Stubs - Blondie!

 

Blondie! (1938) starring Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms, Gene Lockhart. Directed by Frank R. Strayer. Screenplay by Richard Flournoy Based on the comic strip "Blondie" created by Chic Young, owned, and copyrighted by King Features Syndicate, Inc. (1930--). Producer: Robert Sparks Run Time: 70 minutes. Black and White. USA Comedy

One of the longest-running movie series was the Blondie series, which ran for 28 films and was based on the Blondie comic strip created by Chic Young, first published on September 8, 1930. The comic strip is still being published in 2000 newspapers in 47 countries in 35 languages and is now drawn by Dean Young, Chic’s son. The original comic strip revolved around a flapper called "Blondie Boopadoop", who marries wealthy playboy Dagwood Bumstead. The Bumsteads disapprove of Blondie and disinherit Dagwood when the couple marries and he goes to work at a construction company owned by Mr. Dithers.

Blondie and Dagwood from the comic strip.

When Columbia Pictures acquired the film rights, it was announced that Aurania Rouverol would be adapting the series with Gloria Blondell, Joan’s sister, set to star and Sam Marx set to produce. Later, it was announced that Stuart Erwin and Una Merkel were set to star. However, Shirley Deane was originally cast as Blondie, but due to illness, Penny Singleton replaced her, dying her hair blonde.

Blondie! was in production from September 12 to October 7 and in the theaters on November 30, 1938. Its success would spawn the series that would run until 1943, when the studio lost interest after the first fourteen pictures. However, audience response encouraged the studio to re-establish production in 1945 and the series ran through 1950.

The Bumsteads, Dagwood (Arthur Lake), Baby Dumpling (Larry Simms) and Blondie (Penny Singleton).

On the eve of their fifth wedding anniversary, Blondie (Penny Singleton) and Dagwood (Arthur Lake) Bumstead are in financial trouble, but neither knows about the other’s issues. Blondie has been pressing Dagwood to ask his boss, Mr. Dithers (Jonathan Hale), for a raise. He thinks it's because as a family of three, they have a child, Baby Dumpling (Larry Simms), but she has purchased a new set of living room furniture on credit as a surprise. As soon as Dagwood literally runs out, knocking down postal carrier  Mr. Beazley (Irving Bacon), Blondie has a meeting with a furniture salesman (Charles Lane).

Furniture salesman (Charles Lane) (r) helps postal carrier Mr.
Beazley (Irving Bacon) after Dagwood mows him down.

When Dagwood gets to work, he finds out that he’s on the hook for a loan he co-signed for Mr. Dithers’ ex-secretary, Elsie, who has disappeared with the money and can’t be found. The amount he owes happens to be the same amount as the balance of the furniture payment. Dithers is unsympathetic and refuses Dagwood’s plea for a raise.

The one out is that Dithers hasn’t been able to make contact with salesman-phobic C.P. Hazlip (Gene Lockhart), a developer that Dithers wants to work with. He sends Dagwood to the hotel with the promise that if he can land the deal, he’ll get a raise and a bonus that will cover the note Dagwood’s on the hook for.

At the hotel, Hazlip has instructed the desk clerk that he’s out, which is what he tells Dagwood when he arrives. Dagwood decides to sit down and wait, hoping the desk clerk will point him out. Hazlip, as it turns out, sits down next to Dagwood as he tries to avoid another salesman.

Hotel porter (Willie Best) has problems with his vacuum cleaner.

Behind them, a hotel porter (Willie Best) is trying to get a non-functioning vacuum cleaner to work. Dagwood is first drawn in and, later, so is Hazlip. When the porter goes looking for tools, the two men set in on it. But the repair is harder than they thought. Hazlip tells Dagwood that he has a suite in the hotel and tools and the two manage to smuggle it up the stairs to his room. The two men spend most of the afternoon trying in vain to get it to work. Hazlip tells Dagwood to come back the next day and they’ll work on it some more.

Unbeknownst to Dagwood (Arthur Lake), he bonds with C.P. Hazlip (Gene Lockhart).

The next day, Dagwood is met at the door by Hazlip’s daughter Elsie (Ann Doran). He happens to be seen by Chester Franey (Gordon Oliver), once a rival for Blondie’s attentions, now in town on a business trip. Dagwood introduces Chester to Elsie.

