PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Rainmakers 1935

The Rainmakers 1935 Story by Albert Traynor and Fred Guiol, screenplay by Grant Garrett and Leslie Goodwins, directed by Fred Guiol.

Robert Woolsey is a rainmaker and Bert Wheeler is a farmer in the Midwest. Before Robert can help the locals by unleashing his rainmaking device a sand storm blows in. The farmers are mad and blame him. He escapes and takes refuge in Bert's house. The house blows away, the boys were safe in the root cellar, so Bert joins Robert in a trip to California for his next job.

The manager of the bank asked Robert to come see if he can make it rain, the fields are parched and the farmers could loose their crops and their farms if the dry spell won't break. The big rich farmer in the area is using the poor farmer's financial state to ram rod them into supporting a water system to pull water from a lake outside of town. He's making money either way, first by gouging the local farmer's by inflating the cost of the water system, and he stands to get some of their land real cheap if they can't come up with the money to buy into the project.

The bank manager has extended the bank's assets trying to help the farmers by not foreclosing on their loans. His daughter is played by Dorothy Lee and she's Bert's romantic interest here. Bert and Robert break a bunch of stuff before they blow up two locomotives in the big finale. It's fairly entertaining but the locomotives sequence goes on a bit too long. Still, I got a few good laughs out of it anyway. Only 4 more features to go.

 

 

The Nitwits 1935

The Nitwits 1935 Story by Stuart Palmer, screenplay by Fred Guiol and Al Boasberg, direction by George Stevens.

Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey work in a cigar stand in a building where a radio station operates. Bert really wants to write songs and Robert is a bit of an inventor. They get mixed up in a murder case with the usual chaotic results. Fred Keating, Betty Grable and Willie Best are in the cast. 

Not quite as much fun as some of their films and the black characters are quite stereotyped. Just barely average.

Kentucky Kernels 1934

Kentucky Kernels 1934 Screenplay by Lee Marcus and HN Swanson, directed by George Stevens with an assist from Jean Yarbrough.

Robert Woolsey is the Great Elmer and Bert Wheeler is Willie, they're a couple of out of work magicians. They help a guy adopt a kid, Spanky McFarland plays Spanky, you might know him from the Little Rascals. The guy elopes and The Great Elmer and company get stuck with Spanky. Turns out he's a genial little fellow who likes breaking windows.

Mary Carisle, Noah Beery, Margaret Dumont and Willie Best appear. I can't think of a time when Willie Best appearing in a film didn't cheer me up. Sadly not all of his roles are up to his talent, here he's got a good size part and plenty of stuff to do. Bob Hope called Willie the "best actor I know" while working with him on The Ghost Breakers.

Spanky inherits some money and the boys go along to Kentucky where they get into a family feud with the Wakefields. There's plenty of running about and yelling with a bit of romance and a lot of gun shooting near the end. It all turns out well for the boys in the end. Another fun film.

Cockeyed Cavaliers 1934

Cockeyed Cavaliers 1934 Screenplay by Edward Kaufman, Grant Garrett, Ralph Spence and Ben Holmes, directed by Mark Sandrich.

Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey live in medieval England. Bert's a bit of kleptomaniac and even though Robert tries to keep him out of trouble, he gets caught and they both wind up in the stocks. A young man helps them escape and they run off, chased by the sheriff. Dorothy Lee plays the young man, it turns out she's been hiding from the local Duke who wants to marry her. She's not wanting anything to do with that. Bert falls for her and figures a way to get her out of her predicament. It's pretty much the usual fare, some gags, some running about and a couple of songs. Fun.

Hips, Hips, Hooray 1934

Hips, Hips, Hooray 1934 Screenplay by Bert Kalmar, Edward Kaufman and Harry Ruby, directed by Mark Sandrich.

Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey are cosmetic salesman hawking their wares on the street. They get involved with a cosmetic company who have a musical radio show with plenty of pretty dancers.

The boys get up a fund raiser for this poor girl, she has no clothes. That's Doris McMahon in her pre-code costume. You don't see her this closeup in the movie, she appears way in the background. Probably for the best, no use inflaming the youth of the day with a flash of bare hip.

Bert and Robert misplace some company securities and their manager steals them. Now the boys are in trouble with the law and they must use all their limited brain power to get themselves out of this pickle. They decide to get into a car race. That's a good place to keep a low profile.

Eventually things get sorted out with gags and musical numbers. Thelma Todd and Dorothy Lee provide some romance, there's plenty of action once the car racing starts, and there's a happy ending for the guys. Still enjoying the guy's films and there still are several to go.

Diplomaniacs 1933

Diplomaniacs 1933 Story by Joseph L Mankiewicz, screenplay by Joseph L Mankiewicz and Henry Meyers, directed by William A Seiter. It's executive producer was Merian C Cooper and the associate producer was Sam Jaffe.

Like most of the Wheeler and Woolsey films it's available on DVD from the Warner Brothers Archives. There's a 4 disc set with 9 films, a 3 disc set with 6 films, and 8 single discs with a film on each. This is the 12th of the 22 feature pictures that W&W made together. They made a few shorts together and each made a few solo films.

Robert Wheeler and Bert Woolsey are barbers on a Native American reservation where there's little business. The oil rich tribe gives the guys a million dollars each and sends them to a peace conference in Europe. It makes little sense but there you go. It's about as absurd as their last picture So This Is Africa.

