So You Think You're Not Guilty

George O'Hanlon is on the hook for a $2 traffic fine. But being O'Hanlon, he insists he is not guilty and hires jailed lawyer Ted Stanhope to defend him.

It's based on an old vaudeville skit in which a man's lawyer insists on fighting a traffic ticket. While the man keeps saying "Pay the $2!" the situation grows worse until he's going to be executed.

This being one of Richard Bare's absurd short, the situation includes blind eye-witnesses, and O'Hanlon caught up in a jailbreak. There's lots of fun in this episode, which got a well deserved Oscar nomination. With Phyllis Coates, Douglas Fowley, Fred Kelsey and Paul Panzer.

I can't say I found this particularly amusing since the Joe McDoakes character is extremely irritating and foolish to resist paying the $2 and going free by putting up protests until he lands in jail on a ten-year sentence. GEORGE O'HANLON is Joe in this series that was popular during the '50s.

It's a cliché ridden script--done much more briskly by Edward Arnold and Victor Moore in MGM's "Ziegfeld Follies of 1946" wherein Moore is the stubborn man who ends up in jail for not paying the two dollars, in a skit called "Pay the Two Dollars!"

It's moderately amusing but not hilarious, as intended. DOUGLAS FOWLEY (best remembered as the over-excited director in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN), has an uncredited bit.

Too many of the gags, built around one theme, fall flat.

IN MUCH THE same manner as a snowball's rolling down the proverbial hill will grow and continue to do so, this story begin in a seemingly insignificant incident. It does so and before one realizes it grows into a giant, incontrollable nightmare.

WE FOUND THIS installment of the MC DOAKES Saga to be particularly relevant today; that being some 65+ years later. Although so many things in life change and disappear into near oblivion, others seem to maintain s certain of immortality of their own. One of these is the Traffic Ticket.

OUR STORY TODAY is quite simple in its basic premise and its construction. Simply stated: Mc Doakes get cited by foot patrolman, Officer Flannigan (Don C. Harvey). Joe argues that the traffic signal in question was defective (it was, we saw it-right, Schultz?). No one at any level of local municipal government ever sees it his way; not the cops, not the magistrate in Traffic Court, not the Judge or even the Jury at his self requested trial.

FANTASTICALLY, HE WINDS up in the "Big House". This gives the production team to do a little spoofing of the old Prison Film genre as well as to utilize some stock footage from the WB vaults.

ONE REFRESHING ASPECT of this installment of the series was the street scenes. A bright Southern California beat down on the Warner Brothers' Studio's city street set; where the use of several other automobiles gave a real urban look and made the short appear somehow more expensive.

ONCE AGAIN WE are treated to the presence of a fine group of supporting players. Forming sort of a MC DOAKES repertory company are: Fred Kelsey, Phyllis Coates (as Alice Mc Doakes), Jack Mower, Paul Panzer, Ralph J. Sanford and Willard Waterman.

DARE WE REFER back to the second paragraph before we say "Bye-bye?" We stated that there is probably more identifiable with the people today than most any other MC DOAKES outings. Simply stated, the Traffic ticket (Moving violation or parking) is one thing in life that will always be there. Like the proverbial "Death and Taxes", it is the first thing that the Good Citizen thinks about when he hears the word "POLICE!"

Talk about turning a drama into a crisis! "McDoakes" (George O'Hanlon) and his wife "Alice" (Phyllis Coates) are accused of running a temperamental stop-sign but instead of just paying the $2 fine, he elects for his day in court. That is just the start of the domino effect that sees his misdemeanour end up with him sharing a prison yard with some hardened criminals. Oh if only he had just kept his trap shut and avoided this cumulation of calamities! It's ok, this, even if O'Hanlon over-eggs the cake a bit but I wonder if it might have worked more entertainingly had it been a cartoon? The break neck pace of his bad to worse scenario colourfully and mischievously hand-drawn rather than drawn out? Just goes to show, though - the system always wins.

I just saw this short on TCM. It's a fun short, but nothing terribly exciting or hilarious. It is filled with parodied clichés of lawyer/crime movies almost to the point of exhaustion. Some sight and physical comedic gags do not fit well, and it comes with the type of humor you would expect from a Looney Toon if it were live-humans instead of animated critters.

Our hero pleads "not guilty" until he finds himself facing 10 years in prison. It is at this point, around the 8 minute marker, that this little short finally feels like its taking off the ground but by the time you end your first laugh, our hero is ducking behind the big 8 Ball and "The End" is scribbled across the screen.

Worth watching if only for the sheer enjoyment of it being a short, a long lost cinematic tradition in an age when so many pop-tart films would be served in an 10 minute format.