How to Raise a Baby

Robert Benchley lectures his audience on how to bathe, play with, and feed a child, while he ignores his own advice on the screen.

It's one of a series of shorts that Benchley made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (and later Paramount) in which he explained the sex life of the polyp (whatever that is; he never makes it clear) or how to sleep. He would explain his subject so well that the audience would know less at the end than they had at the beginning. So popular were these shorts -- Benchley had done similar routines while at. Harvard -- that one of them HOW TO SLEEP won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject.

This one is pretty funny too.

Another MGM comedy short starring Robert Benchley. This time Benchley gives tips to new parents, particularly the fathers. Fun stuff but not my favorite "How To" short. The funniest part was Benchley talking to his bratty kid. All of the Benchley shorts are good but some work more to his strengths than this one does, in my opinion.

How to Raise a Baby (1938)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Robert Benchley returns for another in his "How to..." series with this one looking at how a father should raise his son. We see how a father should take responsibility and not leave everything up to his wife and that includes getting up in the morning and giving the kid a bath. We also learn how important it is to make sure you don't eat all of the kids food. I've always said that Benchley is a tad bit hit and miss but this one here falls somewhere in the middle. It's not a complete success but if you have eight minutes to kill then you'll find yourself entertained. I watched this short two weeks after my own kid was born so I think this gave me a few more chuckles than it would have gotten otherwise. The movie features a pretty good laugh when daddy is trying to get the kid to eat and another nice scene where both mom and dad pretend to be asleep so that the other will get up in the morning. A few of the films in this series has Benchley talking to the viewer while all the action is going on but here he does the narration and keeps the movie itself silent. I think this here works a lot better than when he's on the screen and directly talking to us while dealing with everything as the "actor".

My dad and my uncle played the babies in this short. Rollie is my dad and Bobby is my uncle. Their full names are Ralston S. Jones and Robert O. Jones. Dad lives in Texas and Uncle Bobby's family is in Oregon. Dad has many stories about being in the movies. Most of them are from their time doing Our Gang comedies. Thank you for preserving our family history.

Short and bittersweet, as most Robert Benchley's comedies are. This one is incredibly funny, just to watch Robert's hopeless expressions.

Child development 101 and then some. New dad Robert has his work cut out for him. The most important child rearing time comes very early in a baby's life -- so let's get to work. Benchley, meaning well, but discombobulated as usual, walks us through the fine art of giving a baby a bath, feeding time ( don't forget the spinach), play time(?), even reading the funnies?

Bottom line, how NOT to lose your dignity in the process, although Robert generally loses everything in record time!

Great stuff, directed by Roy Rowland, who went onto some classic MGM films; OUR VINES HAVE TENDER GRAPES. Mother is played by British character and bit actress Margaret Bert. One of the older kids is played by Ricardo Lord Cezon, younger brother of Connie Cezon, who acted with the Three Stooges.

Thank you to TCM for running these oldies. On remastered dvd, a collection of Benchley short comedy films.