For Your Convenience

What do the subjects of painting a black eye, parachutes, coffee, and mechanical devices to take some weight off ladies have in common? Not a darned thing, so far as I can tell, but that doesn't stop them from appearing as the four subjects of this short from Warner Brothers. Likely this was some footage shot and then the frugal people in the editing department figured they could stick them together and get a short subject they could rent to theaters out of them.

Warner Brothers' color shorts in this period were generally bright and carefully presented affairs. There's a dull, brown sameness to the four segments that makes this less than fascinating.

For Your Convenience (1939)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A rather unspectacular short from Warner takes a look at four things that aren't ever really connected. Up first is a doctor in the Bowery who is able to "fix" black eyes by mixing up make-up and covering them. The second story shows how parachutes are packaged up so that they will open when the string is pulled. The third story shows us a coffee bean in its original state and the various forms it takes before hitting your cup. The fourth and final story shows a weight-loss machine that a woman can hook herself up to and lose ten-pounds in one little day. I'm really not sure what the point of any of these stories are and the majority of them are quite strange to say the least. I'm still not quite sure what the point of covering the black eye was and the sequence comes off rather surreal once you see how poorly done it is. When we see the "black eye" it's clearly just pant and how obvious it is makes you wonder if anyone from the director to the actor ever stopped to see the actual problem. The fourth story dealing with the weight-loss just goes to show that even back in the day no one knew how to kill the pounds. The funny thing is that the narrator tells people in the third story that those over four-hundred pounds wouldn't be flying but if they dared then the parachute wouldn't work for them. The film was shot in 3-strip Technicolor, which is without question the best thing going on here.