Blondie on a Budget

BLONDIE ON A BUDGET (Columbia, 1940), directed by Frank R. Strayer, the fifth installment of the popular family series based on Chic Young's comic strip characters, is notable mostly for an early screen appearance from the up and coming starlet named Rita Hayworth, guest starring as Dagwood's former girlfriend who comes over for a visit on a business deal.

Saving the typical routines for the finish, namely Dagwood rushing out of the house on his way to work and knocking down the postman (Irving Bacon) on the walk, the story begins at the breakfast table where the Bumsteads are gathered together with Blondie (Penny Singleton) going over the family budget. Marvin Williams (Don Beddoe), the next door neighbor, wants Dagwood to join the Swan Lake Trout Club, and membership fee is $100. The only way to join the club and go fishing with the guys is by asking Blondie for the money, but her heart set on getting a fur coat. Joan Forrester (Rita Hayworth) enters the scene, ringing the front door and attracting the attention of neighbor child Alvin Fuddow (Danny Mummert), whom Joan mistakes for Baby Dumpling (Larry Simms). While her visit is actually regarding a business deal between her and Dagwood, Blondie's jealous nature has her believing otherwise, agreeing to give Dagwood the money to join the trout club. When Dagwood and Joan leave together in her car, complications give way when Joan's car breaks down. It gets tolled to the garage, causing the couple to spend the afternoon at the movies (her treat) until the car is repaired. While at the theater, Dagwood enters a raffle, which he wins, but is in a position not to reveal how or why since he was with Joan at the time. With the winnings, he decides to surprise Blondie with a fur coat she's been wanting, having Joan trying it on for size at the department store the very moment Blondie arrives to witness this. Naturally, Blondie misunderstands, packs up her belongings, leaves a "Dear John" letter for Dagwood, and takes Baby Dumpling with her bound to find an attorney to get herself a divorce.

Amusing at times, silly at others, BLONDIE ON A BUDGET main asset happens to be youthful beauty of Rita Hayworth, six years before her super-stardom as GILDA (1946). Comedy highlights include Dagwood avoiding from being seen in public with his ex-girlfriend (at one point placing his hands over his face), with guilt setting in when at the movie theater as he sits back to see every woman seated around him in the vision of Blondie; Alvin Fuddow's attempt in pulling out Baby Dumpling's loose tooth from his mouth, demonstrating the method by attaching the tooth to a string tied to a door, with Alvin losing his tooth instead as Blondie closes the door; Daisy the pooch getting drunk by slurping some dripping leftover champagne from the bottle; and Baby Dumpling asking ticket attendants at a bus station for any old dollar bills they don't need. Don Beddoe makes a second appearance in the series as Marvin Williams. As loyal as husbands can be towards their fellow married men, his Marvin helps Dagwood, who is supposed to be at the trout club, by impersonating his voice over the telephone (with Lake's voice in soundtrack) when Blondie calls looking for him. He makes one mistake by addressing Blondie as "Lovey," which Dagwood never does. Marvin's impersonation of voices gets a bit far-fetched when he perfectly impersonates Blondie's voice for Dagwood.

One of the very few entries not to include Dagwood's boss, Mr. Dithers, nor to take place at the office. It does, however, introduce Alvin's father, Edward Fuddow, played for the only time by character actor John Qualen, appearing during the final minutes of the story. Other performers worth mentioning include Fay Helm (Mrs. Fuddow); Thurston Hall (District Attorney Bryce); William Brisbane (The Theater Manager); and Willie Best filling in for the regular newspaper delivery boy, rushing away on his bike when he sees Daisy chasing after him, believing the dog out to attack him instead of retrieving the newspaper from his hand.

At this point, the leading actors have grown accustomed to their roles, with the series improving with each passing film. Will Blondie go on with her divorce? Will Dagwood go off with Joan? Will Baby Dumpling be able to collect those old dollar bills? Will Daisy be admitted to Dog-aholics Anonomis? Find out when purchasing this movie either on the VHS or DVD format. BLONDIE ON A BUDGET is another one of the few in the series to not be restored to its original theatrical opening and closing credits when presented on American Movie Classics as part of its lineup of Family Classics every Sunday from 1996 to 2001. With or without Rita Hayworth, BLONDIE ON A BUDGET should be a satisfactory entry for fans of the series. Next installment: BLONDIE HAS SERVANT TROUBLE without Rita Hayworth. (**)

Back in the days of the strict Production Code, Hollywood had a lot of rules about sexuality in films. Kisses needed to be brief and chaste, bad girls needed to ultimately be punished and couples NEVER were in the same bed together...even if they were married. As a result, you see many married couples with separate beds...which makes you wonder HOW these couples ever got children! Well, there are separate beds in this one...and, for once, I would have wanted this as Blondie seemed unusually grouchy in this installment of the Blondie and Dagwood series. Of course, Dagwood gave her some reasons to be grouchy...but didn't he always?!

