Here Comes Trouble

Here is the King of Comedy, Hal Roach, on the downslide. This is a very low budget film, a continuation of the series starring William Tracy and Joe Sawyer which was usually the bottom of the double feature at the local theater.

I first saw Tracy as Misto Bottome in "Brother Rat" and thought he was wonderful. He had the look of a mischievous child and oh, that voice!!! He continued to look much younger than he actually was but in this film he is beginning to show his age.

The plot, what there is, revolves around the efforts of a reporter to prove himself to his publisher who is the father of his girlfriend. The finale is a mess......it is the worst type of slapstick with everybody running on and off a stage, falling down, being boffed on the head and generally causing mayhem. It was dated even in 1948. Roach made a career from this type of humor but the times had changed and audiences were not buying it.

Don't get me wrong......I like both Tracy and the excellent Joe Sawyer but this wasn't up to their comedic talents. It's not a total loss but comes pretty close.

I just happened to be off and alone at home when I found this on Turner Classic Movies. It is the first time I've seen the characters of Ames and Doubleday and now I want more. Seeing that it was a Hal Roach Production meant that I was in for a good comedic movie and I wasn't disappointed. We will never see comedies such as this again and now I am searching for more of the Ames and Doubleday movies. We get so caught up in modern movies that are called comedies, but rely on foul language and noisy bodily functions for the laughs rather than on the actors ability to make us laugh. This is a really refreshing movies to relax and enjoy and the fact that it is almost 59 years old, only shows the timelessness of real comedy.

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.

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.

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!