Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) is a thoughtful commentary on the Great Depression masquerading as a screwball comedy.  There are screwballs aplenty, to be sure, but director Frank Capra, as is his wont, manages to show humanity’s noble fight against cynicism in a world full of bad guys lining up to crush us.

Gary Cooper is Mr. Deeds, a flaky, tuba-playing writer of greeting card poems who could be called a misfit except that he fits in very well in the small Vermont community where everybody else is also marching to the beat of their own drum.  It is only when he goes to town – New York City, that he stands out as an oddball.  Mr. Deeds is idealistic, but suspicious of the motives of people who turn out to actually have ulterior motives—making him strangely canny for someone so naïve on the surface.  He is gentle, except for when he belts people in the mouth for pushing his buttons.  He is liberally generous to some, and yet expects to get value from his charity from others and admires those who have enough pride to not ask for his help.

Gary Cooper plays the role that fits him like a glove with such ease and believability that his co-star, Jean Arthur, no less capable in her trademark role as the sassy foil, makes it difficult for us to decide who is the more fascinating.  It is a case, perhaps, of two actors who employ the same method of effortlessly charming us by apparently just amusing themselves. 

Just as he can be a bit vague and preoccupied when spoken to, she also seems distracted by other thoughts, or maybe just has the ability to keep more than one idea in her mind at the same time.  When he is approached by the lawyers for the estate of his deceased uncle, he listens with only one ear, busy with his tuba, or dashing off to the window to watch a passing fire truck.  When her editor speaks to her, Jean Arthur is playing with a piece of rope or a puzzle toy, seemingly not listening but taking in every word he says.  Cooper’s and Miss Arthur’s characters are more alike than even they realize.

Gary Cooper is brought to New York to accept the inheritance left to him, which includes a large mansion and a great fortune.  We see he’s a babe in the woods in the big city, but the estate attorney, played by Douglass Dumbrille, steers him to social obligations and financial investments.  Mr. Dumbrille’s motives are not fiduciary, however.  He attempts to get Cooper to make him power of attorney so that he can control the money and live high off the hog on it, just as he did when the uncle was alive.

Lionel Stander is great in the role of the savvy, snarky man on board to control the press.  He is a gravely-voiced tough guy, with more of East Side in him than the gloss of Mr. Dumbrille, and is as disdainful as he is incredulous that Cooper is unfazed by the fortune and actually seems to not particularly want it.

We are treated to a glimpse of Franklin Pangborn as one of the harried tailors trying to measure and outfit Mr. Cooper as he animatedly discusses business with Mr. Dumbrille.

Jean Arthur is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist given the assignment of getting a story on the new millionaire in town, Mr. Cooper, and she pretends to be a poor soul trudging about town looking for a job.  When Cooper escapes his bodyguards for a bit of freedom, he encounters her one rainy night on the sidewalk in front of his mansion, fainting from hunger.  

He brings her to a cozy restaurant where she is revived with a meal, and after she tells him her story, assuring him she has just gotten a job and starts tomorrow and does not need further help from him, he is charmed, and calls over a violinist playing sad and sweet music.  

Her face, coyly partially hidden under the cloche hat, beams. She is enchanted and he very quickly falls in love.  

His face, reacting to the pleasure of treating her thus, is a marvel of sweetness and boyish enthusiasm.  One of his goals in life is to meet a woman who is a damsel in distress that he may save, and he thinks he has found her.

The romp begins when he recognizes famous literati at the next table and wants to meet them.  They are invited to join the party, mainly because the literary men know he is the famous newly rich composer of greeting card schlock and they want to make fun of his work.  Jean is wary, she’s not sure if he realizes he is being mocked, but he’s not as naïve as he sounds.  He knows very well they are mocking him and he calls them out for their bad manners.  It ends with him throwing punches, but one drunken poet, played by Walter Catlett, who gets a charge out of seeing his colleagues thrashed, befriends Cooper and wants to do the town with him.  Off they go. 

