Blondie Goes to College

This is the tenth in the Blondie movie series. In this one, Dagwood wants to go to college and Blondie decides to go with him though reluctantly. So they send Baby Dumpling to military school. I'll just now say there wasn't much that was funny here though Cliff Nazarro as a doubletalk professor was amusing, as was Dag's attempts at joining some sports teams. Also, having Blondie sarcastically calling her hubby "Daggie" after a coed played by Janet Blair starts calling him that was also good for a laugh. Mr. Dithers seems more sympathetic here though he turns back to his partially mean self soon enough. Among the supporting cast are Larry Parks before his star-making turn as Al Jolson in The Jolson Story and Lloyd Bridges before "Sea Hunt". Not among the supporting cast is Irving Bacon as Mr. Beasley, the mailman. Guess he wanted to take a break from getting constantly knocked over by Dagwood! In summary, if you're a Blondie movie series completest, go ahead and watch Blondie Goes to College. Otherwise, it's skipable. P.S. This is the last one on the Platinum Disc Corporation set I originally bought from Walmart back in 2005 when the "Blondie" comic strip was celebrating 75 years of print. Now that the rest of the series is online, I'll be seeing the rest of them for the first time in the coming weeks and reviewing them afterwards...

Baby Dumpling steals the show as he is dumped off at a military boarding school while his parents go back to school. KP duty is hilarious...I have never seen so many potatoes.

Dagwood gets it in his mind to go to college, which he and blondie missed out on by getting married. Once there things don't go quite as planned. First they have to pretend they are single for their living situations...and then Dagwood comes up with a scheme to meet Blondie at the registrar's office...but he gets waylaid and then Shanghai's by a sorority girl with a flat tire...meanwhile blonde gets picked up by a jock and overall good guy.

Real light weight comedy...but a fun look at college life of the times.

Big highlight for me was seeing the crew races from train and boat...just like I read about in Boys in the Boat!

For reasons I still can't fathom both Arthur Lake and Penny Singleton decide they need to go back to college and further their education. Both have missed the college experience so Dagwood and Blondie park Baby Dumpling in a military boarding school and head to the halls of dear old ivy.

Columbia Pictures more than most studios used the movie series as part of their programming and the Blondie films afforded them the opportunity to exhibit some of their young hopefuls. In the student body are people like Larry Parks, Sid Melton, Lloyd Bridges, Janet Blair and Adele Mara. Parks is the campus jock who sets out after Blondie and the beautiful Janet Blair is attracted to Dagwood God knows why. Blair's father is Andrew Toombes who is rich and who the Dithers Construction company would like to land as a client. Dagwood always had phenomenal charm, or luck, or something that always landed these clients and usually saved his job throughout the series.

This one has some good moments with Dagwood trying out for many collegiate sports. Best is him blowing the big crew race when he stands up in the canoe and tips over. He's not a big man on campus after that.

Good entry in the Blondie series.

You need to be particularly hard up for gentle, mindless entertainment to find refuge in these Blondie movies. In a certain way, they and their radioshow brethren set the stage for nearly all situation comedies on TeeVee.

I cannot recommend any of them, except for those that have a good joke or two in them.

This one does. Oh, the story: the couple go back to college while baby is in military school. They pretend to be single and each get entangled in affairs. Ho hum.

The joke worth seeing has them in class. Etymology. The professor must be a vaudevillian who does what we see for a living.

He mixes stodgy phrases that we can just barely make out — and some of these are erudite — with incomprehensible blather. In a way, its similar to what Chris Cooper does with W. Bush in "Silver City." But here it is snappy and much funnier.

The pacing of when he comes in and out of the glossolalia is the funny thing. He knows just how to catch us with a portion of a phrase and when to leave us hanging. Its amazing comedy, skilled stuff that I think owes a lot to similar rhythms that Shakespeare uses when he moves from reality to metaphor.

Dagwood and Blondie look at each other in reaction. Its perfect. So much of humor, especially in movies, is of people too dumb to understand the language. Black characters were prime targets in that era for being dumped on. Here, the target is us.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Okay, in a strictly logical world, sending B&D to college makes little sense. But this is movie world, where it's contrived situations that count, whether it's good guys winning every gun battle or B&D taking a respite from 40's suburbia. So it's off to college for our comic strip heroes and military school for baby Dumpling and Daisy. Maybe Dagwood will get a promotion for his college effort. And what could be more comically promising than an addled Dagwood among the advanced learning. Now if he can only follow the double-talk origin of the word 'survive', he might even pass etymology class. Then there's the rowing team where he can't stay upright, and football practice where the basic concepts rival etymology. Frankly, I got a lot of laughs out of his good-natured flops.

Then happily we can add eye candy with June Blair as Daggie's aggressive car buddy, plus other coed lollipops from the 40's. Also, mustn't forget coed Blondie who's grabbed by handsome big-man-on-campus, Larry Parks. And if that's not enough, she's quickly conscripted into the top campus sorority. Looks like the Bumstead household may be in trouble, except this is the movies, so thankfully it's back to suburbia once the crop of college laughs are harvested.

No, the entry may not be the series best, but it's hard to beat comedic actors Lake and Singleton. Plus the series concept of a loving family with a wacky husband, a plucky wife, and an unlucky mailman practically guarantees chuckles.

(In passing-I may be wrong, but having Baby Dumpling in military school may well reflect the patriotic urgency of the 1942 production period.)