Over the Counter

Store owner Warner Oland asks secretary Franklin Pangborn what his son, Emerson Treacy is up to. He's organizing the counter girls into a variety show in two-strip Technicolor, of course.

Which is the point of this MGM short. It's directed by Jack Cummings, before his elevation into a producer, where he would lead one of the three musical units, as well as a couple of Red Skelton vehicles. I found it intensely pleasurable, but I like the weird stuff.

"Over the Counter" is a very unusual short film because it is in color...quite odd for the early to mid 1930s. However, unlike most two-color films I have seen of the era, the colors are a bit different. Instead of the mostly orange and green tones, this one is more pink-orange and turquoise.

The story is a bizarre and nonsensical thing with the owner of a department store (Sidney Toler) learning from his manager (Franklin Pangborn) that the son has turned his department into a strange nightclub! Does this make any sense? Nah. What also doesn't make any sense (though it is mildly funny) is the sporting event being broadcast of some insane women having a shopping contest. Finally, there is a hilarious (NOT!) sequence involving a woman abusing her husband. All in all, a not particularly good or remarkable film except for its early use of color.

The staff at the Drake's Department Store is at the end of their rope. The owner Mr. Drake has let his son Freddy do work and he has made plenty of crazy changes. He has hired beautiful chorus girls for a Check Your Husband counter. He converted the nursery into a nightclub, and made shopping into a radio show with an audience.

It's a weird concept but it's fine for a fun little surrealist comedy short. Like the concept itself, it has a lot of dancing girls for the male audience. It's filmed in 2-strip Technicolor. The colors look somewhat pastel. This is something different.

This 1932 TECHNICOLOR! MGM short musical comedy is an historic joy: stupid, a bit risque (pre-sensorship), and full of laughs -- unless, of course, you're a Grinch. All the services and conveniences a. MODERN department store needs, most especially the MGM "Dancing (and singing) Girls," who put on quite a show, reminiscent of the saloon dancers in old westerns and certainly inappropriate by today's criteria.

Also included is the standard range of silly, uptight, and over the top characters who inhabited the short comedies that, along with a cartoon, a serial, the news, and a "Preview of Coming Attractions" made Saturday afternoons at movies in the 1940s and '50s wonderful fun and great escapes from whatever was lurking at home in our parents plans for our well-beings... and, however briefly, despite the news, blocked out THE WAR. And if you cannot "decode" that phrase, you're too young to be in my target audience!

But those of you who are "in the know," should find this movie and, as the opening of "THE LONE RANGER" on the radio had it, take a trip back to those thrilling days of yesteryear -- without WILLIAM TELL along for company!

PS: OVER THE COUNTER was recently shown on TCM following the dated but still compelling and creepy NIGHT OF THE HUNTER with.the ever-brilliant ROBERT MITCHUM.