The Mind Needer

Charley's memory is so bad that he forgets who some people are, so things have to be repeated to him. He makes a mistake next door to his own and bathes there. A jealous neighbor thinks he has an affair with his wife.

This is a short that Charley Chase made for Columbia Pictures near the end of his career. These shorts, while enjoyable, lack the subtlety of most of the films he made with Hal Roach.

In this short, Charley plays an incredibly absent-minded man (too absent-minded to make this a particularly subtle film). His wife has been patient but it's getting too much for her--particularly when he kisses the neighbor instead of her (he mixed up the two) and after he forgets his wedding anniversary. His brother-in-law tries to help him, but the case sure looks hopeless! Even worse, when he comes home, he goes into the wrong house--and showers and makes himself at home in the same neighbors' home that you saw at the beginning of the film. What's to become of Charley?!

So is it any good? Well, it's enjoyable but the film has Charley playing a guy who ISN'T so much forgetful but appears to have a serious brain injury!! No one is THAT forgetful without a serious organic cause--and the film simply tries too hard to drive home that he's forgetful. Having him go into the wrong home could have been more believable--such as if they just moved to a new home and couldn't remember which was theirs. But it's simply a case of a film with a lot of energy and silliness but not much else. Worth seeing but no classic.

Charley Chase had spent a quarter of a century in screen comedy by the time he made this movie. He had worked as actor, director and writer for all the big names, with the exception of the Christie Brothers. He could make anything funny. After Hal Roach ended short subject production, he went to Jules White's department at Columbia, where he annoyed his boss by turning in comedies both funnier and cheaper than White could himself, usually with Del Lord directing (sorry, all you Stooges fans). His subjects tended towards domestic comedies, usually co-starring Ann Doran, with efforts acted a bit broader than his work at Roach, but more realistically than most Columbia comedy shorts.

In this one he has a terrible memory, which irks Ann. The gags on the subject are perfectly pitched and paced, but it is the small gags having nothing to do with the major thread that really tell -- he spends half a minute trying to get all the pins out of a new shirt.

Fans will notice Bess Flowers, Queen of the Extras in a real role with lines. She appeared in more than eight hundred movies and television episodes, almost always as a "dress extra" who provided her own clothes.

THE MIND NEEDER is not a classic Chase picture, but there are laughs aplenty and should satisfy anyone looking for a good comedy.

Charley Chase was a genius for taking an wild, implausible premise, drawing out its real-world consequences for his character, and mining them for brilliant comedy. Here, he's a fellow who's slightly more forgetful than the world's most forgetful man... and it's his wedding anniversary. Columbia Pictures may have required a faster pace from Charley than his old bosses at Hal Roach Studios did, but he seems to have managed to fill that bill with rapid-fire hilarious comedy dialogue and sight gags which don;t hurt his films one-bit: that's what the opening scenes of "The Mind Needer" run on, and they're full of constant character-based laughs that build and hit home, plus simply excellent lines ("It can't be our wedding anniversary... that happened that year.") and visual humor (Charley can't find his pants because they're on under his pyjamas).

Of course, when plot develops in the second act and Charley's forgetfulness lands him an embarrassing situation with another woman, it hits home all the funnier because we are familiar with the new conceits to Charley's character from the first half. It's as funny and well written, structured, and performed as anything I've seen from Chase. It's said that he compensated for Columbia's smaller budgets and tighter production schedules by overworking to make comedies that were his best work, and here it paid off. Well worth finding if you like Charley Chase or classic comedies in general.