Change Your Image
ScottMacGillivray
Reviews
Pardon My Lamb Chop (1948)
Columbia's unsung comedy team in a slapstick frenzy
Gus Schilling and Dick Lane were Columbia's #2 comedy team (behind The Three Stooges. Producer Jules White often threw any two comics together in hopes of creating a new team, but Schilling and Lane had immediate rapport and terrific chemistry.
Their films run hot and cold, because director Edward Bernds tailored material especially for them, while director Jules White was content to remake old scripts and sketches introduced by other comedians. PARDON MY LAMB CHOP is very heavy on the slapstick; even veteran comedy foil Dorothy Granger takes her lumps in the name of comedy. Some of the jokes are extreme, which is par for Jules White, but the cast tackles the gags with enthusiasm.
Schilling wants to lend a helping hand to the next person he meets. Unfortunately it's crazed salesman Lane, who makes himself at home. Lane goes nuts every time he hears a whistle, and of course Granger has a whistle handy to call her dog. Also, for perhaps the only time in a Columbia short, the viewer is treated to an old burlesque sketch, in which the lunatic sees and hears things that the patsy can't, and the patsy gets caught up in the ridiculous situation.
For the burlesque sketch alone, this short is worth a look, with Schilling and Lane getting the maximum mileage out of it. Fans of Stooge-style slapstick should enjoy this.
Hollywood Varieties (1950)
Strictly vaudeville, with a standard lineup of acts. Budget production but professionally made.
HOLLYWOOD VARIETIES was produced by former vaudeville dancer and producer June Carr. She rounded up a number of her old colleagues to appear in this picture, which re-creates a typical vaudeville show of bygone years. There are some movie names here: vaude veteran Robert Alda is very much at home as a genial master of ceremonies; former big-studio juvenile leads Glenn Vernon and Eddie Ryan now teamed as a songs-and-jokes act; B-Western ingenue Peggy Stewart given a rare chance to sing; Western comic Britt Wood doing one of his usual monologues; The Rio Brothers emulating The Ritz Brothers; and the famous stage-screen-and-radio quartet The Hoosier Hot Shots. Al Shaw and Sam Lee, rediscovered by modern audiences in their early-talkie Vitaphone shorts, appear here with the same eccentric dancing and cross-talk.
The rest of the cast members are vaudeville specialties, and producer Carr presents them in strict order to resemble a traditional vaudeville bill. The show opens with a silent acrobatic specialty, just as old vaude shows did as the audience was finding seats. The emcee takes the stage and welcomes a parade of entertainers: dancers, comedians, a barbershop quartet, a dog act, and a trained-seals act. The Hot Shots appear "next to closing," as the star attraction, and are followed by an acrobatic troupe -- again a traditional closing act.
The production is thrifty but serviceable (it was filmed in five days, not one as the "trivia" section of IMDb claims), with crew members familiar to low-budget movies of the period. The live orchestra is a little ragged in spots, and bits of the action are under-rehearsed, but overall the gang delivers a good hour of variety. If you're curious about what vaudeville was like, this is a typical sample -- some grade-A talent mixed in with lesser acts, as you'd see in any theater. Definitely a "B-minus" production but it rates a solid "A" for effort.