Little Giant

LITTLE GIANT (Universal, 1946), directed by William A. Seiter, from an original story by Paul Jarrico and Richard Collins, became what is categorized as the first of two split-up partnerships of the popular comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Though Abbott still resumes billing over Costello, Costello, in title role, is the basic character from start to finish, almost as if this were Costello's solo effort without the presence of Bud Abbott. What makes LITTLE GIANT so interesting is the fact there is a story to back it up. To make sure their public won't be disappointed, some gags were inserted into proceedings, whether it be Costello with Abbott or Costello with some other character actors. As much as this is classified a comedy, in some ways, it's a comedy/drama where the somber moments falling on Costello's character. Unfortunately Costello wasn't able to endure the same effect in comedy/drama to great effect in the manner of legendary comedian, Charlie Chaplin as he did in for THE KID (1921) and CITY LIGHTS (1931). For much of the 1940s, Abbott and Costello were extremely popular, and made their audiences laugh. For LITTLE GIANT, this time it was something completely different.

The narrative begins on a farm in Cucamonga where Benny Miller (Lou Costello) lives with his beloved mother (Mary Gordon). He is loved by Martha Hill (Elena Verdugo), the girl next door whom he hopes to someday marry. Benny's ambition is to become a successful salesman, and has been studying night and day through his record correspondence school. Upon graduation, Benny leaves the security of his happy home to find his fame and fortune in the outside world. He leaves by train for Los Angeles for the company for which his Uncle Clarence Goodwin (George Cleveland) is employed as bookkeeper under John Morrison (Bud Abbott) for the Hercules Vacuum Cleaning Company. Mistaken for a Hercules male model (George Holmes), and not wanting to be embarrassed, Mr. Morrison offers Benny a job for his company, unaware that he is Clarence's nephew with his strict rule of having no relatives at the firm. What Clarence knows but won't reveal is the fact that Mr. Morrison is secretly married to his secretary, Hazel Temple (Jacqueline De Wit), the advertising manager. Due to his failure as vacuum cleaning salesman, Clarence suggests he be transferred to a smaller branch in Stockton, California. While there, Benny works under Morrison's look-alike cousin, Thomas Chandler (Bud Abbott). Benny continues to fail in his profession, forcing Chandler to have his private secretary, Ruby Burke (Brenda Joyce) to present him his letter of dismissal. Feeling sorry for Benny, she doesn't. While at a saloon, the fellow salesmen build up Benny's confidence as a mind reader, leading Benny to become a top salesman, selling nine vacuum cleaners in a single day. This success brings him back to the corporate office under Mr. Morrison and its president, Van Loon (Pierre Watkin), but an unexpected turn of events leads Benny to a different direction.

Unlike prior Abbott and Costello comedies, LITTLE GIANT doesn't contain song interludes, romantic subplots or an exciting chase finish. It does rank one of their longer features as opposed to 79 minutes or shorter. Minus the formatted material the public has become accustomed to seeing, some burlesque routines were thrown in for assurance. The opening minutes starts off with great promise with yokel farm boy Benny trying his salesman approach on an irate customer, wonderfully played by Sidney Fields (Mr. Fields, the landlord, on television's "The Abbott and Costello Show." in the 1950s). Interestingly, when LITTLE GIANT aired on broadcast television in the 1970s and 80s, this great Costello and Fields segment was cut in order to fit this 91 minute feature with commercial breaks into its usual 90 minute time slot.

Abbott and Costello don't come together until 21 minutes into the start of the story, and only have simply one familiar routine together, their famous 7 X 13 = 28, lifted from their earlier service comedy, IN THE NAVY (1941), being a highlight. Other than that, whatever comedy there is, Costello does it alone or with others like Sid Fields or Donald MacBride in the train sequence segment. Sadly, Groucho Marx's most frequent straight lady of stage and screen, Margaret Dumont (Mrs. Hendrickson), is reduced to only a two-minute bit, making one wish she had much more to do. Brenda Joyce and Jacqueline De Wit make due in their roles, and are properly cast.  

