Blondie Plays Cupid
                                                   
Director: Frank Strayer
Year: 1940
Rating: 6.0
This is the seventh in the Blondie film series - only another twenty-one to go. I predict at the rate I am watching these that by the year 2035 I will finish them. So be patient - I will get to Beware of Blondie someday. I know you all wait with bated breath for more adventures of Blondie (Penny Singleton), Dagwood (Arthur Lake), Baby Dumpling (Larry Simms) and of course Daisy the dog. The writing has vastly improved since the first couple and there are some clever routines that cracked me up. Like an egg dropped on the sidewalk. Stupid things like freshly painted chairs, firecrackers and a shotgun to stop a wedding. And every film comes with a different variation of the mailman (Irving Bacon) getting clobbered. These were produced by Columbia Pictures and for it to last 28 films and for twelve years, some folks must have enjoyed them. Maybe children under ten and folks over 60, but people were buying tickets.

 

It mucks about with firecrackers that Dagwood has hidden for him and Baby Dumpling to set off this coming weekend, the 4th of July. Blondie finds them, gives them a stern lecture on the danger of firecrackers and decides to visit her aunt who lives on a farm in the country where nothing can happen. Good luck with that. First the wrong train, then a missed bus and walking 72 miles - but they get picked up by a young couple who are eloping to get married. Took me a few minutes to recognize the man - a baby-faced Glenn Ford in an early film for him while the woman is Luanna Walters who was the sweetheart in bunches of B Westerns.



It dives into screwball comedy when the bride's father (Will Wright) shows up with a shotgun, stops the wedding, kidnaps Dagwood, Baby Dumpling and Daisy - Dagwood tries to explain "Well you see we got on the wrong train and now the wrong car". "Shut-up". Then Dagwood has to try to act as the eloper when Ford twists his ankle and that does not go well. Throw in Baby Dumpling behind the wheel of a runaway car with Dagwood first chasing it and then being chased and you have a Blondie film. I just recently saw Lake in an early film, Tanned Legs from 1929 and damned if he isn't basically Dagwood with the same dithering squeaky voice. Directed by Frank Strayer who directed thirteen in the series.