Today Sterling Holloway is best known, if he is known at all, as the original voice of Winnie the Pooh. He also played character roles in many live action films from the late 1920s to the 1970s like MEET JOHN DOE, and IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD. In the late 1940s, Columbia starred him in a series of comedy shorts. MAN OR MOUSE is a fine showcase for Holloway's comedic talents.
In this short, Holloway is engaged to a lovely girl (Noel Neill, who later played Lois Lane on the TV series SUPERMAN). As the short begins, he hasn't met her father Hercules Jones(Edgar Dearing) yet. Neill is wary about setting up a meeting between them. As his name suggests, Jones is a muscle-bound sportsman. He wants his daughter to marry a brawny man like him. And Holloway is a lanky milquetoast who earned the sobriquet "Mr. Anemia."
Neill, who is athletically inclined herself, determines to make Holloway a strong man while her father's away. There's funny slapstick when Holloway struggles with the training, particularly a gag where he guzzles too much water, making him a human fountain. When Holloway finally meets his prospective father-in-law, he wears a rubber suit under his clothes to make him look muscular. The rubber suit prompts even funnier slapstick when Holloway is forced to engage in physical combat with Dearing to prove his athletic prowess.
Director Jules White sometimes marred the slapstick in the Columbia shorts with crude violence, but he is restrained here, providing MAN OR MOUSE with energy and speed that invigorates but never overwhelms the comedy. Holloway proves himself a masterful physical comedian, effortlessly using his body to execute gags (although he may have been assisted by a stunt man).
What ultimately carries MAN OR MOUSE, is Holloway's appealing personality. With his goofy yet vulnerable features and his soft, twittery voice, he comes across as an endearing, gentle-hearted nebbish. Therefore, as he struggles to impress Dearing so he can marry his daughter, Holloway not only evokes laughs but also sympathy. It's a shame he never had the opportunity to star in feature films. At least in shorts like MAN OR MOUSE, he was able to prove there was much more to him than just his voice.
