The Boudoir Butler

"The Boudoir Butler" is a Mack Sennett production made for Educational Pictures. It stars Andy Clyde and is enjoyable enough to watch but, oddly, it's really NOT funny...which is odd since it is supposed to be a comedy short!

When the story begins, Andy's wife has convinced him to join her in a ruse. It seems that a man is looking for widows to invest in his company...which SHOULD have alerted her that the guy was up to no good. But instead, she convinces her husband to pretend to be the butler and help her entertain the guy. Andy turns out to be a terrible butler but does eventually discover that the guy is a crook...at which point his accomplice (Tom Kennedy) threatens to kill Andy if he tells. What's next?

This is an odd film. First, Tom Kennedy usually played sweet and dimwitted guys but here he's a pretty scary thug. Second, Andy Clyde was a very talented guy and I've seen him in at least 100 films...but here he just isn't funny because the script gives him nothing funny to do. Overall, a weak comedy at best, though it is watchable.

Irene Thompson is trying to buy shares in an agency from Joe Donohue. To impress him, she has husband Andy Clyde pretend to be her husband. She doesn't know that Donohue is a com man. Andy soon finds out, but tough Tom Kennedy won't let him tell his wife.

After a fast start in sound comedies in 1929, Mack Sennett's productions tailed off in quality very rapidly. Short subject were no longer profitable -- in 1931, very few movies of any length or description were -- and his staff never made the the change to sound. Soon the majors would open their own shorts departments, and Andy Clyde would go to Columbia for 20 years, and Tom Kennedy to RKO and Columbia. Miss Thompson would get married in 1934 and disappear from the sreen.