Buck Privates Come Home

Abbott and Costello return from the war as buck privates. Although the credits list Abbott as Corporal Slicker Smith, he doesn't have corporal stripes on his shirts. The reference intended probably was that these are the buck privates who went in (form the first film) and now they're coming home. It's a comedy and family film that mixes in America's participation in the war. This is done with newsreel footage from before the start to the victory marches in Europe and the return home parades. With those are insets of Abbot and Costello joining and returning home, before the meat of the story takes place.

The fact that these guys would be coming back - it looks like at whole platoon or more, as buck privates is somewhat curious, and one wonders how funny that may have been to veterans at the time. They all would have had to goof up in some way or have been busted. Costello's dress uniform has six hash marks on the sleeve - indicating three years (six months per hash) of combat duty. But they went into the Army In 1940 and Sgt. Collins comments that they had been together six years.

Although the draft didn't start until Sept. 16, 1940, the Army and Navy had beefed up recruiting early in the year in anticipation of entering the WW II which had officially begun in Oct. 1939. And, with three million Americans in Europe at the end of the war (VE Day was May 8, 1945), home rotations would continue through 1946.

Now that that's settled, on to this fairly funny story of Costello's Herbie Brown smuggling an orphaned French girl aboard ship to get her into the U.S. This becomes a constant chase with their former First Sergeant Collins, trying to apprehend the threesome. He is played by Nat Pendleton who is back on his New York police beat. How Evie, played by Beverly Simmons, gets into the U.S. and escapes being deported is part of the funny early stuff. But when Herbie and Bud Abott's Slicker Smith meet up with Evie's friend and former WAC Sylvia Hunter (played by Joan Shawlee) , they soon find themselves in the midget car racing arena.

This all serves for some wacky car driving and chase scenes - with Herbie behind the wheel, naturally. It's a fun film that the whole family should enjoy.

Buck Privates Come Home is directed by Charles Barton and written by John Grant, Frederic I. Rinaldo and Robert Lees. It stars Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Tom Brown, Nat Pendleton, Joan Fulton and Beverly Simmons. Cinematography is by Charles Van Enger and music by Walter Schuman.

Abbott and Costello star as two GI's returning from their service who get involved with much malarkey as they try to adopt a six year old orphan who Herbie (Costello) sneaked back in his duffel bag.

The 19th film in the Abbott and Costello series, Buck Privates Come Home is the sequel to Buck Privates from 1941 and evidently it was produced to return the boys to safe commercial ground. It worked and a year later they would pair up with Frankenstein for the first of their much loved films with the Universal Monsters.

Formula is obviously the same as the boys produce high energy slapstick wrapped around a thin plot line. Pace is never less than brisk and with the pair on fine form a number of scenarios score high on the laugh meter. Highlights include sequences involving a time bomb, a sawhorse (come see-saw) table involving food and the customary pie in face gag, Costello in high clothes line peril, some bang-bang at the bank commotion and the finale is a riot as Costello causes chaos behind the wheel of a midget motor car. Pendleton is excellent as the fall guy, first as the army sergeant and later as a New York cop, and Brown and Fulton provide the lovey dovey axis.

Fun and frothy, just how the best A & C films should be. 7.5/10

BUCK PRIVATES COME HOME (Universal-International, 1947), directed by Charles T. Barton, reunites the comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in a sequel to the film that made them instant sensations, that being BUCK PRIVATES (1941). In the original premise, they played a couple of street merchants selling neckties to suckers on Times Square, only to be chased about by Mike Collins (Nat Pendleton), a cop, into a recruiting office where the two unwittingly sign up as army buck privates, with Collins, already enlisted, assigned as their sergeant. Along the way they encounter two guys (Lee Bowman and Alan Curtis) in love with the same girl (Jane Frazee), with musical interludes supplied by the Andrews Sisters. While the supporting players and specialty acts don't appear this time around, Nat Pendleton does, resuming where he left off six years before, chasing after his former buck privates who have come home for more mishaps.

Following the current movie trend revolving around returning war veterans made famous by Samuel Goldwyn's THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946), "Slicker" Smith and Herbie Brown (Abbott and Costello) are first presented through flashback sequences and narration taken from BUCK PRIVATES, including the memorable drill routine, before shifting to present time with them and crew on a vessel bound for the states. With the war in Europe behind them, they have one problem, Herbie has smuggled Yvonne LeBrec (Beverly Simmons), a little French orphan girl hidden inside his duffel bag. Although Herbie's intentions in adopting the child are honorable, she must to be sent back on the next boat. Held for the immigration authorities, Evey is left under the care of army nurse, Sylvia Hunter (Joan Fulton). Evey cleverly breaks away from the authorities into the guardianship of Slicker and Herbie again, whom she has located peddling ties on their old corner, and saving them from being arrested by their former sergeant, Mike Collins (Nat Pendleton), now back on the the police force in his old beat. Unable to return to their apartment, they take up residence with Sylvia, with Evie sharing room with her, Slicker sleeping in bathtub and Herbie on clothes line outside the fire escape. They soon acquire jobs assisting Bill Gregory (Tom Brown), Sylvia's boyfriend, retrieve his midget race car being held at Mulrooney's Garage on an $8,000 debt. Problems arise for Slicker and Herbie with Collins hot on their trail to return Evey to immigration, and getting demoted by his captain (Donald MacBride) each time the boys outwit him.