In the midst of Blondie and Dagwood disagreeing on how to spend their money (Blondie wants a new coat, Dagwood wants to join a fishing club), an old flame of Dagwood's shows up at the house. Joan (Rita Hayworth*) drops by and almost instantly Blondie is jealous and assumes the worst. And, the rest of the film involves Dagwood telling a couple of innocent lies and Blondie assuming the absolute worst....and stomping off for a divorce (the second time in the series).

I think I liked this one a bit less than usual...mostly because Blondie just seemed grouchier and very insecure. Sure, Dagwood is an idiot...but that's not new. Not a bad film but just a bit darker and more unpleasant than it should be. Also, the bit with the neighbor imitating Blondie and Dagwood's voices was really stupid.

*Can anyone on this planet believe that a dope that looks like Arthur Lake could ever catch a woman that looks like Rita Hayworth unless he was, perhaps, a mega-millionaire?!

Dagwood is trying to sweet talk Blondie, who is working seriously on the household budget, into giving him $200. After seeing his father put too much sugar into the coffee, Baby Dumpling spills the beans and tells his mother that Daddy wants the money for the Trout Club. Blondie wanted a new coat. Alvin walks in to offer social comfort, but when he offers to answer the front door, who should it be but Rita Hayworth. Here's where the fun begins. Isn't that taxi driver talented with impersonations? By the way, Baby Dumpling has his first wiggly tooth. The next film in the series is BLONDIE HAS SERVANT TROUBLE.

Bit by bit, I totally believe that the Blondie series is one of the most seriously neglected film series of all time, there were, I don't know, 20? films (actually, 28 now that I've looked it up) and I've seen 5 of them, and they've all be charming, with amazing chemistry with the leads, plenty of humor and smartness, without treating the audience like idiots. In this one, what could have been a one joke movie (Blondie is jealous of Dagwood's old flame popping by for a visit) turns out to be quite a clever and funny series of events. It just so happens the old flame is played by Rita Hayworth in one of those "Before They Were Famous" roles. She's quite magnetic, and actually adds, but surprisingly doesn't distract what is going on. One of the best in the series. Some great shots of an old time movie theatre too.

In this Blondie film, Daisy the dog gets drunk on champagne and performs some of the most incredible 'drunken' antics ever carried out by an animal on film. There is one scene where we first see a chair from floor level (the dog's eye view) going in and out of focus to show us how drunk Daisy is, and then in a continuous shot, Daisy leaps up onto that chair, slides off, falls, undergoes drunken contortions, and then leaps up onto the chair again. The only clue I could gather as to how this was done is that the seat of the chair seemed to be covered with oil and hence slippery. But that does not explain the miracles of dog training involved. Also, as anyone who watches Blondie films knows very well, Daisy often lifts both long ears in astonishment, but in this film for the first time she lifts only a single ear, a kind of canine variation on the arched single eyebrow of human wags. However, lest anyone think Daisy is the only person on screen, I rush to assure everyone that the usual crowd are there and just as comical as ever. And they are joined by Rita Hayworth who plays Joan, an old girlfriend of Dagwood's. She is as vampish as possible, in a comedic fashion, and Blondie becomes insanely jealous, from which most of the comic situations of the story then flow. This must have just taken only a couple of days' filming for Lovely Rita, who made several films this year including ANGELS OVER Broadway(see my review). The comedy this time is rather more situational than in the preceding five films, with fewer sight gags apart from Daisy's antics. For instance, much of the story revolves around mistaken conclusions drawn from a coat hanging in a closet, and Joan trying on the coat in a shop while Dagwood watches (Blondie assumes the treacherous Dagwood is buying the coat she longs for instead for Joan, whereas Joan is really only trying it on to make sure he gets the right size for Blondie.) So it is a bit more like a French bedroom farce than we have encountered heretofore in the Blondie films. Also, there is a rather wild departure in that characters impersonate other characters and have the real character's voices dubbed over their lip movements. This is overdone, and not as funny as Frank Strayer the director thought. Perhaps he was getting bored on his sixth Blondie film and watched to lash out with something new. Penny Singleton (Blondie) looks a bit tired for the first time, and Arthur Lake (Dagwood) also looks a bit more dazed than usual, as if he is being given no time off from the relentless schedule of the Blondie series. In this film there are no scenes at the office, and we do not see Mr. Dithers. It must have been his time for a break. Larry Simms as Baby Bumpling has many funny scenes with his chum Alvin, mostly with the two of them standing and watching the crazy grownups as they carry on, and making wry cracks about them such as: 'They're doing it again.' Having the tiny tots acting as if they are visitors to a zoo or a madhouse, and being the only ones who keep their heads, in itself hilarious. But we are nowhere near the end of this series. There are twenty more films to go, and plenty of fun in store.