While he’s in the suite, Dagwood takes a call for Hazlip. It’s a reporter from the Daily Gazette. Hazlip doesn’t want to talk to him and has Dagwood tell the reporter that he’s abandoned the development project, even though he hasn’t.

The next day at work, Dagwood is fired when Dithers reads in the paper that the project Dagwood was supposed to nail down for the firm has been cancelled. He doesn’t listen to Dagwood’s explanation, either.

Meanwhile, Chester makes a visit to see Blondie and tells her about Dagwood and Elsie.

When Dagwood goes to the hotel, Blondie tracks him down there and is shocked when a woman, who identifies herself as Elsie, answers the phone. She is now convinced that Dagwood is having an affair.

When he gets home, Dagwood is in time to see his old living room furniture being loaded into a van and driven away, thinking it was to pay off the note for the Elsie loan. However, it is part of the trade-in for the new furniture. Dagwood finds that Blondie’s mother (Kathleen Lockhart) and sister Dot (Dorothy Moore) are already there. And even though Blondie is mad at him, she tries to make nice. However, after a while, Dagwood decides to prove he wasn’t having an affair. He decides to go back to the hotel and retrieve Hazlip and Elsie.

Dagwood doesn’t own a car, nor know how to drive, so he takes his mother-in-law’s. Hazlip is happy to help and even takes the still-broken vacuum cleaner with them as proof of what was really going on.

Soon after he’s gone, men arrive to repossess the furniture to settle the note, taking away the new furniture.

Dagwood runs into a police car while driving a stolen vehicle.

On the way back home, Dagwood hits a police car. When it ends up the car has been reported stolen, Dagwood is arrested. Hazlip is taken into custody as well for possessing the vacuum cleaner, which is the property of the hotel.

At the police station, Blondie arrives with her family and Chester in tow. Dagwood tries to explain things to Blondie, but Chester offers to comfort her, which sends Dagwood over the edge and he punches Chester; not a smart thing to do at a police station.

Publicity photo re-enacting the courtroom scene. Hazlip, Blondie, and Dagwood.

Hazlip and Dagwood spend the night in jail, and the next day in court, Blondie straightens out the whole mess when she tells the judge (Ian Wolfe) that it’s all her fault for what happened.

Ian Wolfe plays the Judge.

Once free, Hazlip gladly offers his business to Dagwood just before Dithers arrives to tell Hazlip that Dagwood doesn’t work for him and his actions don’t represent his company. However, when Hazlip informs Dithers that the account is Dagwood’s, Mr. Dithers changes his tune.

He offers Dagwood his job back as they had discussed. Dagwood is only too happy to accept, but Blondie steps in and, using Dagwood’s newfound leverage, gets him a bigger raise ($20 a week), but also a much bigger bonus and a $1000 advance.

When Baby Dumpling is missing, he is known to run away from home, Dagwood and Blondie split up to find him. Baby Dumpling is watching a groundskeeper work on a stalled lawn mower. Dagwood gets drawn in until Blondie comes and pulls her two boys away.

The film was a surprise hit and Columbia decided to make it into a series. Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake would appear in all 28 films. The other titles in the series include: Blondie Meets the Boss and Blondie Brings Up Baby, both in 1939; Blondie Has Servant Trouble and Blondie Plays Cupid, both in 1940. In 1941 the studio produced Blondie Goes Latin and Blondie in Society. Other titles are: Blondie Goes to College (1942), Blondie's Blessed Event (1942), Blondie for Victory (1942), Footlight Glamour (1943), It's a Great Life (1943), Leave It to Blondie (1945), Life with Blondie (1946), Blondie's Lucky Day (1946), Blondie Knows Best (1946), Blondie's Holiday (1947), Blondie's Big Moment (1947), Blondie in the Dough (1947), Blondie's Anniversary (1947), Blondie's Reward (1948), Blondie's Secret (1948), Blondie Hits the Jackpot (1949), Blondie's Big Deal (1949), Blondie's Hero (1950) and Beware of Blondie (1950).

It should be noted that Blondie was also popular on the radio. A series, which starred Lake as Dagwood ran, for 20 years between 1931 and 1951. Singleton, Alice White, Patricia Van Cleve (Lake’s real-life wife) and Ann Rutherford all portrayed "Blondie" at various times during the show’s run.

