Bring 'Em Back a Wife

Taxi boys with ben blue and billy gilbert blue--annoying sounds and just annoying dance lessons \\

The Hal Roach Studios is most famous for its Laurel & Hardy films. Additionally, they produced some wonderful films with Harold Lloyd, the Little Rascals and Charley Chase. But they also worked with some lesser-known comics...and they results were mostly uneven or even sub-par. This would definitely include the shorts by The Boy Friends, Thelma Todd/Zasu Pitts, Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly as well as The Taxi Boys. Each of these series are pretty much forgotten today...and generally for good reasons.

In "Bring 'Em Back a Wife", The Taxi Boys (Ben Blue and BillyGilbert), the film seems like a plot not quite good enough to be used for Laurel & Hardy so they gave it to this unlikable duo. The boss is worried about folks paying too much attention to his girlfriend, so he makes a new rule...only married men will be able to keep their jobs. So, Billy comes up with an insane idea...to have Ben pose as his wife and fool the boss.

The biggest problem with the film is Ben Blue. Ben simply comes off as weird and obnoxious. Many times, he makes weird noises...as if he has Tourette's...and it's not funny. As for Billy, Gilbert was always excellent in supporting roles at Roach...and he tries his best given the material and Blue's lack of talent and unlikability. He was, in his day, the closest thing they had to Pauly Shore. Nuff said!

I wonder if Jackie Gleason was very familiar with this series? Everyone comments on the fact that Gleason's Ralph Kramden and Carney's Ed Norton owe a lot to Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy -- but I find that Gleason's characterization owes a lot more to Billy Gilbert in this movie, one of the Roach studio's 'Taxi Boys' series, teaming Gilbert with Ben Blue.

Hal Roach was always on the lookout for new ideas for short subjects series, and the idea of upgrading dependable second banana Gilbert to lead and teaming him with the acrobatic Blue must have been irresistible. A taxi garage would give endless opportunity for working class humor -- consider the success of the TV series TAXI half a century later. Nor could the fact that the director had done a similar series for Sennet a few years earlier have hurt. However, Gilbert and Blue lack any substantial chemistry -- and independent short subject studios were on their way out, unable to compete with the majors like RKO, who would give you Leon Erroll and Edgar Kennedy, or Columbia, who would give you the Three Stooges or Andy Clyde for much less.

Bring 'Em Back a Wife (1933)

*** (out of 4)

Entry in Hal Roach's "Taxi Boys" series has Billy (Billy Gilbert) trying to win the heart of his dance instructor who just happens to be wanted by Billy's boss. The boss decides to make a rule where if you're not married by midnight then you're fired from your job so Billy has to pretend he's married so he puts Ben (Ben Blue) in drag. This is a pretty strange little comedy, the first I've seen from the series, but there were enough good laughs to make it worth sitting through. The thing that really sticks out is the pre-code humor, must of it sexual, and just look at the way the film plays off the big boobs given to Ben in drag. The film has a lot of fun with his sexuality and this is where some of the biggest laughs come from. I found the first half of the film to be rather slow but things really pick up during the second part as the meeting between Billy, his "wife", the boss and the dance girl gets moving with some nice laughs. The highlight would have to be the sequence when the dance girl learns about who the wife really is and the aftermath from it. Gilbert and Blue make for an interesting team, to say the least, but it's Geneva Mitchell who really steals the show as the dance girl.