Cooper, introduced to alcohol, spends the evening on a spree, including such antics as feeding a horse a bag of donuts.  He will end up being brought home by two cops without his clothes.  Jean leaves the two drunken fellows with the staff photographers who are sneaking behind them, and heads home to write her article on Cooper, dubbing him “Cinderella Man.”  (However, we know that he’s not the real Cinderella Man; that’s boxer James J. Braddock, who was dubbed thus by writer Damon Runyon the year before Mr. Deeds was released.  See the movie Cinderella Man – 2005.)

Her editor, played by George Bancroft is pleased and wants to know how she managed getting through the bodyguards, the PR tough guy Lionel Stander, and a crop of flunkies.  She remarks offhandedly, “I was the world’s sweetest ingenue.”  She is to be awarded a month’s pay with salary. 

Cooper, reading the headlines the next day, is obviously furious and wants to know whom he can punch (Jean has used a false name with him), but he consoles himself with another date with his dream girl.

They ride the double-decker buses through the city and he gets to see Grant’s Tomb in a lovely moment of wonder and patriotism.  She is moved by his respect for history and great men, and he unknowingly throws a shaft of conscience at her with the remark, “What puzzles me is why people get so much pleasure out of hurting each other.”

On a park bench, they perform a duet of “Swanee River” and “Humoresque” with humming and pretend tuba playing and drumming with sticks on a trash can.  It’s pretty good. I would have liked to see them rehearse that one.

Later, we see Jean’s digs, which she shares with pal Ruth Donnelly, who unfortunately does not have a large role, but we see she is an artist while Jean types her column on a big old typewriter on the coffee table in the living room.  As she composes another hit piece on Cinderella Man, we see she is feeling guilty and having a change of heart.  “I’m crucifying him,” she says, and the theme of the hero being crucified is another favorite Capra trope.  We see it as well in Cooper’s role in Meet John Doe (1941), which we discussed here, and by James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), also starring Jean Arthur, which we discussed here.

But he does make good copy.  He abruptly ends a soiree in his mansion for the opera set, scattering them with disdain and critiquing their pomp.  He writes a poem to Jean that sounds like the opening salvo to a marriage proposal.

Then the inevitable.  Lionel Stander discovers his dream girl and the writer of the articles is the one and the same, and he shows the proof to Gary Cooper, who is stunned, his very stillness and the way the director just lets the film roll is something wonderful.  There were not a lot of male actors who could use their faces as effectively as Cooper.  He truly had an ability to show the character’s innermost soul with his eyes and a very slight twitch of his expression.  We see he is shocked, but also deeply heartbroken as if he might cry.  After what seems like a long while, he turns his back to Stander and faces a window, lightly touching a curtain in an absent way.  

Stander moves us as well with a quiet, “If I knew you were going to take it so hard, I would have kept my mouth shut.  Sorry.”

Cooper, however, is dragged from the depths of despair by a man who breaks into the mansion with a gun.  He is a desperate farmer out of work and he accuses Cooper of being just another heartless millionaire.  He angrily reminds him of the outrageous antic of feeding donuts to a horse.   “You never give a thought to all the people starving,” and that there were people in the world who could not feed their children or themselves.  He is played in this wonderful scene by stage and movie veteran John Wray.  He did nine movies in this year of 1936, all bit parts and most uncredited.  Stander, by the way, did eight this year.

He collapses in tears and apologizes for brandishing a gun, saying he lost his head.  “Standing in the breadlines.  Killed me to take a handout.”  Cooper gets him food and watches him eat.  The wheels begin to turn and he gets an idea of what to do with the fortune he never wanted anyway.

He will offer 100 acres, a horse, a cow, and a plow to as many destitute farmers as his money will provide for, some 2,000, and he sets up headquarters in the grand foyer of his mansion, with staff to help, including the converted Lionel Stander, and soon his home is filled with applicants. 

Douglass Dumbrille is not happy, nor a pretender to the family fortune who shows up with his gold-digger wife late in the game.  Lawyer Dumbrille now brings a suit against Cooper, charging him with insanity and needing to be put under his guardianship.  H.B. Warner is the head judge, and the public hearing is swamped with deponents, expert witnesses, and a whole lot of “forgotten men.”  Jean is there, too, trying to make up to Gary Cooper and to help his case and keep him from being institutionalized.

