Blondie Brings Up Baby

Just when the new mailman thought he had a new clever idea to deliver the mail to the Bumsteads without the letters literally becoming air mail, here comes Dagwood again! Alvin (Danny Mummert) is back to visit his pal Baby Dumpling (Larry Simms) to exert his intelligence. Today is Baby Dumpling's first day in school and not all goes well. The next film in the series is BLONDIE ON A BUDGET.

The Blondie films were absolute classics of American comedy, and I hope that one day they will receive their due recognition. The plots of the Blondie films were constructed with the greatest of care, and were complex and always involved more than one story line going on at once in each episode of the series. Certain continuous threads of plot extended through each episode (there were 28 episodes in total) and these threads could be picked up at any time and carried forward, to enormous comic effect. Sometimes, as in Episode Three, Dagwood's office environment does not appear at all. Wonderful characters are sometimes created for a single episode, such as the fabulous character played by Gene Lockhart in Episode One, and then they drop out of sight forever. This was the continuous injection of novelty which kept the series fresh and unpredictable, so that there was always something new and exciting turning up, and then they would move on to the next new and exciting thing. In other words, this was a series that was always 'on the move', developing in an organic fashion, and hence very much alive. The sense of fun was always there, fed with the new and unexpected at every turn. This fourth episode is as hilarious as ever, with even more outrageous plot variations appearing. In this episode, the boy next door named Alvin (played by Danny Mummert, who has now learned to regard adults with a supercilious eye, which adds to the comedy effect) is portrayed as a precocious budding intellectual, who aged five quotes Samuel Johnson: 'Intelligence is always superior to force'. He says this to Dagwood, whom he calls 'a dumbbell'. Blondie pouts and gets jealous that the little boy next door may be cleverer than her own Baby Dumpling, aged four. At that point Alvin makes it possible to open the front door, which was 'stuck' so that neither Dagwood nor Blondie could open it, simply by turning the top lock. In walks a door to door encyclopaedia salesman, who offers a free intelligence test to the two children. The results are that Baby Dumpling turns out to be a genius, and the man pronounces: 'He has an IQ of 168, which is thirty points above the genius level.' Blondie phones Dagwood at the office to tell him this, and Dagwood panics and rushes out of the office shouting: 'I have to go home immediately! Baby Dumpling is ill. He has an IQ of 168!' Blondie insists that because Baby Dumpling is a genius, he must go to school immediately, so she and Dagwood lie about his age and have him enrolled. He refuses to be accompanied to school by anyone but Daisy the dog (whose antics are as cute as ever, including her raised ear trick). However, this leads to a traumatic incident where the waiting Daisy is captured by the officers of the Dog Pound and disappears, causing havoc amongst the Bumstead family. The Dog Pound sells Daisy to the nurse of a rich man whose daughter is in a wheelchair. Baby Dumpling, wandering around the streets looking for Daisy, hears her barking through a huge iron gate leading to a great house with a large lawn, goes in, and is reunited. The invalid girl's father is furious that the nurse let his child have a dog, as he thought dogs were bad for people. Meanwhile, Dagwood has been set up by an unscrupulous property developer during Mr. Withers's absence on holiday and tricked into making alterations to a building design in good faith which the man intends to use as a pretext to get out of a contract because he is secretly going bust. However, after Baby Dumpling coaxes the invalid girl into walking and playing, aided by the jovial company of Daisy, the rich father decides in his joy to build a children's' home with kennels for dogs included. However, he needs a design. Dagwood's design for the crooked builder has been rejected and he has had it carry it home. He dumps it over his front fence and Blondie, who had been weeding on her knees at that very spot, gets encapsulated. This is a very good sight-gag. This design ends up being enthusiastically adopted by the rich man, thus saving Dagwood's job, as Dithers has just fired him again, but quickly re-hires him and gives him a bonus. All of these shenanigans are directed with pace and style, as usual, by Frank R. Strayer, who did the previous three episodes and was to go on to do three more before leaving the Blondie series. Strayer deserves a great deal of the credit for making the Blondie films crisp, funny, and fast. Larry Simms as Baby Dumpling is just as outrageous and cute and funny as ever. Arthur Lake is, well, he is Dagwood. And Penny Singleton (the pre-War version of January Jones) is superb as usual as the dominant Blondie, who while keeping all the men and babies in order has her own moments of feminine frailty and looks weepily at her departing child on his way to school, sensing the fleeting joys of parenthood. Daisy plays Daisy with the same poise and personality as ever, and it is certain that her Dog IQ was even higher than 168. What a wonderful addition to the Blondie series this episode was. In this one, the postman plans various devious ways of avoiding the inevitable collision with Dagwood in the mornings, but all his best-laid plans fail comically. There is simply no way for any postman to avoid the Dagwood Menace, and the bumbling chaos of Dagwood's behaviour spreads like peanut butter over the entire proceedings. But the hopeless Dagwood is so lovable, and Blondie adores him so much, that we forgive him everything. And so we continue to watch the endlessly fascinating spectacle of Blondie bringing up both baby and husband.

