Mill Creek comedy classics #10: "Here Comes Trouble" (1948)

The poster promises "gay new Cinecolor," but Here Comes Trouble is strictly black-and-white.

The flick: Here Comes Trouble (United Artists, 1948) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 5.6

Director: Fred Guiol (Hay Foot, Why Girls Love Sailors, 45 Minutes from Hollywood)

Actors of note: William Tracy (Hay Foot, The Phantom of the Opera, Alfred Hitchcock's Mr. and Mrs. Smith), Joe Sawyer (Hay Foot, Gilda, How the West Was Won), Emory Parnell (The Maltese Falcon, The Andromeda Strain, and so much more), Betty Compson (Mr. and Mrs. Smith, A Slight Case of Murder), Joan Woodbury (The Bride of Frankenstein, The Ten Commandments)

The gist of it: Officious yet gullible Dorian "Dodo" Doubleday (Tracy), returning to civilian life after a stint in the Army, picks up his old life where he left it, i.e. working as a newspaper copy boy at the Tribune and romancing his boss' lovely brunette daughter, Penny. Penny's father, irritable newspaper editor "Windy" Blake (Parnell), despises Doubleday and thus promotes him to the dangerous job of police reporter, hoping that the local gangsters -- angered by the newspaper's anti-mob crusade -- will kill him. On his new beat, Doubleday runs into his old Army buddy, Ames (Sawyer), a big palooka who's recently joined the police force and is so desperate to make good that he's arresting everyone in sight. Despite their total ineptitude at virtually everything, Doubleday and Ames find themselves at the center of a major news story involving organized crime, a shady burlesque theater, a sexy dancer named Bubbles La Rue (Woodbury), blackmail, bribery, and a diary which could bring down the city's crime boss.

A more serious approach.

My take: A kind of goofball, funhouse-mirror version of The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Here Comes Trouble focuses on the plight of veterans returning home from World War II and trying to reestablish themselves in America. Like the characters in that Oscar-winning film, Doubleday and Ames have to contend with personal and professional strife, but here it's played for lighthearted slapstick rather than pathos. Exploding cigars, sneezing clowns, and accidental judo flips are the order of the day here. Despite the wholesomeness of Doubleday, the ultimate goody-two-shoes, Here Comes Trouble has a surprising undercurrent of sex and violence. It's strongly implied, for instance, that Mr. Blake cheated on his insufferable wife (Compson) with Bubbles at a convention in Chicago and will do anything to keep this information a secret. And Blake's total nonchalance at sending Doubleday to be murdered by thugs is, to say the least, eye-opening for what is supposed to be a carefree romp. Far from being patriotic or reassuring, Here Comes Trouble presents America as a place where the police are incompetent, the so-called "crusading" newspaper editor is actually kind of a dirtbag (his reporters seem like pretty slimy guys, too), and a city's real business is conducted in hushed tones behind closed doors. You have to wonder how Mr. Blake made enough money to afford the seemingly palatial mansion where he and his family live. The Tribune's motto, written in a very stylish art deco font on the wall of the bullpen, goes: "Is it news? Is it interesting? Is it fit to read?" Compare that to the more-direct motto of the small-town paper in Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole (1951): "Tell the truth." The cops, meanwhile, are seemingly impotent against an organized crime ring which has permeated the town, even its legitimate businesses, and everyone -- Penny included -- is all too quick to believe that the totally-innocent Doubleday is a murderer. In short, it's a pretty rotten country we've provided for our returning GIs. On the plus side, Mr. Blake has a very nice private bathroom adjoining his office, complete with a shower. In its glory days, print journalism was quite a racket. One last thought here: is the fate of Bubbles La Rue meant to be some kind of moral judgment on her character and, if so, what does that say about gender roles and sexual politics in the 1940s?

Is it funny: For the most part, yes. Certain sequences in Here Comes Trouble, particularly a scene with Doubleday and Bubbles winding up together in Mr. Blake's bathroom while the oblivious Mrs. Blake visits her nervous husband's office, had me laughing out loud. Others, like a scene in which Doubleday's fellow reporters haze him by ruining his new clothes and smearing his face with black ink, just didn't work for me. The ending of Here Comes Trouble is almost exactly the same as that of All Over Town: a murderer runs around a theater trying to evade capture while the cops and all the other characters stumble all over each other in a madcap pursuit, and the audience just thinks they're being treated to a great show. This final sequence goes on too long and deflates the comedy just a bit in the home stretch, but I have to admit I chuckled when Doubleday managed to lose his trousers and ended up in his striped boxer shorts for the last five minutes of the flick. Underwear is always comedy gold.

