Sweet Cheat

Dorothy Granger thinks that whenever husband Leon Errol makes a business trip to Buffalo, he has a woman on the side, so she disguises herself and gets Leon to let her travel half-fare.... and then shows up as herself.

It's a very pleasant Errol short from his long-running series at RKO. This time, Miss Granger gets to show off her comic chops and dish slinging, while Leon gets to react to her shenanigans.

Vince Barnett has a small role as a suspicious hotel detective, but the real treat is Jack Rice as Miss Granger's brother, trying to convince her she's wrong about Leon. Usually he spent his time in Edgar Kennedy's RKO series as his brother-in-law, driving Edgar nuts with his laziness and hatefulness. I guess Jack preferred Leon as his sister's husband.

A balding, nervous, hen-pecked husband with a jealous wife in over 100 comedy shorts for RKO, Leon Errol may be best known today for his performances opposite Lupe Velez in the Mexican Spitfire films. I've got dozens of Errol's comedy shorts and love them, although they are best enjoyed one or two at a time as they followed a fairly strict formula. In this one, which is typical of his work over a 15+ year period, he is constantly being sent to Buffalo on business, and his wife (on whom he is NOT cheating!) thinks these trips are a cover for an affair. She decides to follow him to Buffalo, but winds up getting too close to him and pretends to be a widow, wearing a widow's veil that hides her face, so she can travel with him and keep an eye on him. Errol's comic timing and double-takes are wonderful, as is Dorothy Granger, Errol's longtime partner in these films. Like any long running series, some Leon Errol shorts are better than others, but you can probably pick one at random at find it enjoyable. How I wish these were available on cable TV with regularity. Should you ever see a Leon Errol short as a filler on TCM, PLEASE do not change the channel. I just happened to watch this one this afternoon and wanted to share the joy with others--if you don't know his work, find some.

I've seen quite a few of the Leon Errol/Dorothy Granger shorts and one thing has become obvious....most of these pictures are pretty much alike. In nearly all of them, Dorothy is jealous and thinks Leon is cheating on her....and Leon is often up to no good and so the wife is jealous. To do this for a couple shorts would have worked fine, though with "Sweet Cheat" the formula has once again reared its ugly (and familiar) head.

Leon often has to go to Buffalo on business....and his wife assumes this is because he's cheating on her. When she goes to a lawyer and demands a divorce, the lawyer naturally tells her that her husband's trips in and of themselves are NOT evidence of infidelity. So, Dorothy has decided to trap him during one of these trips. To do so, she wears a heavy black veil and talks like a broad impression of a Southern accent. And, as Ms. Granger wasn't an actress with much range, she says 'honey child' in every other sentence and sounds utterly ridiculous. In fact, this shtick was so bad it really took a mediocre plot and lowered it significantly. Familiar yet grating at the same time!