Henry the Ache

Wow...they don't make 'em like they used to...thank goodness! "Henry the Ache" is a painfully unfunny 'comedy' short from Van Beuren Pictures. While this studio was tiny and had small budgets, they COULD make nice comedies...but this isn't one of them. It's a terrible film in most every way--mostly because it's never funny...not even once.

The film is set during the 16th century and involves Henry VIII and his cheating wife. Most of the humor consists of Bert Lahr (Henry) making loud noise--much like he did as the cowardly lion. Otherwise, there is NOTHING about the film that remotely resembles comedy. Very badly written and a total waste of time.

This short subject about a couple of the wives of Henry the Eighth of England is pretty much of a burlesque skit and Bert Lahr as Henry mugs it up endlessly. Although a marvelous presence, he was made for the stage, with his rubber face and loud noises, so apart from his turn as the Cowardly Lion in THE WIZARD OF OZ, his best role is as a burlesque comic in THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED MINSKY'S. Here he runs through his usual combination of oaf and child, and in a two-reeler it works. But if it had gone on for another fifteen seconds, it would have been far too much.

Also good in this short is Monte Collins, a comic who had a bit of a leading role in some shorts in the late silent era and who then slipped into second banana roles and did some nice work for Columbia, particularly with Buster Keaton.

I'm a fan of Bert Lahr, and I'm also an advocate for the talents of director Ray McCarey (the unjustly obscure brother of Leo McCarey). So, when I learnt that Bert Lahr played Henry the Eighth in a film directed by Ray McCarey, I was salivating to see it. Lackaday, the movie just ain't very funny.

For some reason, the movie breezes past Henry's first three wives, then divides its screen time between Anne of Cleves (Janet Reade) and Catherine Howard (Leni Stengel), the latter caught up in her adulterous affair with Thomas Culpeper. That gentleman is played here by Monte Collins, a scrawny actor who looks even less appetising than Bert Lahr, so it's difficult to see why Lahr would be cuckolded here.

As Henry Tudor, Lahr makes an attempt to personate the famous Holbein portrait of the king, wearing a beard that looks distressingly scruffy rather than funny. Basically, Lahr does his usual schtick here, but it's less effective than usual against a 16th-century background. We get some dialogue such as "Thou hadst better scram." Lahr name-drops William Shakespeare, but he's a couple of decades too early. I laughed at a line about "Sir Walter Winchell", but much of the (very weak) comedy here is merely anachronism, with Lahr seeking a 16th-century divorce in Reno and listening to an Atwater-Kent cathedral radio.

I was delighted to see Shemp Howard listed in this film's opening credits. Unfortunately, that most under-rated of Stooges appears only very briefly in a role that could have been played by anyone. More pleasantly, we see some chorus girls cavorting in principal-boy doublets and hose ... historically inaccurate, but I'm not complaining. There's no mention at all of Henry VIII's sixth wife, so I guess this film is below Parr. I'll rate this dismal disappointment only 3 out of 10. Or, as Bert Lahr would have put it: "Ong, ong, ong!"