Blondie Brings Up Baby

This story of the adventures and misadventures of the Bumstead family starts with an unusual premise. It's Blondie getting conned rather than Dagwood that starts the ball rolling in Blondie Brings Up Baby.

It's another day at the Bumstead house with Arthur Lake running late and plowing into hapless mailman Irving Bacon. Penny Singleton falls victim to the cunning wiles of encyclopedia salesman Olin Howland who convinces her that Baby Dumpling is a genius. Larry Simms will need these books as an aid as he starts school early.

Of course no Blondie film would be complete without Dagwood fouling up on the job. He falls into a scheme whereby the Dithers Construction company gets stuck with a building they built when Dagwood made changes that the prospective owner never officially signed off on. Of course that all works out as well in the end.

Last but not least poor Baby Dumpling can't keep his precocious mind on school with Daisy the dog having run away and then be picked up by the dogcatcher. Daisy gets adopted by little Peggy Ann Garner, a girl with polio. That all works out as well rather touchingly.

Some pathos in Blondie Brings Up Baby as well as the usual laughs at Arthur Lake's expense.

The Blondie films were absolute classics of American comedy, and I hope that one day they will receive their due recognition. The plots of the Blondie films were constructed with the greatest of care, and were complex and always involved more than one story line going on at once in each episode of the series. Certain continuous threads of plot extended through each episode (there were 28 episodes in total) and these threads could be picked up at any time and carried forward, to enormous comic effect. Sometimes, as in Episode Three, Dagwood's office environment does not appear at all. Wonderful characters are sometimes created for a single episode, such as the fabulous character played by Gene Lockhart in Episode One, and then they drop out of sight forever. This was the continuous injection of novelty which kept the series fresh and unpredictable, so that there was always something new and exciting turning up, and then they would move on to the next new and exciting thing. In other words, this was a series that was always 'on the move', developing in an organic fashion, and hence very much alive. The sense of fun was always there, fed with the new and unexpected at every turn. This fourth episode is as hilarious as ever, with even more outrageous plot variations appearing. In this episode, the boy next door named Alvin (played by Danny Mummert, who has now learned to regard adults with a supercilious eye, which adds to the comedy effect) is portrayed as a precocious budding intellectual, who aged five quotes Samuel Johnson: 'Intelligence is always superior to force'. He says this to Dagwood, whom he calls 'a dumbbell'. Blondie pouts and gets jealous that the little boy next door may be cleverer than her own Baby Dumpling, aged four. At that point Alvin makes it possible to open the front door, which was 'stuck' so that neither Dagwood nor Blondie could open it, simply by turning the top lock. In walks a door to door encyclopaedia salesman, who offers a free intelligence test to the two children. The results are that Baby Dumpling turns out to be a genius, and the man pronounces: 'He has an IQ of 168, which is thirty points above the genius level.' Blondie phones Dagwood at the office to tell him this, and Dagwood panics and rushes out of the office shouting: 'I have to go home immediately! Baby Dumpling is ill. He has an IQ of 168!' Blondie insists that because Baby Dumpling is a genius, he must go to school immediately, so she and Dagwood lie about his age and have him enrolled. He refuses to be accompanied to school by anyone but Daisy the dog (whose antics are as cute as ever, including her raised ear trick). However, this leads to a traumatic incident where the waiting Daisy is captured by the officers of the Dog Pound and disappears, causing havoc amongst the Bumstead family. The Dog Pound sells Daisy to the nurse of a rich man whose daughter is in a wheelchair. Baby Dumpling, wandering around the streets looking for Daisy, hears her barking through a huge iron gate leading to a great house with a large lawn, goes in, and is reunited. The invalid girl's father is furious that the nurse let his child have a dog, as he thought dogs were bad for people. Meanwhile, Dagwood has been set up by an unscrupulous property developer during Mr. Withers's absence on holiday and tricked into making alterations to a building design in good faith which the man intends to use as a pretext to get out of a contract because he is secretly going bust. However, after Baby Dumpling coaxes the invalid girl into walking and playing, aided by the jovial company of Daisy, the rich father decides in his joy to build a children's' home with kennels for dogs included. However, he needs a design. Dagwood's design for the crooked builder has been rejected and he has had it carry it home. He dumps it over his front fence and Blondie, who had been weeding on her knees at that very spot, gets encapsulated. This is a very good sight-gag. This design ends up being enthusiastically adopted by the rich man, thus saving Dagwood's job, as Dithers has just fired him again, but quickly re-hires him and gives him a bonus. All of these shenanigans are directed with pace and style, as usual, by Frank R. Strayer, who did the previous three episodes and was to go on to do three more before leaving the Blondie series. Strayer deserves a great deal of the credit for making the Blondie films crisp, funny, and fast. Larry Simms as Baby Dumpling is just as outrageous and cute and funny as ever. Arthur Lake is, well, he is Dagwood. And Penny Singleton (the pre-War version of January Jones) is superb as usual as the dominant Blondie, who while keeping all the men and babies in order has her own moments of feminine frailty and looks weepily at her departing child on his way to school, sensing the fleeting joys of parenthood. Daisy plays Daisy with the same poise and personality as ever, and it is certain that her Dog IQ was even higher than 168. What a wonderful addition to the Blondie series this episode was. In this one, the postman plans various devious ways of avoiding the inevitable collision with Dagwood in the mornings, but all his best-laid plans fail comically. There is simply no way for any postman to avoid the Dagwood Menace, and the bumbling chaos of Dagwood's behaviour spreads like peanut butter over the entire proceedings. But the hopeless Dagwood is so lovable, and Blondie adores him so much, that we forgive him everything. And so we continue to watch the endlessly fascinating spectacle of Blondie bringing up both baby and husband.