remember this from childhood dog caught by vet--nurse gets dog for disabled girl (polio?) Dagwood the fall guy gets fired yet again

When I was a boy, they used to show the Blondie and Dagwood films a lot on TV. The only one I remember at all was this one, a good but rather typical installment.

When the show begins, some huckster is going door-to-door giving IQ tests to children. He tells Mrs. Bumstead that Baby Dumpling is a super-genius....but it seems likely he's just trying to sell her a lot of books.

While Blondie is getting all excited about Baby Dumpling, Dagwood is working on a frustrating project. The client keeps approving every change and Dagwood is excited...but the client is a jerk and has no intention of actually having the project completed. Mr. Dithers (as usual) blames Dagwood and fires him.

Later, Baby Dumpling gets lost while looking for his runaway dog, Daisy. He eventually finds she was adopted by a disabled girl*. And, somehow this meeting ends up being the solution to all the Bumstead problems!

Overall, another enjoyable and nice installment in the series. Worth seeing and quite clever for a B-movie.

*While they never say why the girl is in a wheelchair, most likely it was Polio, which was sadly common. Plus, Polio is a disorder you CAN recover use of the legs from in some cases so this would be consistent with the story.

In this movie there is a scene when Baby Dumpling comes home from school with a blackeye. Dagwood picks him up and brings him over to the mirror to look at the blackeye. During their conversation at the mirror, Dagwood tells Baby Dumpling that although they call him baby dumpling, his "real name is Dagwood, named after me".

Goofy adventure with the Bumsteads, this episode featuring some poignant moments coupled with a Three Stooges-like plot, all worked around Dagwood.

Baby Dumpling is the center of attention, first being hailed as a child genius by a door to door salesman? Everything changes when Daisy wanders off, Baby goes looking for her and disappears. Is there a kidnapper on the loose?

Murphy's Law where everything goes haywire, and really fast. In a sentimental twist, it turns out Baby finds Daisy at the home of a girl confined to a wheelchair (played by Peggy Ann Garner). The two become friends, Dagwood meanwhile is searching for him and gets mistaken (very easily) for the kidnapper? The insane question; how could he look suspicious and goofy at the same time? A recurring theme in many more episodes to come.

Arthur Lake steals lots of scenes here. Even though the story is centered around Baby and Melinda, Dagwood gets himself into some bizarro complications that could lead to him going to prison for life!

Written by Gladys Lehman, one of the founders of the Screen Writers Guild, associated with many classics, later writing MEET JOE BLACK for Brad Pitt. Peggy Ann Garner does a wonderful job here, who would go on to win a special Oscar. She appeared in scores of top films; JANE EYRE, A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN and DAISY KENYON.

Check out the early film posters for these episodes, beautifully designed with a cartoon slant, saluting the comic strip series.

10 Stars. EPISODE 4 remastered. The BLONDIE films are packaged in dvd box sets, either separate episodes or the full series. Thanks again to MOVIES Net for running these classic episodes Saturday mornings.