BEWARE OF BLONDIE (Columbia, 1950), directed by Edward Bernds, finishes the popular sit-com film series starring its original leads of Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake as Chic Young's comic strip couple of Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead, the roles they originated in 1938. The character of Dagwood's employer, Mr. Dithers, returns, but instead of Jonathan Hale, who had played the irritable boss from 1938 to 1946, he is portrayed this time by Edward Earle, whose is seen briefly seated with focus of the back of his head.
In the 28th chapter, the story opens at the Bumstead household with the family gathered together in the living room with children Alexander (Larry Simms) doing his homework and Cookie (Marjorie Kent) playing the piano, before heading for bed. Dagwood (Arthur Lake) suddenly remembers that he has to fill out his income tax form, and finds himself working on it all night while the family is asleep. Spouse Blondie (Penny Singleton), who has noticed that Dagwood hasn't slept in his bed all night, comes downstairs to find him asleep at his desk. She then gets him to finish his sleep in bed. Easier said than done when Dagwood finds his sleep with constant interruptions, including the sanitation men picking up the early morning trash and making noise banging the tin garbage cans. As Dagwood yells out the window for quiet, he disturbs the neighbors, Herb and Harriet Woodley (Emory Parnell and Isabel Withers). As he returns to bed his alarm clock goes off, indicating that it's time to get up and get ready for work. Dagwood arrives at the office exhausted, falling asleep in the elevator and taking numerous up and down trips before he is retrieved by employee Ollie (Jack Rice), who, along with the others in the staff, in need of the key to get into the office. Afterwards, Dagwood encounters Toby Clifton (Adele Jergens), an attractive blonde client who happens to be a swindler. In order to get the company bonds, she stages to have her husband, Adolph (Douglas Fowley) arrive at the scene in her apartment in a jealous rage and accusing Dagwood to be his wife's lover. After Dagwood does give Toby the company bonds, he learns later on that he had been swindled. Dooped again and feeling guilty, he starts having nightmares and dreams of himself being caught, put on trial, found guilty and sentenced to serve time on a chain gang. An amusing moment finds Dagwood struggling to make his escape with a giant iron ball and chain around his leg as he is pursued by a comic guard and his dog. But will Dagwood's nightmares continue? What will really happen to him when Mr. Dithers learns what Dagwood has done with the company bonds? Will Blondie be able to get him out of another mess?
For the last time in the series viewers will get a glimpse of watching the Bumstead children, Alexander, formerly "Baby Dumpling", as played by Larry Simms, now a teen-aged high schooler; Danny Mummert appearing briefly as Alexander's best friend and know-it-all, Alvin Fuddow; Daisy, the Bumstead pooch and her pups; and Marjorie Kent as the youngest member of the Bumstead clan, Cookie; all making final screen appearances after many years in their character parts. Alyn Lockwood returns once more as Mary, the switchboard girl of the Dithers Construction Company. Dick Wessel as the neighborhood postman who always becomes part of the running gag as he constantly gets knocked down by Dagwood as he races out of the house to catch his bus to work, first played by Irving Bacon and later Eddie Acuff, comes upon a great idea in this segment by delivering the mail to the Bumsteads around midnight. But even that doesn't work, for that Dagwood, realizing that he has to get his income tax mailed out before the midnight deadline, races out of the house only to run into the postman for the last time on screen. The postman, realizing that he is fighting a losing battle, runs into the night with Dagwood yelling at him to stop and take the letter back with him. While the neighbors, the Woodleys, have appeared in many of the Blondie comic strips throughout the years, this became the only time in the series in which they are mentioned and seen.
Although a weak production in which the central actors, Singleton and Lake, seem to appear bored with their roles, especially in the way they speak to one another in the early portion of the story, they do manage to rise above the predictable script and situations by producing new quota of laughs with old time worn material.
Years after the finish of the movie series, "Blondie" and the Bumsteads would return in two separate but short-lived television sit-coms: 1957 with Pamela Britton as Blondie and Arthur Lake as Dagwood; 1968 starring Patricia Harty as Blondie and Will Hutchins as Dagwood, with Jim Backus perfectly cast as Mr. J.C. Dithers. As the long running film series (1938-1950) emerged on television in the early 1970s, it reintroduced itself to its former audience as well as finding a new generation of viewers who finally get to see the syndicated comic strip characters come to life.
BEWARE OF BLONDIE was available on video cassette (with new opening and introduction with a sing-along theme song), and had enjoyed frequent revivals, many with the original opening and closing credits restored, on American Movie Classics from 1996 to 2001. (**)