In this movie there is a scene when Baby Dumpling comes home from school with a blackeye. Dagwood picks him up and brings him over to the mirror to look at the blackeye. During their conversation at the mirror, Dagwood tells Baby Dumpling that although they call him baby dumpling, his "real name is Dagwood, named after me".

Just when the new mailman thought he had a new clever idea to deliver the mail to the Bumsteads without the letters literally becoming air mail, here comes Dagwood again! Alvin (Danny Mummert) is back to visit his pal Baby Dumpling (Larry Simms) to exert his intelligence. Today is Baby Dumpling's first day in school and not all goes well. The next film in the series is BLONDIE ON A BUDGET.

Goofy adventure with the Bumsteads, this episode featuring some poignant moments coupled with a Three Stooges-like plot, all worked around Dagwood.

Baby Dumpling is the center of attention, first being hailed as a child genius by a door to door salesman? Everything changes when Daisy wanders off, Baby goes looking for her and disappears. Is there a kidnapper on the loose?

Murphy's Law where everything goes haywire, and really fast. In a sentimental twist, it turns out Baby finds Daisy at the home of a girl confined to a wheelchair (played by Peggy Ann Garner). The two become friends, Dagwood meanwhile is searching for him and gets mistaken (very easily) for the kidnapper? The insane question; how could he look suspicious and goofy at the same time? A recurring theme in many more episodes to come.

Arthur Lake steals lots of scenes here. Even though the story is centered around Baby and Melinda, Dagwood gets himself into some bizarro complications that could lead to him going to prison for life!

Written by Gladys Lehman, one of the founders of the Screen Writers Guild, associated with many classics, later writing MEET JOE BLACK for Brad Pitt. Peggy Ann Garner does a wonderful job here, who would go on to win a special Oscar. She appeared in scores of top films; JANE EYRE, A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN and DAISY KENYON.

Check out the early film posters for these episodes, beautifully designed with a cartoon slant, saluting the comic strip series.

10 Stars. EPISODE 4 remastered. The BLONDIE films are packaged in dvd box sets, either separate episodes or the full series. Thanks again to MOVIES Net for running these classic episodes Saturday mornings.