So You Want to Be in Pictures

"So You Want to Be in Pictures" is one of the very best Joe McDoakes shorts...perhaps the best. It begins with Joe working hard to be an actor via a recorded correspondence course. It teaches him the important lessons of trying to sound like Charles Boyer or Ronald Colman--something all good actors need to do! While working on this lesson, he gets a phone call....it's the studio and he's got a part in a picture!

The next day, Joe appears at the studio...and the laughs started in earnest. You see a variety of Warner Brothers actors playing themselves, such as Jack Carson, Ronald Reagan and Alexis Smith. But my favorite is when George O'Hanlon (the guy who plays McDoakes) sees Joe and comments about him! In other words, you see O'Hanlon playing Joe AND at the same time another O'Hanlon playing himself! You also later see the same thing when the pair are working on a Joe McDoakes short together! This is a silly and fun film...with much to recommend it.

This is my fourth Joe McDoakes short that I've seen and so far the funniest one. In this one, Joe takes voice lessons from a record impersonating Charles Boyer and Ronald Colman. When he goes to Warner Bros. Studio (the company behind this series, incidentally), he asks Jack Carson for directions which gets both confused. Then he encounters actor George O'Hanlon (who's also McDoakes) who speaks in his more normal voice that's not too far from his later Geroge Jetson and gets to the set where he automatically upsets the director. I'll stop there and just say how funny I found the whole thing and was fascinated by the movie star cameos provided near the end. The final scene was especially a hoot so on that note, go to YouTube if you want to watch So You Want to Be in Picutres!

Fully deserving its prestigious Hollywood award nomination, this is an entertaining little gem with lots of pizazz and some delightful surprises. Outstandingly funny scenes include an hilarious shoot (and re-shoot) of a WW1 trench scene with Australian comedian Clyde Cook as an optimistic non-com and the hapless McDoakes as a Boyer/Colman messenger — all under the beady eye of Ralph Sanford's delightfully irascible Anguish; a lost McDoakes guided and re-guided by equally perplexed Jack Carson; assistant director Chandler rejoicing in a McDoakes-sent opportunity: "I'm going to be a director!"

Ace comic O'Hanlon has a dual role, playing both McDoakes and himself playing McDoakes! Oddly, Richard L. Bare who does play himself in one or more other entries in the series, has turned down that opportunity here. In real life, Bare's a youngish, six-foot Rock Hudson lookalike, but here he's impersonated by veteran actor (over 500 movies!), Jack Mower.

I usually like the Joe McDoakes comedy series "So You Want To...", etc., but this one takes the cake for carrying absurdity to the extreme.

It's one thing to spoof show business and the workings of Hollywood's movie factories, but to present McDoakes as a wanna be actor who makes life hellish for director Anthony Anguish (does every director have to be an impersonation of Michael Curtiz???), and have him do it in such absurd ways is more than a little exasperating.

His chance to play a messenger role is ruined when he insists on sounding like either Charles Boyer or Ronald Colman.

Making the whole mess worthwhile are a few glimpses of real stars--Ronald Reagan, Jack Carson, Alexis Smith, Wayne Morris, Robert Hutton, Martha Vickers and Janis Paige. But the comedy is insufferably broad and repetitious. Thumbs down on this one.

I couldn't find it genuinely amusing, not even the pie in the face ending. But don't mind me. It was nominated for a Best Short Subject Oscar but didn't win.

So You Want to Be in Pictures (1947)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Oscar nominated short shows the down side of trying to become a big movie star. There really aren't too many laughs here but lead Joe McDoakes is fun to watch. Ronald Reagon has a small cameo.

So You Want to Be on the Radio (1948)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Oscar nominated short with Joe McDoakes as he plays a husband who wishes he could get on a radio game show but once he does get there he wishes he didn't. I know these "So You Want to Be..." shorts are pretty popular but the four I've seen really haven't worked. They're mildly entertaining but they really don't contain too many laughs for me.