Bum Voyage

It's a cold, snowy night in New York when a woman throws a pair of steamship tickets out the window, and they wind up in the hands of Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly. They're going to Bermuda! They're going to Bermuda. Little do they know they have a third room mate: a gorilla.

Charles Gemora plays the gorilla. His was a specialty for the movies, with his own gorilla suit and a lot of fans of his work. When he wasn't pursuing his alternate job of make-up man, he played an ape in more than 90 shorts and features from 1927 through 1961. He died in 1961 at the age of 58. I wonder how old that is in gorilla years.

Bum Voyage (1934)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Hal Roach short with Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly finding ship tickets so they naturally take the room but what they don't know is that there's a gorilla already there. This is probably the best short I've seen from the duo but most of that credit should go towards the man in the gorilla suit. He manages to give me quite a few laughs and certainly more than Kelly.

None of the Kelly/Todd shorts have found their way to DVD but Turner Classic Movies does a good job at showing a few each year.