Pardon My Nightshirt

Pardon My Nightshirt (1956)

** (out of 4)

Andy Clyde gets asked to investigate ghostly situations at a local school and gets scared. There's one funny gag here where Clyde and his servant fight to see who gets out the door first but the rest of the gags are all rather old. Clyde's final movie.

As of now, none of the Clyde shorts are available on DVD so you'll have to get them from a trader. Columbia owns the rights so perhaps they'll release them at some point as they did with their Buster Keaton shorts. Turner Classic Movies could show them but haven't as of yet.

This short is essentially a remake of two previous Columbia shorts: The Nightshirt Bandit from 1938 starring Charley Chase and 1948's Go Chase Yourself starring Andy Clyde. This version flows along better thanks to some new footage featuring Clyde and campus watchman Dudley Dickerson. Joe Palma assumes the role as the actual bandit who stole the campus's funds from the dean's office.

This was also the final film role for Clyde, as he would continue to work in television up until his death in 1967.

Columbia Pictures made a ton of short comedies in the 1930s-50s....so many that they often resorted to making remakes...and, sometimes, remakes of remakes. This is the case with "Pardon My Nightshirt", as it was the third time the studio used this story. In fact, their lack of originality went even further--they cut apart the first two films and used this footage in the third! Talk about being lazy!

In this film, there's a so-called 'nightshirt bandit' who commits robberies at night. Professor Clyde is asked to help and he ends up being mistaken for the bandit! Fortunately, no matter how bad things get, Andy is more than capable of finding not only the bandit but the money he stole from the college.

Other than a lack of originality, the film just isn't all that funny. What also wasn't funny was the black actor who seemed to be there just so white audiences of the day could laugh at him....which is pretty sad.

Andy Clyde's last short for Jules White is a remake of Charley Chase's THE NIGHTSHIRT BANDIT and Clyde's GO CHASE YOURSELF. It shows all the typical economies that Jules White practiced. Not only were large parts of the script reused, but lots of shots from both earlier efforts.

Even so, it is a very enjoyable movie. Clyde is summoned when the "Nightshirt Bandit" is seen on campus and soon finds himself mistaken for the thief and chasing a dog which has gotten hold of some cash. Clyde's character is not stupid, but events move far faster than he can and this long-time slapstick professional gives a typically fine performance, as does Dudley Dickerson in support.

This was not the end of the line for Clyde, who had started out with Sennett in the 1920s and survived the collapse of the King of Comedy's studio. He moved from twenty-minute film comedies to 20-minute TV comedies, where I saw him frequently on "Lassie" and "The Real McCoys".