Doctor's Orders

This the first film of the Boy Friend's shorts, a Hal Roach comedy series featuring two of the silent players from the Our Gang series. Mary Kornman and Mickey Daniels made a fine transition to films as adults; Mary was the beauty of the series and Mickey was the goofy oaf, sort of a predecessor of Screech from Saved By the Bell.

Doctor's Orders opens with the two girls from some of the Our Gang talkies. They serves as the opening credits for the film.

In this short, the boys of the group fake a car accident to get the attention of Mary and Gertie, the beautiful girls in the neighborhood. Kennedy the cop plays the uncle of the girls who is wise to the antics of the high school boys. He makes it his personal goal to prove that the boys are only faking with some humorous results. This film is filled with cliché, tried but true jokes. It is brief, but it almost runs too long for comfort.

Doctor's Orders (1930)

** (out of 4)

First entry in Hal Roach's "Boy Friends" series which was pretty much started up to give cast members of his Our Gang series a place to move onto as adults. In this one Mickey Daniels and Grady Sutton have crushes on Mary Kornman so they fake a car wreck so that a fake doctor (David Sharpe) can demand that they stay at the girl's house and get better. All goes as planned until the girl's uncle (Edgar Kennedy) catches on. The series certainly didn't get off to a good start as this film contains quite a bit of effort but all of it is wasted because the material is just poorly written and there's not a single laugh to be found. The last portion of the film is not only unfunny but it's also quite annoying as Sharpe must pretend to be not only a doctor but as well a nurse so he's constantly going in and out of various uniforms and trying to fool the uncle who he accidentally beat up earlier in the film. Both Daniels and Sutton remain in the bed for the majority of the picture so they add nothing but sound effects. Our Gang favorite Kornman certainly grew up to be a pretty young lady but she's not given much to do either.

When Mary Pickford reached her late twenties and got tired of playing cute little girls, blonde Mary Kornman replaced her as America's favorite little Mary. The difference was that Kornman was actually the correct age. She appeared in 41 "Our Gang" shorts (they were silents then), when she got too old for that role she was replaced by her sister Mildred. You needed a scorecard to keep track of those "Our Gang" kids.

Several years later she returned to the Hal Roach lot to team up with Mickey Daniels (another too old member of the Gang) and Grady Sutton for the "Boy Friends" series. "Doctor's Orders" is the first of the series, which in 1930 was still being played much like a silent picture. Most of the humor is visual which hurts Sutton the most because his voice and delivery were his biggest asset.

The short has David Sharpe and Mickey staging a car wreck so the supposedly injured Grady can convalesce in Mary's house, and cozy up to her cousin (played by Dorothy Granger). The girls are immediately wise to the deception but go along with it anyway. Leaving Mary's father (Edgar Kennedy) to get to the bottom of things. The longest running gag has David trying to impersonate both a doctor and a nurse with a lot of quick costume changes.

Kornman had progressed from super cute to beautiful and sexy by this time (she also looks great with John Wayne in "Desert Trail") and is the main reason to watch "Doctor's Orders". This style of comedy seems very strained today. It does provide an interesting look at southern California over 75 years ago, as it appears to have been shot on location in a local residential area. Note the super wide sidewalks in the neighborhood.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.