In 1919, when Earle W. Hammons founded Educational Pictures, the motion picture studio was dedicated to doing what was indicated in its title—making films for schools. This didn’t work out too well for E.W., so Educational switched to comedy…and enjoyed great success in the 1920s as a fun factory, with successful generators of mirth like Lloyd Hamilton and Lupino Lane working under its banner. By the 1930s, however, Educational’s fortunes had changed a bit as Leonard Maltin relates in Selected Short Subjects:
Earle W. Hammons |
I should point out here that film historian/friend of the
blog Richard M. Roberts is hard at work writing a reference tome on the history
of Educational Pictures similar to his splendid compendium on the Hal Roach
Studios, Smile Guaranteed: Past Humor, Present
Laughter, and I strongly suspect he’ll have a (most welcomed) dissenting
opinion (I know, for example, he disputes Mr. Maltin's "cheap" observation with regards to Buster Keaton's oeuvre at the studio) . For that matter, I’ve watched several
of Harry Langdon’s Educational shorts and found some of them darned
entertaining.
Ad copy for Educational in that era touted “the best of the
old comedy favorites…the brightest of the new stars.” It was a stage stop for folks on their way up
and old-timers on their way down.
Notable among the veterans were Langdon, Mack Sennett (behind the
camera), and Keaton (whose Educational shorts are available on the
Kino-Lorber Blu-ray/DVD release Lost
Keaton), with funsters like Milton Berle, Imogene Coca, and Danny
Kaye numbering among the newcomers. Maltin
further observes: “There were also vaudevillians and stage comedians like
Ernest Truex, Tom Howard & George Shelton, Buster West & Tom Patricola,
Tim & Irene Ryan, and Joe Cook, who were not down on their luck, but whose
stage success meant little in the movie world.”
Charlotte Greenwood in Girls Will Be Boys |
Publicity shot of Marjorie Beebe (and non-talking dog) |
James Gleason, Harry Gribbon, and Mae Busch |
The remaining shorts on Ultra-Rare Pre-Code Comedies, Volume 2—So This is Marriage (1929) and The Beauties (1930)—resemble those Vitaphone two-reelers that often air
on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ from time to time; they’re
pleasant if unmemorable, though Beauties
does have a saving grace in that Billy Gilbert (billed as “Billie”) generates many
chuckles as a vengeance-obsessed man whose constant refrain of “For 400 years
the blood of a Castilian has run through my veins” gets funnier and funnier
with repetition. The Messenger Boy (1931) stars Benny Rubin as the titular
character; he’s hired to look after a brat on behalf of a nightclub performer (Marie
Wills), which results in the darling little tot proceeds destroying his tiny
automobile. Later, Rubin must don drag
and perform in an act with apache dancers John Sinclair and Bud Jamison (who has
a propensity to repel folks due to his onion-eating regimen). If you like Jewish dialect humor you’ll get a
kick out of Messenger…but the high
point for me was hearing Rubin use a favorite gag with which I have become most
familiar thanks to the Three Stooges (“Tell me your name so I can tell your
mother…” “My mother knows my name!”).
Also new from Alpha Video is Blondes and Redheads: Pre-Code
Comedy Classics, Volume 2—a follow-up to the first volume of Blondes and Redheads comedy shorts reviewed
here on the blog in March of last year.
I couldn’t get through the entire disc as this was going to press…but this
release includes the debut comedy in the franchise, Flirting in the Park (1933), and a very funny outing directed by
Sam White in Wig-Wag (1935). There’s just something about a guy (in this case,
TDOY fave Grady Sutton) having to
appear in drag that makes for great comedy (Some Like It Hot [1959] taught us this); Sutton is dragooned into the
female masquerade by his pal Jack Mulhall, who’s scheming to make his fiancée
jealous (not knowing of course, that the bride-to-be—played by Dorothy
Granger—is already wise to the gag). The
icing on the cake in Wig-Wag is that
it features plum roles for back-to-back Best Supporting Actress Oscar winners:
Hattie McDaniel plays the family maid (and does a nifty fall into a wedding
cake—though it may have been a stuntwoman) and Jane Darwell is Mulhall’s mother,
who at one point takes a tumble down a flight of stairs (again—work for a
double) while carrying a tiny dog in her arms.
(Bud Jamison is in this short, too, as a butler—the bewildered look Bud
gives Grady as Sutton keeps pulling “springs” out of his corset is gold,
Jerry.)
1 comment:
Love the photo of Charlotte in "Girls Will Be Boys". As her biographer, I am ashamed to admit I have never seen it before. Thanks for sharing!
Grant Hayter-Menzies
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