He wants nothing more to do with her.  He will not even defend himself.  As part of his charge against Cooper’s philanthropy, Douglass Dumbrille builds his case on the aspect even more egregious than insanity: philanthropy itself. (Capra, a conservative Republican, had been once poor himself and did not mind pointing out the flaws in oligarchs.)  “In these times, with the country incapacitated by economic ailments and in danger with an undercurrent of social unrest, the promulgation of such a weird, fantastic, and impractical plan as contemplated by the defendant is capable of fomenting a disturbance from which the country may not soon recover.  It is our duty to stop it. Our government is fully aware of its difficulties.  It is capable of pulling itself up out of its economic rut without the assistance of Mr. Deeds or any other crackpot.”  One wonders if he includes President Roosevelt in that number.  One wonders if Capra did.

Two of the witnesses are a pair of sisters, played by Margaret Seddon and Margaret McWade, from Cooper’s Vermont hometown who insist he is nuts, or “pixilated.”  Afterward, when Cooper addresses them in his cross-examination, we learn they think everyone is pixilated except themselves.

But at first, he will not defend himself and remains stubbornly silent.  It is only when Jean, harassed by Mr. Dumbrille into admitting she loves Cooper, that he relents and gets the gumption to fight for himself.

We have our happy ending when Cooper retains his freedom, his fortune, and is allowed to give it away to help end the Great Depression.  He scoops Jean Arthur up into his arms and inexpertly kisses her. 

We learn that when money is absent, pluck will go a long way to aid in survival.  It might even have been true.

    

*******************************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

 

Children's Wartime Adventure Novels

My non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is available for sale in a new venue which many of you have discovered as a great source for your online book purchases -- Bookshop.org.

In an age where many readers are, for one reason or another, trying to avoid shopping at Amazon or other large online shops, and yet don't have very good access to a local bookstore, there is another option...

Bookshop.org is "An online bookstore that financially supports local independent bookstores and gives back to the book community."  A portion of your online purchase will be donated to a fund supporting independent booksellers, and you can even request that the portion donated from your purchase will go to a specific, favorite local bookstore.  They also have a database on their site that will help you to find local independent bookstores in your area.

Available here online from Bookshop.org (Children’s Wartime Adventure Novels – hardcover - https://bookshop.org/a/116354/9798330314133

Children’s Wartime Adventure Novels  – paperback - https://bookshop.org/a/116354/9798330314942)

Children's Wartime Adventure Novels received the following BookLife review in Publishers Weekly:

"Lynch illuminates a fascinating, little-studied chapter of publishing history in this study of exactly what the title suggests: World War II adventure novels for young American readers, printed during—and in a few cases before—U.S. involvement in the war itself, in which protagonists in their late teens and early 20s set aside the anxieties of youth to do their part to stomp out fascism. In title after title, pilots and soldiers (the men, mostly) and nurses, reporters, WACs, WASPS, WAVES, and more (the women) evince courage, endurance, dedication to the cause, and a savvy sense for identifying fifth columnists. Lynch celebrates the novels' sense of ‘spirited adventure’ and ethos of ‘patriotic self-sacrifice’ while digging into thorny questions of propaganda and indoctrination, including racial and ethnic stereotyping…

“Lynch writes with infectious enthusiasm for the subject, soaring through detailed summaries of the stories of dozens of books like Red Randall at Pearl Harbor, Nancy Blake, Copywriter, and the surprisingly grim nurse adventure Ann Bartlett at Bataan, which is frank about wartime surgery: ‘a tattered mass of flesh and bone.’ Especially engaging are Lynch's considerations of the differences between the novels with girl heroes—these stories of the "protectors of the homefront" sometimes boasted career advice and a ‘surprisingly feminist spark of independence and derring-do’—and the high-flying, battle-oriented novels starring boys…

“Late chapters surveying questions of patriotism and stereotypes across a host of books...offer continual revelations and insights, a rich contribution to the study of American literature and propaganda. These books deserve serious study. Takeaway: Fascinating study of WWII teen adventure novels and the American character.” BookLife review in Publishers Weekly (May 12, 2025)

The book also received reviews by Celeste Schantz at A Reader's Almanac YouTube vlog (starting at 12:00) 

And Meg Perdue at Books Off the Beaten Path YouTube vlog - 

It is also available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

 

Stand Up and Cheer (1934)

Stand Up and Cheer (1934) is a morale-boosting movie about…morale boosting…during the worst years of the Great Depression.  Whether it actually succeeded in spreading optimism could certainly be doubted, but it likely was successful as, at least, a diversion.  The thin plot of a new government office being created to bolster good feeling during the hard times was the framework for a lineup of vaudeville acts and musical numbers that carries us through the end of the movie and the fictional end of the Depression.

