So You Want to Be a Banker

George O'Hanlon goes to work at a bank. After twenty years, he is promoted to teller. After that, he steals a million dollars. It's American Banking at its best.

The Joe McDoakes series usually had old George dealing with the insanity of post-war America, usually with a wife who might be whichever starlet was available that week. Occasionally, however, writer-director Richard L. Bare would decide to tell a different sort of story. He had done it before in SO YOU WANT TO KNOW YOUR RELATIVES, and here we have it again. The world is just as crazy and unfair as ever, and it's just as funny in the usual absurd fashion. With Alvy Moore,

Continuity was NOT a strong point in the Joe McDoakes shorts. Mrs. McDoakes was played by a variety of folks as was Joe's co-worker, Homer. Additionally, often Joe's life is incredibly different from one short to another. In this case, Joe doesn't work at the usual company but instead it shows him graduating from PU and then going to work in the banking industry. However, his old college rival (Alvy Moore of "Green Acres" fame) is now his boss. But, using perseverance, hard work and lots of criminal activity, Joe manages to eventually take control of the bank...at least temporarily.

This is sort of a screwed up Horatio Alger story where hard work AND cheating are the keys to success. Clever...but also very strange as it seems very much unlike all the previous McDoakes films.

So You Want to Be a Banker (1954)

** (out of 4)

Fair entry in the series explains how Joe McDoakes finished last in his class yet managed to become the president of a bank and tycoon. If you're familiar with the series then you know it mostly contains simple situations that our hero McDoakes gets himself into. It's usually his dumbness that gets him into trouble but that's not the case here as he actually finds a way to borrow a million dollars without anyone knowing. This is an interesting twist for the series but sadly the screenplay really doesn't offer us anything funny. For the most part the film plays is rather flat as we get a few sequences that get a brief smile but there's simply nothing good enough to make the film worth sitting through other than fans such as myself who want to see each film in the series. George O'Hanlon does his typical good job but the rest of the cast is rather forgettable.