Blondie

BLONDIE (Columbia, 1938), directed by Frank R. Strayer, introduces Chic Young's famous comic strip characters, the Bumsteads, to the silver screen in the persona of Penny Singleton as Blondie; Arthur Lake as Dagwood Bumstead; Larry Simms as Baby Dumpling; and Jonathan Hale as Mr. J.C. Dithers.

In this series opener, Blondie, Dagwood and their four-year-old son they call Baby Dumpling, along with their dog, Daisy, live in a simple community going through their daily routines. Though simple enough, a chain of unfortunate events soon come one after the other at the time of Blondie and Dagwood's fifth wedding anniversary. Blondie starts the show by planning a surprise anniversary party and presenting Dagwood with the house of brand new furniture. While Dagwood is trying to impress his boss, Mr. Dithers, in trying to contact a very important client for the firm by waiting for him in the hotel lobby where he is staying, Dagwood befriends a middle-aged gentleman (Gene Lockhart) in trying to fix a broken down vacuum cleaner. Coming up to this man's room, Dagwood is introduced to the man he calls C.P., and his daughter, Elsie (Ann Doran), unaware that this is the man Dagwood must contact for the firm. Problems ensue when Blondie suspects Dagwood is having a secret rendezvous with an Elsie Watson, and mistakes CP's daughter to be that girl, considering Dagwood was seen with Elsie at the hotel by Blondie's former sweetheart, Chester Franey (Gordon Oliver). Chester shows up at the Bumsteads anniversary party, telling Blondie of the situation to Blondie at the gathering of guests consisting of Blondie's mother (Kathleen Lockhart), and sister, Dot (Dorothy Moore), leading to a World War battle. Poor Dagwood must get CP and his daughter to come to his house to straighten out everything, but more complications ensue. And yes, Dagwood gets fired for the first of many times on screen by Dithers.

Setting the pattern in future film installments is Blondie getting jealous when she believes Dagwood is tangled with another woman; Dagwood running out of the house and running over the postman in order to catch his morning bus for work; and Alvin Fuddow (Danny Mummert), Baby Dumpling's "genius" friend, getting his chance to show off his smartness, etc. Supporting the cast are Irving Bacon as Mr. Beasley, the postman, the surname later changed to Crum in future installments); Fay Helm as Alvin's mother; Ian Wolfe as the courtroom judge, along with several other character actors. And let's not forget Daisy, the Bumstead dog, who is always the scene stealer. Fortunately, American Movie Classics, which premiered BLONDIE October 8, 1995, has restored its original theatrical opening and closing titles, starting with the Columbia logo, doing away with the tag-on opening and ending with the King Features logo and 1960s-style sing along theme by unknown vocalists that accompanied the movie and its sequels when distributed to local television in 1970. Interestingly, when shown on Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: May 1, 2018), the cable channel that airs restored movie prints, reverted to the King Features opening from the 1970s instead. BLONDIE is an enjoyable entry that produced 27 more movie episodes, ending with 1950s BEWARE OF BLONDIE. One particular thing about the BLONDIE series is that the central characters are played by the same actors throughout the entire series. And no one can play Blondie and Dagwood better than Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake. Sequel: BLONDIE MEETS THE BOSS (1939) (***)

I read in "Guinness World Records" that the original "Blondie" movie was the world record holder for most sequels and there were over two dozen of them! That was what really attracted me to this movie in the first place. I think that by now, the standards have probably changed. It's simply a long running film series, like Godzilla or James Bond. I genuinely liked this movie, but not enough to see all of the followups. The plot is pretty basic, with Dagwood trying to get a raise to do something special for his and Blondie's wedding anniversary. He seems like he gets fired or threatened to, constantly.

I am not much of a fan of the "Blondie" comic. Then again, newspaper comics themselves have mostly declined. I admit to being unfamiliar with their kid, Baby Dumpling. He probably grew up to become one of the teenagers that now appears in the comic. The acting in this is pretty good and the jokes are quite funny. My favorite is probably the bit with the weighing machine. The comic strip was bright and colorful, so it was pretty weird to see it in black and white, but it still worked. When you have a slice of life story like this, it's hard to get that much story. This still worked pretty well. It's certainly light years ahead of those awful live-action Marmaduke and Garfield movies.

