Here Comes Trouble

In the sixth of eight Dodo Doubleday streamliners, William Tracy is released from the army and goes back to his job on Emory Parnell's newspaper. Parnell has been trying to clean up organized crime, and the gangsters have run off four crime reporters in the last sixth months. His daughter, Penny Blake, is im love with Tracy, and lobbies for a promotion for him. So he gets promoted from copy boy to crime reporter. Maybe, Parnell reasons, he'll be killed.

It's pretty mild comedy, even if we get Joan Woodbury as a dancer in a burlesque house, and the other interesting performers that Hal Roach could get after a third of a century in Hollywood. Joe Sawyer is back as Tracy's ex-sergeant and now cop on the beat; Betty Compson has her last film role as Parnell's wife. But the small roles and uncredited bits are taken by newer names; Roach's old comics were dead or retired.

Turner Classic Movies has taken to running this in its original Cinecolor hues, and frankly, they don't help. There's a monotony to the color design of the movie, and I never saw so many men wearing orange ties!

This appears to be a very, very low-budget production. It is a comic treatment of crime. It is a comic treatment of ex-GIs who have returned from WWII. The acting is generally not only slapstick but also slapdash.

A GI returns to his job on a newspaper. He is in love with the editor's daughter. She wants him to get a better job. Light bulb goes off: Dad needs a new crime reporter, because it is so dangerous. Gives it to ex-GI. Ex-GI encounters friend from the war who has been booted up to a job in the police. The laughs proceed on this premise.

Joan Woodbury is actually very entertaining as a burlesque star called Bubbles LaRue. She wears shoes with ankle straps that reminded me of the first girlie magazine I ever saw. I couldn't figure it out, because it had photos from the 1940s -- ankle straps and all -- and I was a child in the sixties.

Though the movie is not very good, it is fun to see. One really tires of the same old things when it comes to vintage movies. My cap is off to whoever unearthed this.

Unabashed madcap with Tracy playing a character named Dodo, which about says it all. Biggest surprise, for me at least, was tough guy Joe Sawyer doing comedic hijinks, and well too. Seems Dodo's gotten promoted to police reporter by newspaper boss Blake because it's literally a dead-end job, which means the inept Dodo won't be around to marry Blake's daughter Penny (Lloyd). But things quickly complicate ending in a madcap spree on a stage show that's funny but over-extended. Anyway, for guys there's plenty of eye candy, especially Woodbury as a stripper, and drop-dead gorgeous Lloyd looking a lot like Jane Russell's sister. (Too bad Lloyd dropped her brief career soon after this; I wish IMDB knew why.) All in all, the sub-hour's a lot of silly knock-about, but good for some laughs as everyone gets in on the goofy act.

(In passing-- Watch for bony-face Charles Middleton best known as Ming The Merciless as a non-speaking reporter in one of the crowd scenes.)

The major point of interest in this goofy comedy-thriller made near to the conclusion of Hal Roach's series of Streamliners following the adventures of recently demobbed cub reporter Dodo Doubleday as he went after that all-important scoop was the fact that Roach had seen fit to make it in colour; the chief beneficiary being Joan Woodbury as a burlesque queen called 'Bubbles' La Rue.

The colour aside the production values look decidedly humble, the action taking place on what look suspiciously like standing sets. At about the halfway point the action transfers to behind scenes at a burlesque house where people get shot at and hit by sandbags - you know the sort of thing.

Here Comes Trouble (1948)

** (out of 4)

Another in the Hal Roach series featuring Doubleday (William Tracy) and Ames (Joe Sawyer). This time out the two are out of the Army and Doubleday, thanks to his soon to be father in law, is working as a reporter and he tries to crack a big case against a gangster. Ames, working as a policeman, gets in and tries to help but of course chaos follows. I believe this is the fifth film I've seen with the duo and there's no doubt that this one here is the weakest. The previous films were always going for laughs but this one here really seems a tad bit lazy because it seems not much of an effort was given in the screenplay to try and get any laughs. For the most part you get a lot of dialogue and none of its funny. Not because the material bad but because the material doesn't even go for laughs. Tracy is his usual self here but Sawyer seems really bored because his comic flair is never seen, although, to his credit, the screenplay doesn't offer him too much. Another problem is that most of the film's in the series ran from 40-45 minutes but this one here clocks in at 55-minutes and it really feels like 55-hours.