Li'l Abner

OK, so this is as hokey as they come, but really sort of enjoyable. Jeff York as Li'l Abner is good, and Martha O'Driscoll as Daisy Mae is beautiful, so how can you go wrong?

This film spends about the first 30 minutes establishing the locations and characters, and the final 43 minutes resolving the (thin) plot structure that revolves around both a Sadie Hawkins day race and Earthquake McGoon's capture and subsequent escape. The final 10 minutes are really fast paced with Wendy Wildcat and Daisy chasing after poor L'il Abner as he attempts to evade marriage.

Hey, not a classic, but not bad either.

I was pleasantly surprised watching this comedy for a number of reasons. First, it was not as low budget and amateurish as I expected. It was actually a quite respectable B movie with make-up, sets, stunts and camera-work that matched the level of W.C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy features of the time.

Second, Buster Keaton's short role prefigured the third banana roles he would play in the American International Beach Movies of the 1960's. His on-screen time is less than five minutes, still, I suspect he had a lot more to do with the production of the movie than his bit part would indicate. The gags have a Keatonesque quality. For example the ending scenes of the women chasing men are reminiscent of the ending scenes in his "Seven Chances." The world of Dogpatch has a self contained, parody of the intellectual world quality, as does many of the comedic worlds created by Keaton (See his "Three Ages" for example.

The humor in the movie foreshadows the hillbilly humor of the 1960's television series, "The Beverly Hillbillies." A recent Lucille Ball biog movie suggested that Keaton had played a major part in the success of the 1950's television series "I Love Lucy." If Keaton did play a role in designing some of the gags in this movie, one might suggest that Keaton was in some sense responsible for a great deal of the successful comedies of the 1950's and 1960's.

On the other hand, the producers might have hired them only because they liked his silent film work and he might not have had any input to the film other than his two or three days on set in his bit part. I wonder if anybody else has any information about the role Keaton played in this still charming movie.

I had the DVD of this version of Al Capp's comic strip for years but it's only been now that I even bothered to watch it. The reason was because since I've been reviewing the Our Gang shorts-and films outside the series featuring at least one member from the series in it-in chronological order, this was next on the list. In this case, former member Mickey Daniels has a cameo in which he does his famous laugh. I also found out that a few supporting characters from various eps of the series are also in this movie like Johnny Arthur (Spanky's father in Anniversary Trouble, Darla's father in Night 'n' Gales and Feed 'Em and Weep), Hank Mann (Drunk worker at train station in Alfalfa's Double, Butch's father in Bubbling Troubles), Marie Blake (Butch's mother in Practical Jokers, the title role in Alfalfa's Aunt), and Edgar Kennedy (the cop in various OG shorts that starred Jackie Cooper). Of them all, only Kennedy was funny enough to me. There's some amusing sound effects and some pretty good visual gags and silent comedian Buster Keaton wasn't too bad with what he was given. In summary, this version of Li'l Abner was okay as entertainment.

Al Capp's cartoon strip was so satirically acidic that he was constantly being threatened with suit by the public figures he parodied--and at least one, Joan Baez, actually took him to court. But viewers needn't expect much of Capp's celebrated wit in this 1940 cinematic take on the much-celebrated residents of Dogpatch, USA; more silly than clever and more embarrassing than entertaining, L'IL ABNER has been justly neglected for more than a half a century.

Still, it does have a few charms, and most of these are among the cast. Director Albert S. Rogell was a workhorse of the silent era, and the film is crammed to overflowing with a host of silent actors taking one more shot at fame--with the great Buster Keaton the most celebrated name on the roster. Sad to say, they are largely wasted, but we're at least given a chance to see them once more, a decade after their stars faded.

The most successful members of the cast are actually the younger players, with Jeff York (billed as Granville Owen) unexpectedly effective in actually looking the part of L'il Abner himself. Martha O'Driscoll is merely acceptable as Daisy Mae, but Billie Seward strikes all the right notes as the man-hungry Cousin Delightful. And now and then a moment "pops" enough for you to see a little of what made Capp's concepts so wickedly funny.

The plot is standard Capp, but it lacks Capp's bite: Daisy Mae loves Abner, Cousin Delightful wants him for herself, and Abner prefers pork chops. In terms of production values, the film was very obviously done on the cheap, and Rogell's direction is hardly inspired: not only is the camera static, the pace is positively leaden. Fans of the original strip will probably find it a guilty pleasure, but even they will likely admit that this is Al Capp with both fangs pulled.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

I came across the budget DVD of this one some time back though I never got around to renting it, not so much because of, say, Leonard Maltin’s lowly opinion but rather the unavailability of the later and better-known musical version from 1959. Consequently, I’d previously been interested in it more as a Buster Keaton film (in fact, many a Silent comedian make an appearance here) than as an adaptation of the Al Capp comic strip – but, having now found the latter as well, I decided to make it a double-bill! In retrospect, Keaton’s role is minor (playing the Indian Lonesome Polecat who has a long-haired and eyeless giant for a sidekick) despite the ballyhoo regarding his presence on the DVD front cover.

Still, despite its intrinsic cornball nature, the film proved less oppressive than I had anticipated: being a low-budget production and a brief 73 minutes in length, the plot (as seen in the musical version) has been considerably streamlined – focusing solely on the Sadie Hawkins’ Day race (where the unwedded females of Dogpatch pursue the community’s eligible bachelors) and the character of the villainous Earthquake McGoon. Even so, the piece’s essence is already there – including the unexpected earthiness of the girls; it goes without saying, however, that the later film is the more satisfactory rendition of LI’L ABNER.