Knights Before Christmas

Karl Dane and George K. Arthur formed a 'big and little' comedy team for MGM during the silent era. During the sound era, their disparate accents were revealed, as well as their lack of comedy chops.

Fortunately they are in this short much. Unfortunately, there isn't much here that is particularly funny, even if you count Irving Bacon doing a couple of dozen pratfalls.

RKO set Dane and Arthur up in a series of shorts, apparently hoping to milk what was left of their reputation from the previous decade for what it was worth. Alas, while Arthur clearly shows some promise in a blank-faced way, Dane lacks anything worthwhile. After six shorts, RKO gave up.

One of the strangest and unfunniest comedy duos was George Arthur and Karl Dane. Imagine....casting an Englishman and a Danish guy in a series of American comedies The odd accents weren't the biggest problem with their films, however,...it was the writing. Again and again, these unfunny guys were placed in unfunny situations and the results were generally pretty poor. I've seen four of their six films in the series and perhaps the best is "Knights Before Christmas"....and it's not all that good.

While Arthur and Dane are certainly in this film, the star seems to be Irving Bacon who plays Pa. He's a crabby old cuss and he hates having folks over for Christmas...particularly Karl. And, when all the guests arrive, things go from bad to worse.

Once again, the material isn't very good and aside from a few laughs at how cranky Bacon was, I didn't laugh at all during this short. Not particularly enjoyable and you can see how Arthur & Dane were not exactly comedy stars.