After frequent viewing, LITTLE GIANT is one movie with potential that should have been a worthy departure for Abbott and Costello. The problem was the material, which seems more like something out of director D.W. Griffith silent era days of local boy making good, may not seem suitable for Lou Costello. As much as Costello is capable of being a serious actor, devotees simply refuse to accept him as one. Casting Abbott as two different characters is fine,in fact, excellent. Having Costello in a movie all to himself is satisfactory, yet, like his character, he tries too hard to be both funny and serious at the same time. The mixing of gags with straight story helps, but there are times where it throws it off balance. The problem mainly falls upon its scripting during its second half which should have been better handled. Critics and fans wanted Abbott and Costello in surefire comedy, and didn't seem ready for sentimental pathos on Costello's character. Distributed to video cassette in 1993, LITTLE GIANT has become available onto DVD some years later.

Regardless of its pros and cons, LITTLE GIANT is never really boring. Just different. Though Bud and Lou returned to formula comedies where they belonged, the team worked in one more split comedy again, to much better results, in THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES (1946).(**1/2)

This is a little appreciated A&C film that actually is quite good. It has almost no music to interrupt it. Abbott has a dual role & is only with Costello in small parts of the film. When this was made, the boys were fighting so they tried not to do scenes together.

Director William Seiter has a lot to do with a lot of the difference here. Sidney Fields has a great sequence doing the straight man with Costello early in the film too.

This film has a funny/ fuzzy math routine (common core) that obviously is drawn straight from A&C's radio shows they did before the movies. There is a lot of good support for A&C in this movie. This is the only film where Costello does "pathos" type comedy and he is actually quite good at it.

Some critics rated this as the best A&C film that few people have seen. It is the first of 2 films which departed from their standard format. Maybe they should have fought more often as they are 2 of the stronger films the team did.

Overall, this is a good outing, and worth seeing. Universal has it on their DVD Franchise Collection, Volume 2 of 4 volumes.

Little Giant is the most unusual Abbott&Costello film ever made with Bud and Lou not functioning as a team per se. They did one other film like that for Universal at the time. According to the Bob Thomas book on the team the two were close to breaking up at the time and it was decided to treat them separately. Eventually things were patched up.

Bud has a dual role as the evil general manager of the Hercules Vacuum Cleaner company who's been skimming off the books to pay for his expensive, but secret wife Jacqueline DeWit. His other roles is as his own cousin and branch manager of the Stockton office of the said company. Bud as the cousin has a girlfriend in secretary Brenda Joyce.

Not enough is said about Bud's acting here in two fairly straight roles because he got lost in the praise for Lou Costello's best show of pathos. Little Giant is the film where he is fairly compared with such silent screen comedians like Charlie Chaplin, Harry Langdon, or Roscoe Arbuckle. If Little Giant had been a silent film, any one of these comic greats could have done the Costello role. Lou measures up to all of them here.

Lou's a simple kid from the farm who's taken a correspondence course in salesmanship and wants to be a vacuum cleaner salesman in the tradition of his uncle George Cleveland. With the best wishes of his mother Mary Gordon, Lou goes off to Los Angeles to get a job with the Hercules Vacuum Cleaner company.

Costello's various adventures both on the job and amorous show him at his best as an innocent. Not even Stan Laurel ever responded to vamping the way Lou does with Jacqueline DeWit.

Today's viewers will not get the joke, but Costello's character Benny Miller coming from Cucamonga was a guaranteed laugh every time the town was mentioned. It took years for the town to live down its reputation as a place for hicks, but that was as a result of the Jack Benny Show and the famous announcement that occurred every so often in one of the broadcasts about a train leaving for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga. Imagine that with every letter Cucamonga enunciated to the fullest. When you got off at Cucamonga you were in the equivalent of Hooterville. And Costello's very character was a typical Cucamonga resident as the Jack Benny Show told the world.