I hesitate to watch any of the other movies because I would probably go insane from their sheer number. Besides, none of them are really significant in any way apart from this. I'm just reviewing this and I'll be done with it. It seems to be off to a good start. Must be to get so many followups! ***.

Singleton and Lake-- a marriage made in comedy heaven. Here they get the movie series off to a rollicking start. Poor Dagwood. He needs a raise from tight-fisted boss Dithers or the Bumstead livingroom will turn into an empty container. Worse, Blondie thinks he's having an affair when all the evidence conspires against innocent hubby. Good thing for Dagwood there's a broken down vacuum cleaner that cleans up the mess. Meanwhile, Baby Dumpling tries to stay out of punishment corner, while four-leg Daisy grabs all the food. Just another week in 1930's white-collar suburbia.

First-rate pacing from director Strayer. The threads never sag, while mild gags combine effortlessly with snappy dialog. It's a delightfully addled Dagwood and a humorously patient Blondie. Amazing how a studio cheapo like this so delightfully out-performs bigger budget comedies of then and now. I guess my only misgiving is with the rather dramatic upshot, but that's just a minor matter of taste. Anyway, kudos all around to a charming 70-minute Columbia production that you might think came out of the 1950's. Uh oh! I better stop now and take out the trash or the wife will have me joining Dumpling in the corner.

With this, the first in a movie series based on Chic Young's comic strip, Blondie has many elements and characters one associates with it like Dagwood often getting himself in hot water which his wife Blondie usually gets him out of though she isn't above some flaws herself when she jumps to conclusions like thinking he's having an affair. There's Dag's boss, J.C. Dithers, who also jumps to conclusions often resulting in him firing him before changing his mind when Dag does something good for the company. And then there's the Bumstead offspring of Baby Dumpling and the family dog, Daisy. Oh, also the mailman, Mr. Beasley who Dag always bumps into when he comes! All characters from the strip. One not from the strip is Alvin Fuddle who's Baby Dumpling's friend. Anyway, Arthur Lake and Penny Singleton are funny enough in their roles, Larry Simms is cute enough as the toddler, Daisy brings the funny with her takes, Jonathan Hale a good straight man for Lake as his boss, and Danny Mummert amusing enough with his exchanges with Simms. Oh, and Irving Bacon suitably flabbergasted as Mr. Beasley! There was one character I didn't like in this entry: Willie Best doing his stereotypical slow-witted Negro at the hotel. Good thing his part was brief. All in all, a fine initial entry for the long-running series. P.S. Since I like to cite when players from my favorite movie-It's a Wonderful Life-are in something else, here it's not only Simms (who played the Bailey offspring Pete) and Mummert (who played Little Marty Hatch) but also Charles Lane (who was Potter's associate who told of Bailey Park and said he may work for George someday) who plays the furniture salesman here.

Chic Young's popular comic strip Blondie made it's debut with this film for Columbia Pictures. For a dozen years Columbia put out the Blondie series of films starring Arthur Lake and Penny Singleton as Dagwood and Blondie. It might have kept going but for television and the fact that Penny Singleton had blacklist problems. Arthur Lake was forever typecast as Dagwood after this series, maybe the worst case of typecasting ever as no one could see him as anything else.

The usual problems of the Bumsteads both domestic and on the job for Dagwood are here from the comic strip. In this film Blondie buys a whole new living room set to surprise Dagwood on their fifth anniversary. In the meantime Dagwood wants to get ahead at the J.C.Dithers construction company and Jonathan Hale as Mr. Dithers tells him to land a big account with Gene Lockhart. Dagwood meets Lockhart without knowing who he is and from these two situations the whole movie develops. It's much too complicated to tell if further.

This was a nice debut for the series which was a money maker for Columbia while it lasted.