Harold Teen

A marvelous unsung "B" musical from 1934. No breathtaking dance routines, no overpaid big names----just 68 minutes of fun, music and good humor. There are some familiar faces such as Guy Kibbee, Douglas Dumbrille, Rochelle Hudson and Pat Ellis in the cast. And it's your only chance to hear Chick Chandler SING! And you'll want to hum the songs by Sammy Fain & Irving Kahal. Get the DVD of 42nd Street and you can see the production short from this feature. The story----as if there needed to be one----concerns a cub reporter, based on the 1920's cartoon strip character HAROLD TEEN, who will do anything to get a big story, including learning how to dance from Hugh Herbert---a correspondence school dance instructor. Harold's a fast learner, considering that star Hal Le Roy was a Broadway dancer at the time. The usual complications occurs: a temperamental rich girl who wants to be the star of the show and her father who decides he's going to marry a girl young enough to be his daughter. Everything turns out well in the end, of course, especially for the audience who had a darn good evening at the movies.

Recommended!

This is the second film based on the popular comic strip that ran from 1919 to 1959. The 1928 film starred Arthur Lake as Harold. Warners updated the characters and added several songs for this musical version starring Hal Le Roy, who's just about perfect as the lanky teenager.

The comic strip famously lampooned teenagers and all their silly fads and lingo over the years. This film has Harold working as a cub reporter and getting involved with Lillum's high school graduation, and the "big show" the banker's daughter Mimi is putting on.

Rochelle Hudson plays the silky Lillums and Patricia Ellis plays the snappy Mimi. We also get Chick Chandler as wisecracking Lilacs and Eddie Tamblyn as the shy Shadow. Among the adults, there's Hobart Cavanaugh as Pop, Guy Kibbee and Clara Blandick as the Lovewells, Douglass Dumbrille as the banker, Hugh Herbert as Rathburn, Richard Carle as the high school principal, Charles Wilson as the newspaper editor, and Mayo Methot as the newspaper secretary. Jane Wyman is among the high school throng ... if you can spot her.

This was probably meant to be a series, but it didn't happen. Fun all along the way and we the Hal Le Roy's big dance number as a finale.

HAROLD TEEN (Warner Brothers, 1934), directed by Murray Roth, from the comic strip character created by Carl Ed, stars hoofer/dancer, Hal LeRoy, as the title character originally enacted on the silent screen in 1928 by Arthur Lake, the same Arthur Lake most identified with Chic Young's beloved comic strip character, Dagwood Bumstead, from the popular "Blondie" series for Columbia (1938-1950) starring Penny Singleton. While LeRoy's career consisted mainly of musical film shorts with few featured roles to his credit, he's best known work, if at all, appears to be that of Al Terwilliger in both stage (1939) and screen (1940) versions of the musical, TOO MANY GIRLS. As for this edition of HAROLD TEEN, it's neither a sequel nor a remake, but basically a showcase for young LeRoy as both the bumbling teen and tap dancer wanna be, the later demonstrated much later in the story. While not exactly a landmark teen movie that proved favorable later in the decade with Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland musicals at MGM, or Paramount's own lovable teenager, "Henry Aldrich," in a series of lighthearted comedies in the 1940s, HAROLD TEEN is one of those rare cases at the time (noteworthy exceptions being 1933s WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD and THE MAYOR OF HELL) where the central character(s) are basically teens rather than the common case of youngsters as Jackie Cooper or the soon to be popular Shirley Temple taking the spotlight.

As for the plot, Harold Teen (Hal LeRoy), a year old Covina High School graduate, now working as reporter and column writer of "Your Main Street and Mine," for the Covina Crier under the supervision of its editor, Mr. McKinsey (Charles C. Wilson). Harold has a girlfriend, Lillian "Lillums" Lovewell (Rochelle Hudson), but finds himself in stiff competition with his rival, "Lilacs" (Chick Chandler). During her graduation ball, Harold gets his pants pulled by Lillum's dog, Pretty, who followed them there. To make matters worse, Harold gets criticized for being a bad dancer by constantly stepping on Lillums' toes with his tangled feet. Losing her to a better dancer, Lilacs, Shadow (Eddie Tamblyn), a four-year freshman, interests Harold to Ed Rathburn's brochure on a home study dancing course, which he gladly accepts. Later, while on a canoe ride one evening with Lillums, Harold accidentally tips it over, both coming out soaking wet. Lillums leaves Harold behind to accept a ride home from H.H. Snatcher (Douglass Dumbrille), a recent resident from New York now president of the Covina State Bank, who happens to hold a Kingsley note on the home of her parents(Guy Kibbee and Clara Blandick). The Lovewells approve of their daughter's relationship with Snatcher, which might be the sole means in them not losing their home foreclosed by the bank. Learning of her father's relationship with a girl close to her own age, Mimi Snatcher (Patricia Ellis) takes matters into her own hands, leading to her infatuation with Harold, much to the jealous nature of Lillums.