For the biggest and most successful extension of Lou Costello's range as a comedian, one should view Little Giant.

Having just rewatched Laurel & Hardy's Our Relations in which both stars played twin brothers. I then felt the need to then rewatch this one in which Bud Abbott played two roles-a Mr. Morrison and a Mr. Chandler, revealed to be cousins by their mothers being sisters. Oh, and Abbott also posed as the grandmother of them as shown by the portrait hung in Chandler's office. Before I reveal their function in the story, let me first mention that Lou Costello plays Benny Miller, a farm boy who's been listening to correspondence records on being a salesman. So he goes to Los Angeles to meet Mr. Morrison and, well, something goes wrong that I won't reveal here. So Benny then goes to Mr. Chandler's who reveals the backstory I mentioned above. Now when I first watched this in 1980 as a 12-year-old kid watching this on a late Saturday night on "The Abbott & Costello Theatre", I remember being a little confused by the direction of the story since for once, the two stars weren't presented as friends as many others of their movies had done up to then. When I later read bios of Bud & Lou, including Lou's daughter Chris' book "Lou's On First", I found out two things: first, the box office of a couple of their last movies weren't doing as well as before, and second, the two weren't getting as much along as before to the point of avoiding each other when not performing. So a decision was made to change the formula of their movies starting with this one. Their next one, The Time of Their Lives, also dispensed with the usual A & C formula. Actually, at least one routine was reprised here-"7 x 13=28" which they previously did in In the Navy. Also, as a kid watching, I remember not liking so much drama permeating this one, I mean, previously, Lou had some lines meant to provoke feelings but then went back to the comedy, here, it took a while to get back to that. Having now watched this again on YouTube, I actually like this much better now. Also, what a treat to now find Sid Fields, best known as the landlord in the comedy team's TV show, as one of Benny's first customers who gives it to him good concerning his family's health in order to avoid getting sold on anything. Another treat is seeing Fifth Marx Brother Margaret Dumont being the victim of Benny's vacuum cleaner demonstration. She had also appeared with W. C. Fields and Laurel & Hardy during this period. Speaking of L & H, the director here was William A. Seiter who previously helmed Stan & Ollie's Sons of the Desert. Among the fellow salesman Benny associates with is one played by Joe Kirk who was his brother-in-law who, like Fields, also appeared in that TV show as an Italian friend. One more supporting player I have to mention is Chester Conklin, a Sennett veteran who also once worked with W. C. Fields during the late silent era (I only know this because I once read a filmography book on Fields which had pics of the three now lost films he and Conlkin made). Here he's a hotel valet. Okay, so with all that, I'll just say, if you're interested in a different sort of A & C flick, Little Giant is recommended. Oh, and my next review will be Laurel & Hardy's Hog Wild...

While I certainly agree with the other viewer that Little Giant is atypical of the Abbott and Costello oeuvre, it is definitely not their last movie together!

It also had the one singularly saddest scene in my 50+ years of movie-going.

Seemingly failed vacuum-cleaner salesman "Benny Miller" is returning home to the sticks with a little bird in a small wooden cage, a gift for his mom (Mary Gordon, of course). He stops to aid a neighbor whose mule-drawn wagon is stuck in a big muddy patch. He puts his shoulder to the rear of the wagon, the whole ensemble takes off without so much as a "thank you" from the neighbor, "Benny" goes face first into the mud and when he manages to get himself erect, he discovers that the bird has escaped.

He's standing there, covered with mud from eyebrows to knees in his best Sunday suit, holding the empty cage, and says, his lower lip quivering, "M-m-my bird... it was for my Mom.."

This 12-year-old dissolved into tears right there in the fifth row of the Macomb Theater in Mount Clemens, Michigan. Years later I could still well up at the thought of that scene, and when, as an actor, I needed to play a certain value, it was that "sense memory" I called upon.