Warner Baxter, a driven, hard-working producer (not too unlike the character he played in 42^nd Street the year before), is summoned by the President (who does not sound like FDR) to take over a new cabinet position, Secretary of Amusement (which reminds one, less cheerfully, of the “Secretary of Morale” position grifter and sellout to fascists Andy Griffith was given in A Face in the Crowd – 1957 – which we covered here).  Mr. Baxter arrives at the Capitol Building in an autogyro, a 1920s and 1930s precursor to the modern helicopter.  Someday I’d like to take a look at autogyros in movies and cartoons of that period.

Unlike the role Griffith played, however, Mr. Baxter is no megalomaniac, just a driven workaholic with a passion for the entertainment industry.  He calls for entertainers of all types: circus acts, ballet, vaudevillians, but apparently no “boop-a-doop singers.”  The Roaring Twenties are behind us, and flappers are passé (it’s all about autogyros now).  He calls for auditions from all 48 states, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, which at that time was still a U.S. territory.

Madge Evans plays an underling in charge of the children’s division.  We last saw her as the tragic and touching female lead in Hallelujah, I’m a Bum! (1933) here.  She will eventually become Baxter’s love interest, though there’s hardly any time for that in the continual stream of acts, sometimes coming at us in unexpected ways.  The first, rather startlingly, is when Baxter and Madge Evans are looking at a newspaper, and punching through the big headlines is Nick Foran (whom you may remember better as Dick Foran, changing his first name the following year) singing in a booming baritone, “I’m laughing.” Despite being out of work and down on his luck, this barrel-chested workingman declares that “I’ve got nothing to laugh about, but if I can laugh and sing and shout, brother, so can you!”  His spirited verse launches a montage of people who’ve got nothing to laugh about either, but they still carry on cheerfully, including a farmer, a woman with many children washing laundry on the roof of a tenement, and, most touchingly, a garment worker at her sewing machine in a sweatshop.  

Her moment in the song is not as rollicking; the tempo has slowed, and she is almost whisper-quiet, singing of dreams and future hopes.

The final verse in this song is taken by Aunt Jemima in what appears to be a church hall.  The actress is actually named Tess Gardella, but the corporate logo – for reasons both racial and monetary – was seemingly deemed to take precedence over a real actress.  Aunt Jemima was one of the oldest and most successful corporate logos in the U.S., dating back to 1889 and the Pearl Milling Company.  Pushing their flour product at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, they hired Nancy Green, a former slave, to cook pancakes, tell stories and sing songs in a kind of cozy folklore embodiment of the home goodness of their flour, and Aunt Jemima became a company trademark.  It was certainly not the first capitalist fantasy ever generated in our culture, but it would last longer than most.

The mammy image went through a few transformations over the years, but most curious was the adoption of the name by performers.  To be sure “Aunt Jemima” began as a minstrel character even before she became a corporate trademark, but though several actresses were hired to portray her in company promotions, Tess Gardella, who originated the role of Queenie in the seminal Show Boat (1927) on Broadway, was billed as “Aunt Jemima,” as this was the stage name she used in vaudeville – though she was not connected with the company that made flour and pancake mix.  (Reportedly, a light-skinned woman, she performed often in blackface.)  You can see her here on this YouTube clip.

Another veteran of Show Boat was Stepin Fetchit, who played Joe in the 1929 “part-talky” version.  His real name was, impressively, Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry.  “Stepin Fetchit” was his own vaudeville creation, “The Laziest Man in the World,” and made him one of the highest-paid performers in vaudeville, and his name in the credits of Stand Up and Cheer is more prominent than most of the rest of the cast.  For all that, the stereotype he embellished brought him no good fortune in later years and fell out of favor.  Though I can admire his success in vaudeville and early 1930s films, I confess I find him one of the most annoying characters in this movie or most other movies he appeared in—not because of the insulting stereotype—Hollywood was full of them—but because of the quality of his speaking voice.  To me, it’s like nails on a chalkboard. 

