Andy Plays Hookey

Throughout the 1930s and 40s, Andy Clyde made a bunch of comedy shorts for Columbia...the same folks who were making the Three Stooges shorts. In some cases, the plots are actually Stooges films remade with Clyde. Interestingly, in this case, IMDB says it's a remake of a W.C. Fields film, "Man on the Flying Trapeze"...but it isn't. Instead, it's a reworking of the plots from MANY Edgar Kennedy shorts from the 1930s.

When the film begins, Andy learns that his live-in brother-in-law destroyed his cars and got a bunch of tickets....but ran away. Soon, a cop arrives and gives them all to Andy because they didn't know that he wasn't driving....after all, it WAS Andy's car. No one says anything to help...they only berate him.

Wanting to get away from his hellish household where his mother-in-law and brother-in-law mistreat him continually, Andy calls in to work and tells them he cannot come in, as his mother-in-law just died (wishful thinking I guess). Instead, he goes to a boxing match...but all sorts of things go wrong there and eventually Andy is as mad as can be....and returns home to take care of things.

I really hate the Clyde films with the obnoxious in-laws...they are just cruel and selfish and unfunny. This one is no exception, though you do enjoy seeing Andy finally flip out and put everyone in their place. Not terrible...but it could have been funnier and the in-laws were too cruel to be enjoyable.

Andy Clyde wants to go to the prize fight, so he tells his boss his mother-in-law has died. It's a twenty-minute remake of W.C. Fields' THE MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE, written by the other movie's writer, Clyde Bruckman, and it makes a typically good short for Andy.

Mr. Clyde's movie career went back to Sennett in the silent era, where he wound up specializing in older men. He kept the character throughout his movie career and aged into it in a career that encompassed more than 300 movies, and the second-longest running series for Columbia's short comedy division -- yes, they produced more than Three Stooges movies.

This movie has lots of good gags, many of them directly borrowed from the W.C. Fields movie, but of others of older provenance. Keep an eye out for other old-time comic actors, including Snub Pollard and Fred Kelsey.