So You Want to Play the Piano

Alice loves it when men play the piano. Unfortunately, when Joe buys one, he finds it's not nearly as easy as everyone else makes it out to be.

This is the second to last of the Joe McDoakes shorts. Considering how many they'd made, when you compare this to earlier ones it sure looks as if the director (Richard Bare) and writer (George O'Hanlon) didn't care any more. This is because in the piano playing sequences, it's VERY obvious some of the folks playing aren't playing at all...as their fingers aren't even touching the keys and the viewer can clearly see this. As for the writing, this one wasn't funny...and little attempt was made to make this as funny as the previous shorts. A real shame but fortunately, the next (and last) is significantly better.

So You Want to Play the Piano (1956)

** (out of 4)

Joe (George O'Hanlon) comes home from work one day and notices that Alice hasn't cooked him dinner or cleaned up the house. It turns out she's been over to the neighbors house who just happens to be a famous piano player. The jealous Joe decides to buy a piano and teach his wife a lesson. This was the next to last entry in the Joe McDoakes series and unfortunately it's not one of the better entries. There are a couple decent moments but overall the film is burdened with a rather weak screenplay that doesn't offer us anything fresh or original. The movie pretty much goes through the motions as our hero Joe makes an idiot out of himself and tries to become some great piano player but he makes one mistake after another. There's even a sequence where just about everyone who walks into the house jumps on the piano and does better than Joe even though he's been practicing for weeks. O'Hanlon certainly has the energy for the role but you can still tell that he apparently knew things were coming to an end. Phyllis Coates is back as Alice and it was good to see her back but the screenplay doesn't give her that much to do. The 9-minute running time is a tad bit slow and that's not a good thing so this one here is certainly for fans only.

Phyllis Coates is spending all of her time at the new neighbor's house. He's a concert pianist, and George O'Hanlon isn't getting his meals or marital attention. So he tries to learn to play the piano.... and discovers that everyone else, from moving men to cleaning lady can make the keys shimmy like your sister Kate.

It's a typically absurd and funny episode in the long-running series for Warner Brothers. There were 65 short comedies beginning with SO YOU WANT TO GIVE UP SMOKING in 1942, and ending with SO YOUR WIFE WANTS TO WORK in 1956..... plus reteamings between Bare and O'Hanlon in television. I guess so they wanted to keep on working.