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The movies from my youth. This movie which I wish was on DVD! is a great ole movie for a rainy day. Red'd never been better getting away from the bad guys. And of course winning the girl and keeping Unbreakable Soft Glass he invented for his Cab!

The Yellow Cab Man is another of Red Skelton's madcap big screen comedies where Red plays an eccentric inventor who is also accident prone. So accident prone is he that he can't get insurance no way, no how. So what does he become in lieu of a modest settlement and for signing a quitclaim given him by agent Gloria DeHaven, a cabdriver for the Yellow Cab company.

Because of his tendency for the unfortunate, Red's invented himself a version of plexiglass, a shatter proof glass he calls elastic glass. Can't break it short of a bullet being fired into it. But he hasn't copyrighted the formula. And some unscrupulous people led by bottom feeding shyster lawyer Edward Arnold and medicine show charlatan Walter Slezak will do anything to steal the formula.

Red's a true babe in the woods in this film, but it's amazing how schnooks like him get some really good looking women to fall for him like Gloria DeHaven. Arnold and Slezak look like they're having a great old time. Usually both of them when they play villains exude a quiet menace, but here they are both outrageously overacting and the audience joins in on the fun.

The Yellow Cab Man is a treat for Red Skelton's legion of fans.

Red Skelton is an accident-prone, self-taught chemist. He comes up with a safety glass that works beautifully. However crooked lawyer Edward Arnold finds out about it and sabotages the demonstration; his increasingly violent attempts to get the formula will make up the plot of the movie. Gloria DeHaven and James Gleason work for a taxi company and get Skelton a job driving for the company, with disastrous results.

The best comic sequence had Red being left with a child by his mother, resulting in panic about a bomb and Skelton being accused of kidnapping the child. After that, the movie settles down into the inevitable plot, with some brief attempts at comedy that aren't quite as funny; the final chase, while big, only has a few grace notes to it.

Nonetheless, the fast start and some fine comic actors like Walter Slezak, Jay C. Flippen, and Paul Harvey keep this thoroughly afloat. If it isn't as strong as the stuff directed by S. Sylvan Simon, it's a chance for Skelton to do some of his fine clowning. And Miss DeHaven is very cute.

This film is better than some of Red's other movie efforts in that he has some better supporting actors in it. Wish Red had a chance to make more movies than he did in his career but shortly after this started his record run on television. That took away a lot of his time for making movies.

This film is quite short at less than 90 minutes but most of the best comedy films are short. They don't get stuck in long & possibly boring sequences & they don't do the same joke over & over again. This film fits that model quite well.

Red was a classic clown who is sorely missed in todays "over the top & down & dirty comedy era". He had a class that shows in films like this one & his old television programs. This film is still a very watchable example of that.

I think that so many people only think of Red Skelton from TV and I think they forget that he did movies and in fact very funny movies. I scrounged around until I could find most of them on VHS but now I long for a good DVD set. The Yellow Cab Man has got to be my favorite, I laugh so hard at parts of it that I have to actually pause the film so that I can catch my breath. I usually don't care that much for physical comedy but he and Danny Kaye seem to be the masters of the art and their movies have me rolling on the floor every time. The plot in here is really not that great but it is just what is done with a simple idea -A nice guy that is totally accident prone trying to be a cab driver and show his new invention. Just wind Red up and let him loose.