The film's limited animated credits seem to anticipate a style that would become popular a decade later and establishes the film as a kind of domestic situation comedy, a genre that would become the mainstay of television series in the 1950s. It should be noted that there were two attempts at making this into a TV series. In 1954, a pilot was made, but the series didn’t appear until 1957 and only lasted one season with 26 episodes. Lake again reprised the role of Dagwood with Pamela Britton as Blondie.

Another attempt at a series took place with Blondie (aka The New Blondie), which aired on NBC. Patricia Harty portrayed Blondie, Will Hutchins as Dagwood, and Jim Backus as Mr. Dithers. The series also only lasted one season with 13 episodes.

In many ways, Blondie! does feel like an overly long situation comedy, as the problems are more a lack of communication between husband and wife, fodder for many situation comedies. And like most domestic situation comedies, money is always an issue. And, as was the practice, there is a happy ending as well. No matter how much they might distrust each other, husband and wife manage to come together in the end.

While Penny Singleton appeared in movies before Blondie!, including roles in After the Thin Man (1938), and The Mad Miss Manton (1938), she is best known for the role of Blondie. Except for Young Widow (1948), all of her film credits afterward are as Blondie until Jetsons: The Movie (1990), reprising the voice of Jane Jetson that she also did for the animated series that ran from 1962–1963 and again from 1985–1987.

At least in this first film, Singleton’s Blondie seems at time scattered, but also has a good head on her shoulders, as she negotiates a better deal for Dagwood at the end of the film. This, too, would forecast the role for women in early sitcoms, as they were always the power behind their man.

Penny Singlton and Arthur Lake would play Blondie and Dagwood in 28 films together.

Arthur Lake seems like he was born to play Dagwood. He seems to have the right demeanor for the role and seems to share a certain physicality with the character. After watching the film, it would be hard to imagine anyone else in the role.

Arthur Lake in the 1920s.

Lake’s film career dates to silents, when he appeared in several films including Jack and the Beanstalk (1917), when he was only 12. Universal Pictures signed Lake to a contract where, as an adolescent, he played character parts in Westerns. He signed with RKO Radio Pictures shortly after it formed in 1928.

Lake’s first sound film was the 1929 musical comedy On with the Show!, which is notable as the first all-talking feature film using the Vitaphone process, and as Warner Bros' first all-color film shot in two-color Technicolor. Lake typically played light romantic roles, often with a comic "Mama's Boy" tone to them, such as Indiscreet (1931), starring Gloria Swanson. He also had a substantial part as the bellhop in Topper (1937).

Even though he played Dagwood on radio, film, and television, he was kept on at Columbia when they first ended the series and Singleton was released. Lake starred in comedy features for Columbia, Republic Pictures, and United Artists before the series went back into production. He also lent his voice to a series of military cartoons produced by Warner Bros. for the U. S. Navy in 1945, voicing "Mr. Hook," a hapless sailor learning the value of war bonds.

Larry Simms was a child actor who had to play Baby Dumpling, one of the worst names for a character I’ve ever heard. His first film was The Last Gangster (1937), where he played Edward G. Robinson's young son, after which he started playing Baby Dumpling and as the character grew up, gained the name Alexander.

Outside of the Blondie films, Simms would appear in two Frank Capra films, playing sons. The first as Governor Hopper’s (Guy Kibbee) in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and as Pete Bailey, the oldest son of James Stewart's George Bailey, in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). His final film role was in Her First Romance (1951), after which he retired from acting to join the Navy.

The film features performances by various familiar faces, including Charles Lane as the furniture salesman, Gene Lockhart as C. P. Hazlip, Ian Wolfe as the Judge, and Willie Best as the hotel porter with the broken vacuum cleaner. While none of the acting stands out, they do add in small ways to the film.

This is definitely a B-picture, but one that seemed to capture the audience’s imagination at the time. Outside of the MCU, Blondie is one of the longest film series ever produced in Hollywood and the longest during the Golden Age.

Watching the film now, it’s hard to see the appeal that would lead to such a long run. Blondie! is not a bad film, but it certainly won’t be making too many top 10 lists. Some of that may have to do with watching it now as opposed to 1938. If you want to see what started such a long film series, like I did, Blondie! is not a bad way to spend 70 minutes.