Clock Wise

Edgar Kennedy can't get a decent night's sleep, because father-in-law Billy Franey has souped up the grandfather clock so it produces a loud racket every hour on the hour.

It's an agreeable but not exceptional entry in Kennedy's long-running RKO shorts series, "The Common Man", which ran from about 1933 through his death in 1948. the cohort in this one has Vivien Oakland as his wife, instead of Florence Lake as his spouse Franey is short, irascible and always anxious to put one over on Edgar. Fred Kelsey, who played comic cops in hundreds of movies, is present as Edgar's landlord.

It's a rather thinly written one, although Edgar performs his patented slow burn and the clock's chiming is amusing.

The Plot.

Pop's noisy mechanical clock is driving Edgar crazy.

This is an early two-reeler in the RKO series starring Edgar Kennedy with a different wife, but the same father as later films in the series.

Kennedy is also living in an apartment rather than the house of later 2-reelers.

The clock in question is a gigantic grandfather clock ticking away in pop's room. It even has two sailors that come out every hours and play the drums!

The genius of this series is the simplicity. The story line is always built around Kennedy's strengths and that makes them so great!