Hey, Pop!

I completely expected to hate this film. After all, Fatty Arbuckle's most famous ones were the ones he made early in his career--before the famous rape trial that severely derailed his career. Now in the early 30s, Vitaphone (part of Warner Brothers) brought him back for some sound shorts--a medium we're not used to seeing Fatty in and which feels a bit odd. Despite this, the film is enjoyable and surprised me very much...especially since the only other Vitaphone film starring Arbuckle I saw, "Buzzin' Around" wasn't all that great.

The film begins with an orphan being discovered at Fatty's job. The owner calls the local orphanage and Fatty won't let them take the kid. After all, he was an orphan and cannot imagine letting the kid grow up there. So, he quits his job and tries to make a going of it with the boy. Unfortunately, he can't find work so has to resort to a very funny method to get groceries. During this time, however, the orphanage folks see him and the kid and give chase.

The film made me laugh several times--both with Fatty's 'grocery shopping' as well as his attempt to dress up as a lady to disguise himself. Full of cute little comedy sequences...the only thing I wasn't 100% fond of was the rather dark ending...but all in all, a cute little film.

Just watched this, Fatty Arbuckle's first talkie film. Also, his first appearance on film after a scandal almost ruined his career. Here, he's a cook who quits after a boy cries to him after being abandoned by his mother. I'll just say there's plenty of funny gags about cooking, throwing food, and female disguises to keep me laughing throughout. So that's a recommendation for Hey, Pop!

"Hey, Pop!" is Roscoe Arbuckle's talkie debut, and also his return to the screen after the long and unfair blacklisting that ruined his career. After he grins at us in the opening credits, the film begins with a shot of Roscoe smiling broadly while he repeats his window-cleaning gag from his silent films. (Many comedians recycled their old gags; Arbuckle did it more often than most, but in this case we'll forgive him.) Roscoe is clearly delighted to be back on screen, and we want to welcome him.

But "Hey, Pop!" isn't a very good film. Roscoe plays a butcher here. He meets an orphan boy who looks about nine years old. The kid is on the run from the authorities, who want to lock him in the mean old orphanage. There were often flashes of astonishingly bad taste in Arbuckle's films, and one of them occurs here. When the child-welfare authorities arrives, Roscoe sneaks the orphan past them by disguising him as a slab of beef. There's a shocking camera set-up in which Roscoe carries some "beef" slung over his shoulder: the beef is obviously a small boy wrapped in a thin piece of butcher's cloth, and we can clearly see that the boy is naked underneath the translucent cloth! I'm astonished that this sequence was ever filmed, much less included in the movie. It would have been funnier if the boy kept his clothes on while Roscoe drew a moustache on the boy's lip, gave him a cigar, and passed him off as a midget.

Roscoe and the boy (minus his clothes) go on the lam, and they need disguises ... so Roscoe dresses up as a woman and he disguises the boy as a baby in a pram. They accidentally end up in a baby parade, and they have to keep playing their roles. (Of course they win the baby contest, so "Mama" Arbuckle has to give a speech at the judging stand.) Despite his bulk, Arbuckle was one of the very few male comedians who could convincingly impersonate a woman ... but there's something quite tasteless about a man disguised as a woman playing a scene with a 9-year-old boy dressed as a baby, especially after the nudity we've witnessed earlier.

The last gag in the movie (a well-framed long shot) is a funny surprise, just a little bit poignant, but most of what comes before it isn't funny at all.

I'm from Britain, so it pains me to report that - when "Hey, Pop!" was first released - it was immediately banned by the British film censors, sight unseen. Arbuckle made five more films, but all of them were denied exhibition certificates in Britain.

Hey, Pop! (1932)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, in his return to the big screen, plays a cook who takes in a young boy left in a restaurant by his mother. The two of them become friends but soon a cop is on their trail when the plan of taking the boy to an orphanage. HEY, POP! would be Arbuckle's first talkie but it was more importantly his return to acting after a very long hiatus due to the now infamous court trial. The film is basically just a short version of Chaplin's THE KID but the actor manages to make it a lot more entertaining than it deserves to be. The first thing you're going to notice is that Southern accent of Arbuckle's, which just isn't the type of voice you'd expect from him after watching all those Keystone shorts he made. However, the voice actually manages to work extremely well for this film because it just has a loving nature to it and it really makes you believe that this guy wants to take care of the kid. Considering the studio still had to "sell" the actor to a public who for a time hated him, the opening pretty much has Arbuckle showing off some skills in the kitchen. There's also a rather large food fight as well as a few scenes where the actor must show how well he could bounce around a bed. HEY, POP! certainly isn't a masterpiece but it's an entertaining movie that fans of Arbuckle should enjoy.

Anyone who is remotely interested in the history of screen comedy, or for that matter, the history of Hollywood's impact on the social landscape of society, should become familiar with Roscoe Arbuckle and his work. His life story is as all encompassing in highs and lows as it is engrossing. One of the most interesting aspects of it was his return to the screen in talking pictures. After the nightmare that his life became, for him to have the courage to step back in front of a camera, with the added challenge of sound, is nothing less than heroic.

Hearing Roscoe speak, with his slight southern accent, adds a wonderful dimension to this film. His character becomes more human and the derivative nature of the plot, (clearly based on Chaplin's "The Kid" as well as taking gags from his own "The Waiter's Ball" and "The Butcher Boy"), becomes less distracting. He is charming, and endearing, and most of all genuinely funny; throwing his bulk around, dressing as a woman, and especially, interacting with Billy Hayes.

This film, along with the other Vitaphone talkies, is a great introduction to this gifted man's work, despite their coming at the end of his career. Watching them may make his silent films more accessible to new comers.

In the end, this is a very enjoyable film.