In between the hi-jinx and misunderstandings, HAROLD TEEN takes time for musical interludes, with an assortment of songs by Irving Kahal and Sammy Fain including: "How Do You Know It's Sunday?" (sung by Chick Chandler, Rochelle Hudson, students); "Simple and Sweet" (sung by Sammy Fain); "Two Little Flies on a Lump of Sugar" (sung by Patricia Ellis and Chick Chandler); and "Collegiate Wedding" (sung by Chandler and Hudson, with dance solo by Hal LeRoy). "Collegiate Wedding," the film's only production number, highlighted by co-eds holding and flipping color tiles for visual effects and Hal LeRoy's fancy footwork. The song numbers come off as brief as the film's 66 minute presentation, but overall, okay.

Other members of the cast consist Mayo Methot as Miss LaSalle; and Spec O'Donnell as the stuttering student (possibly passing himself off as the son of movie stutterer, Roscoe Ates!). Hugh Herbert, a bewildered character actor in many Warner Brothers productions of the 1930s, basically plays it straight as Ed Rathburn, New York dance director staging a high school musical show, "Junior Gaities." This alone, along with he wearing a shirt containing with a Warner Brothers shield logo, comes as surprise casting. Due to Herbert's good natured characters he's played so often, maybe he and Douglass Dumbrille, usually cast a heavies, should have switched roles, making Herbert's relationship with Lillums more agreeable than Dumbrille's. Hobart Cavanaugh, another Warners stock player, as Pop Jenkins, proprietor of a local malt shop, The Sugar Bowl, makes a fine caricature for a comic strip character, right down to his walrus mustache. As for Chick Chandler playing Harold's rival, it's ironic how closely he resembles that of dancer/actor, Lee Dixon, whose brief career in the Warner Brothers musical cycle was only two years away.

As much as this might or should have been a start to a "B" series of "Harold Teen" comedies starring Hal LeRoy, it never got past this stage. While Carl Ed's character remained in the funny papers until the late 1950s, by today's standards, both comic strips and movie editions featuring HAROLD TEEN, are virtually forgotten. Only Hal LeRoy's carnation to the bumbling teenager had turned up occasionally on Turner Classic Movies. For now, Harold Teen is one for the memory book. (**1/2)

The gangling young vaudeville hoofer Hal LeRoy stars in this feature version of a long-forgotten comic strip, and the casting couldn't be more apt. With his reed-thin frame, impossibly long legs and goofy, Jack-o-lantern grin, LeRoy is a cartoon figure come to life. Unfortunately, the film doesn't live up to the star's oddball potential. It's a slapdash, hopelessly corny take on small town life that derives its paltry humor from the silly names of its characters.

LeRoy plays the teenage cub reporter for the local paper in his hick town (Covina, no less) who takes mail order dance lessons to win back his sweetheart Lillums after she falls for a rich older man, the banker Mr. Snatcher. In a gross misuse of his talents, LeRoy doesn't even kick up his heels until the finale. As consolation, we are offered several forgettable ditties warbled by such unlikely thrushes as Rochelle Hudson, Patricia Ellis and the frog-throated Chick Chandler, whose sweet shop number is at least sprightly.

But when the insanely spirited LeRoy finally gets to strut his stuff it's a sight to behold -- a miracle of rubber limbs and boundless energy rivaled only by Ray Bolger at his most manic.

With the ubiquitous Guy Kibbee and Clara Blandick as Lillum's parents, Douglas Dumbrille as the oily Snatcher, Hugh Herbert, wasted as per Warners' habit, as the theatrical director.