One Shivery Night

During the 1930s-50s, Columbia Pictures made a ton of short comedies...often starring people who were past their prime and needed work. A few examples of these were the Columbia shorts starring Charley Chase, Harry Langdon and Buster Keaton....all who had seen better days with other studios before this. With "One Shivery Night", the studio picked up Hugh Herbert....an actor who worked steadily for Warner Brothers during the 30s and 40s but who was pretty much washed up by 1950. During the last four years of his life, Herbert made eight shorts for Columbia.

In this short, Hugh and his partner, Julius (Dudley Dickerson) are contracted to work on an old mansion. While there are rumors the old man who owned it hid money there, his heir (Vernon Dent) swears there isn't any and he plans on turning the place into a fishing lodge.

When the pair arrive there, there are already two fortune hunters there looking for treasure. But they cannot do this with Hugh and Julius in the place, so they set out to scare them away...leaving the house unoccupied.

This is pretty much a standard haunted house comedy--and they made tons of them! But it's also pleasant and entertaining...if not exactly original.

From 1943 until his death in 1952, Hugh Herbert had made a series of comedy two-reelers for Columbia. The majority of his output consisted of standard marital farces, but Herbert also made 4 shorts with a scare theme that co-starred Dudley Dickerson and were considered the best of the entire series. This was also the final short to be directed by longtime Columbia short regular Del Lord.

Herbert and Dickerson are workers for a house demolishing business who are hired to tear down a creepy mansion that is told to have a fortune hidden somewhere in the house. When they arrive, they run into two fortune hunters (Philip van Zandt and Robert Williams) who mistake them for claim jumpers and do everything they can to scare them away.

Dickerson gets most of the laughs in this short and it's pretty entertaining.

Hugh Herbert runs a construction company with the aid of Dudley Dickerson. Vernon Dent hires him to renovate a broken-down house he has just inherited, and the two of them head over. There they encounter a couple of men who have heard the rumor that a million dollars has been hidden on the place, and who decide to scare Herbert and Dickerson into leaving, using the usual Columbia comedy short program of wearing a black cloak and a dime store Hallowe'en mask.

Amidst the vast array of reused gags, there was one involving footprints that seemed, if not new to me, at least not overdone. Otherwise, it's a sad end to Herbert's career as a fine comic actor.

This is by far one of the funniest Columbia comedy shorts I've ever seen. The teaming of Hugh Herbert and Dudley Dickerson couldn't have been better. Dickerson (an extremely talented black performer who is probably best remembered as the bewildered chef in the 3 Stooges short "A Plumbing We Will Go") rarely got leading roles, and his performance in this lively scare comedy is tops. Dudley practically steals every scene, and the results are both funny and rewarding.

In this fast-paced short, Hugh and Dudley are hired to demolish a creepy mansion rumored to have a fortune hidden somewhere inside. When the two arrive at the mansion, they are met by two fortune hunters who have been tearing the place apart seeking riches. They mistake Hugh and Dudley as claim jumpers and try to scare the duo away. There are some pretty fun moments, and fans of the 3 Stooges short "The Hot Scots" will recognize one of the masks used during some of the scare tactics.

This is not the first time that Herbert and Dickerson were teamed in comedy shorts. They appeared in 3 other two-reelers with a "haunted house" theme. Fans of this type of comedy will also want to seek out "Nervous Shakedown", "Tall, Dark and Gruesome", and "Get Along Little Zombie". These scare comedies were a very refreshing step away from Herbert's typical two-reel comedies for Columbia, which usually were marital farces pitting Hugh against a misunderstanding wife with plots similar to Leon Errol's series of shorts over at RKO.

I own a 16mm print of "One Shivery Night", and it never fails to bring laughs when shown to an audience. I highly recommend it to fans of two-reel comedies.