As entertaining as BUCK PRIVATES was, and remains, BUCK PRIVATES COME HOME is every bit as funny as the original. Aside from Abbott and Costello routines worked well into the plot, Costello demonstrates his ability as a fine fine actor when allowed to become serious, particularly where telling his sergeant how wrong it would be to send Evey back to France, and another where the former army men are singing happily to "We're Coming Home" while Costello's Herbie, missing the child after being taken away, sits sadly alone on his cot. This doesn't take away from the comic character Costello has created, especially in a scene that follows in the Fort Dix Separation Center where he encounters a recruiting officer in a "Keep your shirt on/ take it off" routine, then asking him "Is your name Abbott?" Costello also takes the spotlight in the race car sequence that ranks one of the funniest climatic scenes ever captured on film, followed by another "in joke" thrown in where Herbie unwittingly drives the race car through a billboard outside a building that reads "Abbott and Costello in 'Romeo and Juliet'" Much of the team's encounters with Mike the cop in BUCK PRIVATES COME HOME apparently serves as a dress rehearsal for their television series "The Abbott and Costello Show" (1952-54) with the boys being harassed by another Mike the Cop, this time enacted by Gordon Jones.

Beverly Simmons, the little girl who plays Evey, is certainly a charmer, even when disguised as a little boy. She might have served as Universal's answer to MGM's current child star, Margaret O'Brien, but with only few prior film roles to her credit, Simmons' career never expanded as far as this edition to BUCK PRIVATES, with this being the only film for which she appears to be in circulation in later years, ranging from commercial television dating back to the 1960s, to home video and broadcasts on cable TV's the Disney Channel (1990s), and American Movie Classics (2001-02).

It's a wonder how many script revisions and unused footage were made before coming up with the final result to what becomes of the buck privates after coming home from the war. The result is hilarious. (***).

This movie just seems to cash in on the original film which was a big hit back in 1941 but the past couple of movies from Abbott and Costello were flops and this movie does seem to be just thrown together. I don't know if this movie was a hit or not but their careers didn't do that well until they started making their monster movies like Frankenstein and The Mummy. I can't believe Leonard Maltin actually gave this three stars and said it was better then the original. This movie stars right after the war in which they are going home but it turns out Costello brought a kid back on the boat and the kid is a foreign citizen and Costello tries to hide the kid, so she can't be deported. She is found out but escapes and winds up hiding out with Abbott and Costello and Nat Pendleton who was their captain in the army and now a cop is looking for the kid. The movie just doesn't work and does seem thrown together.

With the war effort in Europe over and done with, the many men enlisted into the military return home as heroes. As most of them return to their previous stations in life, Herbie and Slicker are not overjoyed with this as it involves them becoming hustlers again. This time though they have a reason to better their position as Herbie has smuggled French orphan Evie into the US and is going to struggle to adopt her legally. The pair do come up with some sort of plan but they can only succeed if they manage to evade the clutches of the police (in the form of one Sgt Collins) for long enough.

It has been many decades since I saw Buck Privates and I did want to see it again as I remembered enjoying it. Unfortunately I could not find it so I went with what I could get, which was this sequel, which sees the boys return to their private lives but with as many troubles and challenges as ever. In terms of plotting we are on pretty thin ground here because the only tangible narrative device is a sickly sweet kid (never an easy proposition) and even that is quite uninteresting. The film just about manages to get by because the various comic situations are mostly pretty funny. There aren't really any classic exchanges or situations but it is consistently amusing for those that like this sort of thing.

Abbott and Costello are doing their usual thing but they are far from going through the motions in the way that they would occasionally do in some other films they made. There are some nice in-jokes and Costello is pretty funny with some of his pratfalls and reactions. The overblown car chase at the end isn't them at their best though mainly because it feels like the writers are just looking for something "big" to end on with the hope that the noise will make viewers overlook the fact that it is neither all that clever or funny. Pendleton is pretty good as a fall guy although I did feel for his character a little bit. Brown is so-so, Shawlee is sidelined to the point of being forgettable and Simmons is so sickly that I suspect extras in her scenes developed diabetes.

All told though I quite enjoyed the film. It doesn't have the classic material or the big laughs that their better films produced but it is still an amusing affair that doesn't have too many problems to it and can be easily enjoyed by fans as well as doing an OK job for the casual viewer.