The Nightshirt Bandit

Columbia Pictures' studio style when it came to short subjects was, under the direction of Jules White, often focused on delivering a lot of broad physical slapstick. This converged perfectly with an act like The Three Stooges, but was not necessarily so natural a fit for the usually more sophisticated comedy of Charley Chase, who came over from Hal Roach Studios in 1937.

Sometimes, Chase's own personal style remained apparently intact and he starred in shorts that were similar in tone to his Hal Roach output. He had been brought in to Columbia not just as a comedy actor but for his skills as a writer and director as well, so it's no surprise he had input into the content of his films. "The Nightshirt Bandit," though, was directed by Jules White himself, and the Columbia emphasis on slapstick can definitely be felt. Fortunately, it's not a problem for Charley Chase -- he is such a subtle performer (with a slapstick pedigree from Mack Sennett comedies in the 1910s) that he plays the gags that are grounded in pure physical comedy (having trouble getting dressed in the morning, everyone continually falling down a trap chair into a pool) with believability and flair that puts him above other comics.

The premise of this short is a funny one on its own: Charley is a professor of criminology who is horrified to discover that he is the "nightshirt bandit" who has been terrorizing his college. This is put across, happily, with a good deal of comedy in Chase's specialty vein even as physical gags fly faster than usual, as Charley is placed into outlandishly embarrassing situations the land him, for instance, crawling under the beds in the girls' dormitory.

Unfortunately, Fred "Snowflake" Toones' night-watchman character is on the broader end of racial stereotypes, and the "cowardly black simpleton" humor won't play at all today (and was not very original even in 1938). Largely, though, this is an enjoyable short that shows the signature Charley Chase comedy of situation and character mixing surprisingly well with the violent slapstick of Jules White.

This film is on the second volume of the Charley Chase shorts from Columbia. Interestingly, I noticed that the films became progressively worse as I watched them--like they deliberately stuck the bad ones at the end. This one was pretty bad, as it was amazingly silly (not in a good way) and relied too much on slapstick. In many ways it looked and sounded more like a Three Stooges Short (also from Columbia) than a Chase short.

When the film begins, you learn that there is some weirdo out stealing things. He is a kleptomaniac sleepwalker and the university seems to be his target. So, the Dean goes to the new professor of Criminology, Charley, to find out more about this thief. Little do either know that Charley is the thief--and that night he's back in action. However, this time he awakens and realizes what he's been doing. But by then, it's too late--he's stolen a lot of important stuff--including some of the college funds! To retrieve the money, he needs to sneak into a girls dorm and retrieve the money that was just stolen again by an annoying dog. What follows are a lot of pratfalls and slapping of Charley on the butt.

Does this sound like a Charley Chase film? No. Slapping, falling, hitting and the like, this is pretty much a Stooge-style film and it doesn't work all that well.

On the whole, I tend to prefer Charley Chase's Columbia shorts to his sound shorts at Hal Roach, as Columbia (as usual for them) emphasize physical comedy and the shorts tend to have faster pacing. Here, Chase is a college criminology professor who is called upon to find a sleepwalking bandit on campus--who he soon learns is himself! In an early scene, he is paired with the great Fred "Snowflake" Toones, who plays the night watchman. Of course, Chase winds up being caught in the sorority house. This being a Jules White film, there are great sound effects and all kinds of wild slapstick. THE NIGHTSHIRT BANDIT should appeal to both Chase fans AND Three Stooges fans, since any short directed by Jules White features many qualities he used in his Stooge shorts.