Blondie Meets the Boss
Director: Frank
Strayer
Year: 1939
Rating: 5.0
2nd film in the series.
It is hard to imagine that this series from Columbia went on for 28 films
from 1938 to 1950. They are just so silly. After 14 of them Columbia tried
to stop the series, but there was such an angry outpouring from rabid fans
that they re-started the films. During the same period MGM was producing
another family oriented series, the Hardy Family films, but in comparison
to Blondie they feel like high art.
Blondie was a franchise for its time. It was a popular comic strip beginning
in 1930 and is still going, the films, a radio program for over a decade
and a few attempts as a TV show. The films span the lives of the Bumsteads
from early marriage with the dog Daisy and their son Baby Dumpling to having
Cookie and watching their children grow up and go to college. Arthur Lake
as Dagwood and Penny Singleton as Blondie were in all 28 of them. Amazingly,
so was Larry Simms as their son Baby Dumpling and later called Alexander.
Jonathan Hale as Mr. Dithers was in the first 18 of them. Lake was to make
a career of playing Dagwood in the films, radio and TV.
This is an improvement over the first film in the series in which Dagwood
was a total nitwit. Here he is only a half nitwit. But still such a namby-pamby
that you wonder if the children came through osmosis. In this one Dagwood
impulsively resigns from his job and Blondie tries to get it back. There
are a few odd bits considering the nature of these films. A philandering
neighbor who attempts to convince Dagwood to do the same and Blondie saying
that if she discovered her husband cheating, she would kill him, herself
and Baby Dumpling! Throw in a few funny bits with the dog and the baby and
a Jitterbug Dance contest and this wasn't a total punch in the eye.
