Blondie

This is the first of the classic films of American comedies in the BLONDIE series, of which 28 were made between 1938 and 1950. The films are all wonderfully comic and delightfully whimsical, and frequently absolutely hilarious. The main characters are Dagwood Bumstead and his wife Blondie. They derived from Chic Young's famous comic strip "Blondie", which began publication in 1930. From the 1930s right through to the end of the 1950s, Dagwood and Blondie represented a side of Middle American life which resonated though the heartland from coast to coast, and the two characters and their child "Baby Dumpling" and dog Daisy were so familiar that most ordinary people throughout America almost thought they knew them personally, or wished they did. The "Blondie" stories, according to Chic Young, were set in Joplin, Missouri, and what could be more Middle American than that? Arthur Lake, who played Dagwood with such genius, was born in 1905 in Corbin, Kentucky, the same strange former roadside town with truck-stops (before interstate highways existed) which gave the world Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, so Lake knew how to play a comic Middle American dimwit as well as anyone. ("Blondie, some of my green socks are blue.") Lake had already made 123 films before he commenced the BLONDIE series, but he did little else after 1938 until his retirement in 1957 than play Dagwood, in films, on TV, and on radio. He became a national institution. As a child, everyone I knew read "Blondie" every Sunday in the Sunday paper, though everyone called it "Dagwood and Blondie". I remember that it was from reading it that I learned for the first time in my life that there was such a thing as a pie which was not sweet but which had cheese and tomatoes on it instead, called a pizza, and after reading that I went around asking all the grownups I could find if they had ever seen or heard of a pizza and they all said no. It was years before I tasted one of these strange pizzas. It was definitely Dagwood who introduced the pizza to Middle America in the 1950s, such was the educational potential of a mass comic strip in those days, and look at the effect it had on the whole country. Now can you imagine American or any other Western life without pizza? Even the Mainland Chinese have been addicted to pizzas since the 1990s. Much of this we certainly owe to Chic Young's comic strip and his character Dagwood. In this first film we have the only appearances in the BLONDIE series of the comic genius Gene Lockhart (as C. P. Hazlit, an eccentric millionaire), and his wife Kathleen, as Blondie's mother. It is a pity they never reappeared, as Gene Lockhart in particular largely steals the film with his brilliant performance. (Maybe the producer was worried for that very reason that Lockhart would prevent his main characters from establishing themselves.) But the shining star of the whole BLONDIE series was always the perfectly cast Penny Singleton. It is clear to me that, consciously or subconsciously, January Jones of the TV series MAD MEN has modelled her stance, her pout, her deportment, and her movements on Penny Singleton, for period authenticity. They look and dress like sisters. Penny Singleton was a true phenomenon, a whirlwind of a housewife who took husband, child, dog, neighbours, husband's boss and husband's job all in hand while multi-tasking with all the housework at the same time. It was she who got her husband a raise in salary, she who brought all chaotic situations under control, she who made wry and humorous remarks all day long, she who rebuked and disciplined and then softened the situations with her angelic smile and a flattering witticism. In short, she was the Middle American ideal woman of her period. She was what every woman from Oregon to Georgia, from Vermont to Arizona, wanted above all to be. And she was beautiful. So she became the greatest of the unsung female American icons. But no modern feminist would ever give her the time of day or admit she had ever even existed, because she stands for everything extremist feminists most fear and hate, female contentment and subliminal control, with no fuss. When Penny Singleton said to Dagwood in this first film: "I think bringing up a husband is more difficult than bringing up a baby," she said what every American woman outside the coastal metropolises knew all too well, and she said it with such an angelic and loving smile that everyone adored her just as much as Dagwood did. We must not forget the other great star of this and the following BLONDIE films, the amazing child actor Larry Simms, who plays "Baby Dumpling", the unbelievably cute and adorable son of the Bumsteads, and in this film he makes his acting debut at the age of four (the same debut age as Margaret O'Brien and Shirley Temple). Apart from appearing in Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) and a few others, Simms largely played this character, retiring from the screen in 1951 at the age of 18. Simms did appear in an uncredited role at the age of three in something else. I can understand something of what Simms must have gone through, since I myself was briefly a child actor at the age of three. At that age you are too young to notice or worry about the camera at all. What bothers you are the lights, which are so bright and dazzling and they have to keep telling you not to let the lights bother you and not to squint. The running subplot in the BLONDIE films of Baby Dumpling playing with the little boy Alvin next door provides some of the most hilarious episodes in the series, along with the little dog Daisy.

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.

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.

I have seen this and countless others in the series and always beat a path to the TV if I know any one them is on. AMC, in their less commercial era showed these every Sunday morning. Please watch these films if you have the opportunity. They are great, clean, non-violent family fun. And they work wonderfully well today.

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.