They sail to Europe and cause chaos aboard ship and later at the conference. Some rival governments and a dirty arms dealer want to see the peace conference fail so they try gumming up the works. Thankfully typical dirty tricks don't work so well on our boys. Marjorie White and Phyllis Barry are the romantic interests, they fall hard for the boys. I know, absurd. Edgar Kennedy is the chairman of the conference. Hugh Herbert is Chow-Chow, he's credited as Chinaman in the films credits.

The movie is of the times and filled with stereotypes of all sorts. While I'm not happy to see the stereotypes, I can put them in the context of their time. It's politically incorrect for the modern day but not so much in 1933. Near the end of the film a bomb is tossed into the conference and the explosion gives everyone in the room blackface, then there's a minstrel show style song and dance number called No More War. You may say "Wow" but it turns out to be a good song with the right message. I'm not always a big fan of the musical numbers but this film has some of their best work.

I read on the IMDb that the film's been preserved by the Library of Congress. That's a good thing, we need these sorts of films to remind ourselves of what we were like in the past. I'm also glad they put it on disc so we can still enjoy one of Wheeler and Woolsey's better films.

So This Is Africa 1933

So This Is Africa 1933 Screenplay by Norman Krasna and direction by Edward F Cline. It's the boys only comedy for Columbia Pictures and it's a goofy bit of business.

Robert Wheeler and Bert Woolsey play vaudevillians with a lion act. They're broke, the lions are hungry and the hotel is ready to toss them out for not paying their bill. Across town Ultimate Pictures is having a big meeting about their latest blunder. The big man in charge has hired Mrs Johnson Martini, a naturalist with African expertise, to film an animal picture in Africa. They've just learned she's afraid of animals and the studio is in a uproar. I suspect that Mrs Johnson Martini refers to the travelers and film makers, Osa and Martin Johnson.

The studio hits upon the idea of getting W&W's tame lions. They'll send them to Africa with Mrs Martini and make their film. It's a bonkers idea that seems to have been forgotten once the group gets to Africa. Mrs Martini seems set on wooing Robert. Bert gets picked up while sleepwalking. Literally, Tarzana picks him up in his night shirt and swings him through the trees to her tree house.

Wheeler and Woolsey are reunited just as the Amazon's arrive. There's a whole tribe of them and they're set on romance. Luckily for our guys a whole tribe of Tarzan lookalikes show up for the annual grab a bride ritual. The movie ends with the W&W in the village, married with children. 

It's a pretty wacky film with some good jokes and some bad. It's about average for their films, despite the dumb studio plot line. It's a wonder they're still in business with that level of intelligence. It's not available on DVD for some reason but you can find it on YouTube in the link above. 

Hold 'Em Jail 1932

Hold 'Em Jail 1932 Story by Tim Whelan and Lew Lipton, screenplay by Walter DeLeon, SJ Perelman, Eddie Welch and Mark Sandrich, directed by Norman Taurog.

Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey are really stupid, they try a robbery prank and sent to prison for using real guns. The prison warden is played by Edgar Kennedy, Edna May Oliver plays his wife, Betty Grable plays his daughter. I also recognized Robert Armstrong, Roscoe Ates and Warren Hymer in the cast.

The boys don't fit into prison life very well, they do get on the prison football team. Chaos on the football field and other nonsense makes poor Edgar's life a nightmare. He is a rather excitable guy to start with and to make things worse, Robert flirts with Edna, and Betty has her eye on Bert. It's a breezy bit of business, only 66 minutes, and there's plenty of noise and running about. It lost a bit of money, $55,000, at the box office. I still liked it.

Girl Crazy 1932

Girl Crazy 1932 Screenplay by Walter DeLeon, Herman J Mankiewicz, Eddie Welsh and Tim Whelan, directed by William A Seiter. It's based on the 1930 play of the same name by Guy Bolton and John McGowan. Guy Bolton had worked with PG Wodehouse on a number of plays in the 1920s. I read the movie wasn't much like the play.

 

Three songs from the play, written by George and Ira Gershwin, were used in the movie. Two are familiar to me, Bidin' My Time and I Got Rhythm. The latter was introduced in the play by Ethel Merman. Ginger Rogers was the star of the play. There was a 1943 adaptation of the play with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.

  

Bert Wheeler is a cab driver, he's driving Robert Woolsey across the California desert to a remote gambling place in a tiny town. Stanley Fields is the local thug, he's been killing the sheriffs as they've been hired. He runs the gambling and he wants to put the saloon Robert has come to work at out of business. Poor Bert gets signed up to be the new sheriff. Robert tries to keep him from getting killed, after helping get him elected. He wants to keep Stanley from getting control of the saloon.

 

Besides too much singing, there's some knockabout shenanigans, some romance, and the usual sort of things one would expect in a Wheeler and Woolsey film. They don't change their style much in their run. The RKO records say it lost $150,000, the film cost $532,000 and the box office was $555,000. I don't know what the theaters got out of the box office in those days but I could guess. I enjoyed the running about and speeded up some of the songs.

The Lad 1935

The Lad 1935 Based on the 1928 play The Lad by Edgar Wallace, screenplay by Gerald Fairlie, directed by Henry Edwards.

A breezy crime comedy with Gordon Harker. The movie opens before he gets on the scene, a pricey necklace is being stolen from a rich guy's house, one of the men is caught and sent to jail, the necklace has not been found. Gorden is in the slammer, the day before he is to be released he overhears the robber tell another man where the necklace is hidden. Outside Gordon skips along to the mansion where he takes advantage of a mistaken identity plot point. He winds up being a droll sort of hero, helping most of the family with their various problems. It's more like a comedic play than a crime movie. It's not any better than average but it's fun and there's a happy ending. Another one that I would watch again sometime.