The Merry Frinks

This film is hilarious. It loses a little about half way through, but the opening 20 minutes with the disfunctional family is downright hilarious. This pre *Roseanne" family is something you never saw in old Holltwo6od films. Dad is a drunk, the son is a juvenile delinquent, daughter is an ungreatful brat, the brother is an angry communust, grandma is a foul mouthed sneaky drunk who is always lobbing insults and fighting with the teenager. Then throw in Guy Kibbee, the long lost uncle who decides to move in with them. Finally, we have mom. A contrast to them all A total sweetheart who is constantly doing nice things for the family she loves. This is a must see.

Very peculiar Warners comedy, with a good Warners cast, that in a way presages "You Can't Take It With You," but doesn't nearly match it.It's similarly about a do-your-own-thing family in the Depression--dad's a sportswriter who drinks too much, one son (Allen Jenkins, unusually cast) a Communist-leaning lawyer, a daughter's dating a married man, little Frankie Darro is a would- be prizefighter. And Aline MacMahon, that Warners treasure, is the mom who tries to keep the family together and can't. You have to watch humiliation upon humiliation pile on this woman before you get to a late payoff, and it's painful. The comedy's just not very funny, and it strains credulity that these ingrates would suddenly see the errors of their ways. Helping are Guy Kibbee as a wastrel relative who turns out not to be a wastrel, and Louise Beavers as (forever) a maid. But it's a strained, uncomfortable piece, and it's not surprising that it's not remembered.

The Frinks are a family of non-stop bickering, drink-sneaking, school skipping folks, and all before breakfast! Viewers with recognize (or hear) the nasal Allen Jenkins as the dad Emmet Frink - always played the new york cab driver, or small time thug. Also look for Louise Beavers, who starred in "Imitation of Life" the same year. Guy Kibbee and Hugh Herbert are along for the vaudeville bits. Not a lot of other big names in this Warner Brothers 68 minute piece, but very entertaining and more realistic than all those sweet, soapy clean, rich, society movies of the late 1930s and 1940s. Kind of a strange moment when the rough, tough-talking son does a mocking, swishing walk across the room, just as the Hays Code was started being enforced. Also, about 20 minutes in, there are film quality issues on the TCM version I saw. Hattie, the mom, is the central figure (played by Aline MacMahon), and has to make big decisions in her life that will affect her whole family. She sometimes says "Noooorman" in a long, shrill, up-swooping voice at the end, Psycho-style. Has the feel of a film made from a play, since most of the action takes place in their kitchen. Produced by Jack Warner and Hal Wallis - (what a wide range of movies Wallis had done - this in 1934, Casablanca in 42, then half of the silly Elvis movies in the 50s and 60s) Fun, realistic, fast paced. Very plain and simple plot. Doesn't get bogged down with long scenes.

The great thing about this movie is that you will, if you watch it, see some of the busiest and best character actors of the 1930's Hollywood strut their stuff. Aline McMahon, Hugh Herbert (in a less than sympathetic role, unusual for him), Guy Kibbee, Allan Jenkins and Frankie Darro. Pay no attention to the plot, it just gets in the way of some of the finest bits of scenery chewing ever put on film. Jenkins, especially, is as loud, as obnoxious, and as hammy as you'll ever see him. At no time does he speak at a decibel level less than ear splitting. (He's a communist, you see, at a time when they didn't cart you off to jail for it). Here is Aline McMahon, a really fine actress, emoting to such a degree that it makes you want to cringe. And Frankie Darro, prancing around, shadow boxing, wearing his hat brim turned up (this, apparently, was meant to make you look tough, much as turning the brim sideways does today). Frankie's problem was that he looked as though he might weigh 83 pounds, if he wore lead boots. No, the plot (disfunctional family learns it lesson, eventually, and learns to appreciate Mother) isn't important here. The opportunity to see these folks certainly is, though.

During this time only W.C. Fields was showing a typical American family as a bunch of good-for-nothing, ungrateful louts, but even Fields' worst can't match a tenth of the so-called Merry Frinks. Dad is a drunken newspaperman who can't hold a job, his mother is a crotchety whiner who demands breakfast in bed while trying to sneak booze away from her son, his oldest son is a Communist constantly spouting off about the evils of capitalism, the youngest son plays hooky from school to go to prizefights and his daughter is having an affair with a married man. The only decent person in the house is long-suffering Mama Frink who waits on them and cleans up the catastrophes the Frinks leave in their wake. Her job becomes even harder when her husband's windbag uncle shows up on the doorstep from New Zealand. The cast is populated with some of Warner Brothers' best character actors of the early 1930's but the result is more outrageous than funny and after a while you just want someone to kill the family and be done with it. Director Green does provide one great camera move as Papa Frink arrives home to be pursued by his nagging relatives while walking through the entire house twice in a continuous tracking shot that must have been difficult to stage. Plus Warner's lab must have been especially bored as this film uses every optical wipe of the time.