Stepin Fetchit’s part in this movie is to latch on to Warner Baxter and take a job as a guard to keep out the riffraff.  He stumbles about, has a comic struggle babysitting a penguin, and takes a plunge into a large aquarium. 

Strangely, the penguin is voiced-over, muttering complaints, by an actor doing a Jimmy Durante impersonation, wearing Durante’s trademark hat.  One wonders why Mr. Durante himself isn’t in the movie?  Maybe the penguin had a better agent.

Stepin Fetchit isn’t alone in the physical slapstick department; Jack Durant and Frank Mitchell play a couple of bumbling senators who keep up with a stream of nonsense dialogue about a dam project (“We’ve been together on every dam project!”) while they do acrobatic tumbling and throwing each other around Baxter’s office.  It’s quite funny and rather jaw-dropping.  Literally.

Handsome John Boles, in his romantic tenor days, is dressed in a white Naval uniform and sings a love ballad with Sylvia Froos, he with the rolling “r’s” and she looking a little bored.

Look for little Scotty Becket in a brief, uncredited role as one of the child actors under Madge Evans' tutelage.

Warner Baxter runs into a snag when the big business oligarchs (though the term was not commonly used then) try to scuttle his project with a “campaign of ridicule.”  He nearly quits.

I would expect any film buff worthy of the name knows that the real breakout star of the film was little Shirley Temple, who plays the daughter of hoofer James Dunn.  She is a charming moppet—her own trademark, merchandising to follow—and sings a verse of “Baby, Take a Bow” with Mr. Dunn.  Practically before the director could yell, “CUT!”, little Shirley was whisked away into a new movie called Baby, Take a Bow (along with Mr. Dunn), and became the highest box office draw for the next four years.

So memorable a figure she cut in Stand Up and Cheer, that in the film’s finale, after a rather long salute to hillbilly music “Broadway’s Gone Hillbilly,” (which features the always delightful sight of chorus girls dancing on top of New York City skyscrapers), that Shirley takes a solo bow in the big parade in Washington.

This happens when James Dunn rushes into the despondent Warner Baxter’s office and announces that the Depression is over! 

“Factories are opening up!  Men are going back to work by the thousands, our farm products are being sold the world over, savings accounts are leaping up, the banks are pouring out new loans!  There is no unemployment!  Fear has been banished!  Confidence reborn!  Poverty has been wiped out…We’re out of the red!”

That’s kind of a lot to scream at somebody, using up all those exclamation points like that.  But Dunn is right, the Great Depression has ended, and to celebrate, an NRA-style parade commences with armies of workers, nurses, teachers, military—and little Shirley Temple—all singing “We’re Out of the Red.”

Must be true.  Nick (Dick) Foran is back, dressed as Paul Revere, and his ghostly figure is riding across the sky on a horse, singing it, too.

I can remember watching this movie on TV with my parents when I was a child, and my mother chuckling, “And that’s how the Great Depression ended.”  And my father snorting, “Yeah, just like that.”

Even as young as I was, I could tell they were being sarcastic, but at the same time, the strangely wistful, almost sad smiles told me they wished it could have been like that.  They were the original audience for that movie when they were young teens.  Maybe at that age they really believed the Depression could end like that, any day now.  Maybe seeing the movie again after so many years, they realized they’d been hoodwinked.  Maybe they also realized that the fantasy was needed at the time.  Warner Baxter certainly thought so.

  *******************************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

 

In Memoriam Lest We Forget

Twenty-four years is a generation, and it is yesterday.  We pause to reflect and remember.

Photo Library of Congress collection, public domain.

One Good Turn - 1931

One Good Turn (1931) shows the pluck, the kindness, and the good humor needed to forge on during the Great Depression, all qualities that were abundant in a Laurel and Hardy short—along with several smacks on the head.

Laurel and Hardy, like The Three Stooges, moved from job to job as interesting and humorous scenarios for their exploits.  We mark this Labor Day with one Laurel and Hardy short that not only has them without employment, but actually mentions that their plight is due to the Depression, as we continue our look this year at movies made during the Great Depression that addressed that crisis.

