (Way Out West, Big Business, and other Laurel & Hardy features and shorts)

Actors of note:

• Olsen and Johnson (Hellzapoppin', Country Gentlemen, Ghost Catchers)

• Mary Howard (The Great Ziegfeld)

• Harry Stockwell (voice of the Prince in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, father of Dean Stockwell)

• Franklin Pangborn (Sullivan's Travels, My Man Godfrey)

• James Finlayson (To Be Or Not to Be, Foreign Correspondent, many Laurel & Hardy features and shorts, and the guy who popularized the expression "D'oh!" later adopted by Homer Simpson)

The gist of it: Olsen and Johnson, playing fictionalized versions of themselves, are struggling vaudevillians ("the last of their tribe, the true vanishing Americans" according to some title cards at the start of the film) living in a $12-a-week theatrical boarding house in Manhattan and trying to make a star of their trained seal, Sally, who can do the usual seal tricks: balance a ball on her nose, play a tune by honking horns, clap, etc. They bring this dynamite act to the "jinxed" Elridge Theater, a grand old place which has been closed since a murder was committed there two years earlier. During rehearsals for the new show, another murder is committed, setting up a climax in which Olsen and Johnson promise to reveal the identity of the killer live on the radio.

Scooby and Shaggy's signature bit.

My take: All Over Town is not terribly fitting as a title for this frantic backstage farce, but it comes close to describing the film's scattershot, all-over-the-place approach to storytelling.

At first, I thought it was going to be one of those "save the orphanage"-type movies with Olsen and Johnson's trained seal act reviving the troubled Eldridge Theater and rescuing pretty young Miss Eldridge (Howard), the heavily-in-debt daughter of the theater's deceased owner, who in turn pursues a chaste romance with an up-and-coming piano player (Stockwell) with big showbiz ambitions.

Then, when O&J actually get to the theater and are menaced by various flying objects, strange echoes, and a raving lunatic who seems to live there, I thought All Over Town was going to be one of those "scaredy cats in a haunted house" stories, like Scooby-Doo and at least a dozen Three Stooges shorts. They even do the classic Scooby/Shaggy bit where one jumps into the arms of the other.

After that, there are some comic misunderstandings which lead everyone else in the movie to believe that O&J are oil millionaires, so I thought the film was going to be a rehash of Country Gentlemen, with the boys as fly-by-night swindlers. Then, when grouchy old Mr. Bailey (who wants Miss Eldridge to sell the theater) is shot by a mysterious figure, I thought the film was going to turn into a comedy whodunnit.

It ultimately winds up as a wacky, anything-goes live-action cartoon in its last few minutes, with a bumbling cop getting tangled in ropes, a brass band dodging gunfire until only a tuba player is left onstage, and lots of fake "theater snow" falling on everyone and everything as Olsen provides a running commentary for the radio audience. I wasn't bored by All Over Town, but I wasn't really satisfied by it either. The film tries a little of everything, perhaps to distract us from the fact that none of it is really all that good. If nothing else, this movie provides a glimpse of the dying days of Vaudeville, a form of entertainment which (ironically) was displaced by the distribution of motion pictures just like this one.

Franklin Pangborn and James Finlayson

Is it funny: Well, it's funny-ish. I'll give it that. All Over Town is certainly more madcap and adventurous than the previous year's Country Gentlemen. I suppose it all depends on how amusing you consider Olsen and Johnson to be. Personally, I can take or leave them. They're zanier and consequently not as relatable as, say, Abbott and Costello or even Martin and Lewis, yet they lack the pure inspiration of wilder teams like the Marx Brothers or Laurel and Hardy at their best.

This film gives them plenty of opportunities to do their trademark schtick, and at least twice, the movie stops dead so that they can do a bit: one is a phony ventriloquist act with Johnson pretending to be the dummy and another is a musical comedy number with O&J shamelessly stalling before they butcher Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C sharp minor.

At one point, they attempt some Groucho/Chico-style verbal humor, with Olsen trying without success to get Johnson to memorize and repeat a single line of dialogue for the show. None of this really catches fire. Fortunately, for you hardcore comedy nerds out there, the supporting cast includes at least two legends. Franklin Pangborn, famous for portraying "prissy" (today we'd say "gay"), uptight characters, is the show's Costumer.

And the radio show's sponsor, Mr. McDougal of McDougal's Mackerels,  is the impatient, always-agitated James Finlayson, usually a foil to Laurel and Hardy. If you've ever derived pleasure from Homer Simpson yelling "D'oh!" (a contraction of "damn" and "oh") after some setback, you can thank Mr. Finlayson, who made that word his calling card. And, yes, he says it at least twice in All Over Town.

My grade: B-

P.S. - Not even a hint of racial stereotyping here, though PETA folks will probably cringe at the treatment of Sally the seal.

Mill Creek comedy classics #2: "Country Gentlemen" (1936)

The poster blatantly gives away the ending of Country Gentlemen, a vehicle for the team of  Olsen & Johnson.

The flick: Country Gentlemen (Republic, 1936) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 5.2

Director: Ralph Staub (The Mandarin Mystery, Screen Snapshots Series)

Actors of note: 

• Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson (Hellzapoppin')

• Joyce Compton (The Best Years of Our Lives, Mildred Pierce)

• Prince the Great Dane (Never Give a Sucker an Even Break)

The gist of it: Two fly-by-night swindlers have to go on the lam after they sell some worthless shares in a gold mine. They abandon the city for small town life in the quaint little community of Chesterville, where they start a new scam selling worthless shares in an oil well. Madcap hijinks ensue, as you might guess.

My take: All diligent students of comedy will eventually come across references to Hellzapoppin', a wild and fast-paced 1938 Broadway revue that became a surrealistic 1941 film. With its rapid-fire pacing, kitchen sink approach to humor, and total lack of plot, Hellzapoppin' is often cited as a precursor to Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Saturday Night Live, and Monty Python's Flying Circus. At the center of all this craziness were Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson, two very conventional Vaudeville comics who'd been working as a team since about 1914.

Country Gentleman is a pre-Hellzapoppin' vehicle for the boys, but it's a  much more timid and traditional story about two scoundrels who accidentally find redemption in a small town. Ole even romances a widow with a cute kid. How cornball can you get? This was a cheapie made by Republic Pictures, so every possible expense was spared in the making of this film. Johnson blatantly flubs a line once and corrects himself before the scene continues.

Ole and Chic: Together forever in Las Vegas.

Is it funny: Eh, it depends on your tolerance for creaky Vaudeville humor and the type of gags typically found in children's joke books. I have to admit I laughed out loud when Johnson said, "You wouldn't hit a man with glasses," while holding up two drinking glasses in front of his face.

At the heart of it, Olsen & Johnson are a second-rate act, nowhere near the Marx Brothers or Laurel and Hardy and taking a back seat to the Three Stooges and Abbott and Costello. Olsen is the slightly more serious of the two and comes off like a cross between Bud Abbott and Shemp Howard. Johnson is the chubbier one -- his character is even called "Chubby" in this film -- and he has a slightly zanier personality, somewhere between Joe Besser and Curly Howard. Laughing at your own jokes is supposedly a comedy no-no, but it's absolutely essential to Olsen & Johson's schtick. Their calling card, in fact, is Johnson's high-pitched giggle, which is heard frequently during Country Gentlemen.

Frankly, the best lines in this film go to Joyce Compton as a ditzy blonde secretary with a pet Great Dane she has whimsically named "Fluffy." By the way, I found it strangely poignant to learn that Ole and Chic were buried side by-side in Las Vegas' Palm Mortuary.

My Grade: B-