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.

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.

On the day of his fifth wedding anniversary, Dagwood is in trouble needing to raise $563 to pay back on an endorsement check that went sour to a woman named Elsie. Dithers (Dagwood's boss) says he will give Dagwood $600 as a bonus (plus a $10 raise that Blondie has been wanting Dagwood to get) if he can secure the contract from developer C.P. Hazlip. Hazlip, not wanting to see any salesmen such as Dagwood, becomes friends with Dagwood while indulging in one of their hobbies, tinkering (in this case a vacuum). Blondie becomes jealous when a man from the finance company comes to the house about "Elsie's note". Blondie suspects her husband is having an affair and confirms her suspicions when she finds Dagwood at Hazlip's hotel with his daughter Elsie. Dithers believes Dagwood is not getting any headway with the Hazlip deal so he fires him (not the first or last time this will happen) and Dagwood is further in Daisy's doghouse when Blondie, her mother and sister believe he is unfaithful. What is our lovable protagonist to do? I haven't seen any other films in the Blondie series, but it is easy to tell this is a standout film. Singleton and Lake are the perfect people to play the lead roles and Simms is adorable as Baby Dumpling. The script has numerous funny scenes, many of which are humorous touches to the film that don't develop the scenario further, but that is no big deal here. At the beginning of the film, the scenes alternating with Dagwood and Blondie didn't seem that smooth, but that may be the only flaw of the film. Rating, 9.

I read in "Guinness World Records" that the original "Blondie" movie was the world record holder for most sequels and there were over two dozen of them! That was what really attracted me to this movie in the first place. I think that by now, the standards have probably changed. It's simply a long running film series, like Godzilla or James Bond. I genuinely liked this movie, but not enough to see all of the followups. The plot is pretty basic, with Dagwood trying to get a raise to do something special for his and Blondie's wedding anniversary. He seems like he gets fired or threatened to, constantly.

I am not much of a fan of the "Blondie" comic. Then again, newspaper comics themselves have mostly declined. I admit to being unfamiliar with their kid, Baby Dumpling. He probably grew up to become one of the teenagers that now appears in the comic. The acting in this is pretty good and the jokes are quite funny. My favorite is probably the bit with the weighing machine. The comic strip was bright and colorful, so it was pretty weird to see it in black and white, but it still worked. When you have a slice of life story like this, it's hard to get that much story. This still worked pretty well. It's certainly light years ahead of those awful live-action Marmaduke and Garfield movies.

I hesitate to watch any of the other movies because I would probably go insane from their sheer number. Besides, none of them are really significant in any way apart from this. I'm just reviewing this and I'll be done with it. It seems to be off to a good start. Must be to get so many followups! ***.

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.