We find our heroes on the side of the road in their rattletrap 1911 Ford open touring car, where they are camped.  Oliver Hardy washes their laundry in a stream resembling more a mud puddle than a brook, and Stan Laurel cooks soup over a campfire, but accidentally burns down their pup tent with all their belongings.  Any trip, slip, or misunderstanding usually leads to catastrophe for the boys, but their personality traits that always have Stan squeakily whimpering and Ollie punctuating his emotions with a side glance at the camera—breaking the fourth wall is part of their schtick—are so well known that we really don’t need complicated plots.  The gags are set up and we have an easy time almost knowing what’s next.

Ollie remarks on their situation, “Our earthly possessions are slowly getting less and less, no place to sleep, and no food.  What could be worse?”  Then they notice their laundry, which includes, of course, a union suit, has shrunk with washing.

The boys stop at a nearby house to beg for food.  Like any practiced hobo, they check to make sure there are no dogs about.  With hat in hand, Ollie smiles charmingly and asks the elderly lady of the house, played by Mary Carr, “Pardon the intrusion, lady, but my friend and I are victims of the Depression.  We haven’t tasted food for three whole days.”

To which Stan remarks, “Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”

Ollie coyly twists his finger around on his derby hat and requests a piece of buttered toast, but Stan heartily adds, “Would you mind throwing a piece of ham over that?”

The lady is kind and says she is going to “fix them something very nice.”

Ollie, ups the ante, “Is there some little thing we could do to repay your kindness?  We’re willing to work, you know.”

Stan suggests that Ollie chop wood, and Ollie tells him to do it. Eventually, the lady calls them into the kitchen and gives them coffee and sandwiches.  The prolonged taking of one more and then one more sandwich by Stan, completely oblivious to good manners, has Ollie steaming, and after a few tit-for-tat reprisals, they settle down to enjoy their food.

But what’s this?  They overhear the lady in the next room in conversation with a man who says he is going to foreclose on the mortgage, and that she must have $100 by three o’clock or he will throw her out on the street! She pleads with him for more time, discovering that the money she has saved in her sewing basket has been stolen!  He is heartless. 

“I have you in my clutches!”  It sounds like an old-time “mellerdramer,” which it is.  Unbeknownst to the boys, the lady is just rehearsing a play for the local community theatre.  James Finlayson, well known to Laurel and Hardy fans, is the evil banker.  The lady refers to him by his real name, which was perhaps a joke among the cast.  Blink and you miss him Snub Pollard also plays one of the community theatre players.

Our hapless heroes, however, eavesdropping from the kitchen, think it’s real.  Gallantly, Ollie vows to raise the money, and the boys go into town to auction off their car.

Billy Gilbert plays a drunk who places a bid, but then mistakenly puts his wallet into Stan’s coat pocket. After a misunderstanding in the bidding and Ollie pummeling Stan in the car that remains unsold and, in fact, crumbles to pieces in their fight, the wallet is discovered.  Ollie thinks Stan has stolen the old lady’s mortgage money.

Just how he jumps to this unlikely conclusion, we can’t imagine, but the childlike chums are quick to wound (literally) and quick to jump to conclusions.  He muscles Stan back to the old lady’s house to return the money and to confess.  She laughingly tells them it was a play rehearsal they heard, and Ollie, a tad embarrassed, makes the hysterical remark, “I must have made a faux pas.”

Stan, fed up, goes after Ollie with an axe and brings down the old lady’s shed on his head.

The gags and slapstick would have been familiar and fun to the Depression-era audiences, but those audiences were not as blind to the social commentary of the film as we might be today.  People did camp out on the side of the road.  They did live in their cars.  They were removed from their homes when the banks foreclosed.  They and their belongings were thrown out on the street.

Just as is happening more and more today. The felon in the White House has taken measures to criminalize homelessness, institutionalize captured homeless, and, ironically, increase the number of homeless in this country.

May we show as much resilience, heart, and generosity in our troubled time as Laurel and Hardy.  But I somehow think if one of us were knocked repeatedly on the head by chunks of firewood, we might not fare as well as he does. Got to give him that.

  *******************************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation.