Heather and Yon

A fast-paced remake of the 1937 Buster Keaton two-reeler Jail Bait that he made for Educational Pictures. Andy Clyde fits well with the material, as he plays a simpleton who goes undercover in a jailhouse to track down a killer. A few gags seemed to be borrowed from Laurel & Hardy's Pardon Us, but it flows along nicely with supporting roles from Jack Norton as Clyde's nutty reporter friend and Vernon Dent as an uptight judge.

However, this short does have a sad backstory: Clyde's 8-year old son passed away earlier in 1944 from a rare internal disease and Clyde was allowed a long hiatus from work, but fortunately he was surrounded by old friends at the funeral, as well as during filming, but he visibly looks despondent in certain scenes.

This is a short from Columbia Pictures starring Andy Clyde. Clyde had a long career from the silent days to the 1960s and starred in a wide variety of films...not just comedies. He was also a wonderful sidekick in about half of the Hopalong Cassidy films and has nearly 400 IMDB credits! This film is a remake of a 1937 Educational Pictures short starring Buster Keaton ("Jail Bait")....and it was a very disappointing film. Perhaps this remake is better as it was, oddly, made by a different studio...though the main story idea still makes little sense.

When the story begins, Andy is taking a diction class to get rid of his Scottish accent. While Andy was Scottish, I never thought you could tell he was Scottish...though it is interesting that the short mentions his heritage. Surprisingly, during his lesson he asks his teacher to marry him...and she agrees.

So far, the film is fine. What happens next is incredibly contrived and bad. A friend is a reporter and convinces Andy to admit to a murder he never committed so he could go to prison and investigate. What about the wedding? And, who would ever consider such a goofy proposition?! In fact, this is THE reason that "Heather and Yon" fails just like the original. Despite Clyde's best efforts and a few cute moments, it just doesn't work.

By the way, in the scene where a fellow inmate is trying to cut away the bars to free Andy's head, that's Snub Pollard, another silent star who made a ton of pictures...even more than Clyde...over 600 in fact!!!

Reporter Jack Norton knows who committed a murder, and he wants to go after the man without the police interfering and killing his story. So he convinced Andy Clyde to confess to the murder. Andy has a hard time convincing judge Vernon Dent he did it. By the time he does, Norton is reported missing in an air crash.

It's a remake of Buster Keaton's Educational Pictures short JAIL BAIT. The site I saw this on claims that, in turn, was a remake of a Frank McHugh short for RKO, THE HOT SPOT. To complete the insanity, you might claim that Fritz Lang's last American feature, BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT, was a remake of this.

All of which goes to show there are few new ideas for stories, so it's what you do with the details that matters. Here, Andy's slow reactions to the fast-paced insanity around him is a lot of fun.