Birthday Blues

I found this copy on YouTube...and I should warn you that the sound quality is not great. But it is watchable....if you don't mind.

Back in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, Australian comic Leon Errol made a long series of comedy shorts. In most, he's married to a rather angry wife...and Leon often ends up on her bad side. In the case of "Birthday Blues", Leon forgot to get his wife a birthday present...and he rushes from the apartment to get her something as soon as possible. On the street, he meets up with a crook who sells him a hot fur coat. The wife loves it but when Leon finds out his across the hall neighbors were robbed and a fur coat was stolen, he's panic-stricken and assumes he's bought a hot coat. But instead of coming clean and telling the police, he tries to weasel his way out of it. Will he manage to prevent his wife from finding the truth? And, more importantly, will Leon end up in jail?!

While this is not a rollicking comedy, it is enjoyable and Errol is, as usual, very good in the lead. Clever and worth seeing.

When Leon Errol forgets wife Dorothy's birthday, he claims her present is at the office and goes to get it. He buys a fur coat on the street that turns out to have been stolen from the couple that's just moved into the apartment across the hall. When he finds out, he spends the rest of this funny short trying to get rid of the coat before the police catch him with it.

This short is particularly funny because of the casting of the husband of the new couple. The husband is played by Lawrence Tierney; if you're wondering what an actor who specialized in playing psychopaths and seems to have lived his life that way is doing in a slapstick comedy, under the friendly sobriquet of "Larry".... well, he's a jealous husband, you see, and boy, does Leon's frantic mugging play well against him!