My grade: B+



P.S. - Yes, there is one stereotypical Negro in a menial role here. This time, it's an elevator operator who reacts with wide-eyed astonishment at Doubleday, who is blissfully unaware that his coworkers have made him look like a bearded hobo.

Mill Creek comedy classics #5: "Hay Foot" (1942)

William Tracy and Joe Sawyer square off in Hay Foot.

The flick: Hay Foot (United Artists, 1942) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 5.7

Director: Fred Guiol (several Laurel & Hardy shorts including Their Purple Moment, Sailors Beware and Sugar Daddies; later a screenwriter whose credits include Giant and Gunga Din.)

Actors of note: William Tracy (Angels with Dirty Faces, The Shop Around the Corner), Joe Sawyer (The Killing, Grapes of Wrath, and much, much more), James Gleason (Arsenic and Old Lace, Night of the Hunter), Noah Beery Jr. (Red River, Inherit the Wind, TV's The Rockford Files), Elyse Knox (The Mummy's Tomb), Douglas Fowler (Singin' in the Rain, The Thin Man)

The gist of it: Clever young Sgt. "Dodo" Doubleday (Tracy) is long on book smarts but short on street smarts. His encyclopedic knowledge of weaponry and his photographic memory help him win the favor of blustery Col. Barkley and Barkley's pretty daughter, Betty, but the poor dope is too mild-mannered to even fire a real gun. Meanwhile, the more brusque and worldly (read: crude and stupid) Sgt. Ames (Sawyer), who considers himself "the best shot in the Army," wants to prove that Doubleday's a fraud and win the favor of both the colonel and the daughter at the same time.

My take: Hay Foot is sort of an early 1940s military version of Revenge of the Nerds, with a goofy but likable brainiac outwitting some thuggish, dim-witted jock types again and again. This curiously brief feature (clocking in at a mere 43 minutes) feels more like an extended episode of a situation comedy than a feature film. And, sure enough, UA churned out a whole series of lighthearted service comedies revolving around Sgt. Doubleday and Sgt. Ames from 1941 to 1943 includingo Tanks a Million, About Face, and Yanks Ahoy. Supporting players like Noah Beery (Jim's dad on The Rockford Files) and James Gleason came and went, but Tracy and Sawyer were in it for the long haul. In 1948, several years after World War II had ended, United Artists brought back Doubleday and Ames one last time as civilians in Here Comes Trouble, which is also included in this Comedy Classics boxed set. A few years later, even-lower-budget Lippert Pictures brought Tracy and Sawyer back for two more military comedies, and the series finally ended in 1952 with Mr. Walkie Talkie, the eighth installment in the "Doubleday" franchise. It's kind of odd that there's not even a mention of the war in Europe in Hay Foot, the second film in the series, but this is light entertainment, not war propaganda. The strangest thing about this movie is that it seems to end one scene too early. There's a big sharpshooting contest mentioned in the dialogue, but we never get to see it. A shame, too, because it would have been the perfect opportunity for Doubleday to redeem himself as a marksman. As for the film's title, it's never actually said aloud by any of the characters, but it's a Civil War term for a "green recruit," i.e. an inexperienced soldier. Here's an American Heritage article all about it.

Burns & Smithers: One of the great comedy teams.

Is it funny: Yeah, for the most part. I laughed pretty much all the way through Hay Foot at both the verbal and physical humor, and it's always fun to see the little guy make a monkey out of the big guy. Plus the colonel and Doubleday have kind of a "Burns and Smithers" dynamic going on (minus the sexual undertones). But the film has a bad habit of setting up jokes in a very obvious manner and then repeating them until they lose their appeal.  Case in point: Betty sends a dinner invitation addressed only to "the best shot in the Army." It's intended for Doubleday, but Ames and his crony Sgt. Cobb (Beery) find it, too, and since they both consider themselves to be the Army's greatest sharpshooter, all three men show up at Betty's doorstep. Okay, fine, but Hay Foot shows each of the three men discovering the invitation individually, and the script requires them to explain aloud what's happening even though there's no one else in the room to hear it. (The dialogue is always something to the effect of: "What's this? A dinner invitation for the best shot in the Army? That's me!") By the third time, you want to shout, "Yeah, we get it already! Let's move on!" But I'm nitpicking. Hay Foot has some good-natured fun at the Army's expense (as usual, the top brass are morons), and the movie even has a cute little dog who thinks he's people. He stands on his hind legs and everything! That's always funny. Plus, if you think it's hilarious to watch guys being thrown out of windows, you need to watch this movie immediately. Hay Foot repeats that particular gag so often that it almost plays like defenestration fetish porn.

My grade: B



P.S. - Any negative racial stereotype characters here? Well, there's one heavyset African-American maid, but she doesn't have any dialogue. I'll say no.