Born with the century, Mervyn LeRoy was at his busiest & best directing early ‘30s Warners mid-list (LITTLE CAESAR; FIVE STAR FINAL; I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG; HEAT LIGHTNING) before success turned him dull & corporate. Even during his best years, much chaff amongst the wheat, like this where’d-it-come-from comic programmer that’s not much of a film, but eye-opening as historic/cultural time-capsule. A natural for New York’s fading Second Avenue Yiddish Theater (loving/bickering Lower East Side Jewish family hits success and falls apart), it opened on B’way (in English) a month after the Wall Street Crash and still managed to run the 1929/’30 season. Probably thanks to Vaudeville faves Smith & Dale, as the family’s overbearing Black Sheep cousins, pulling in the customers.* LeRoy’ lets everyone talk a mile a minute and LOUD, anticipating televison sit-coms to come. Though without a laugh-track, dead gags are really dead. Still, just enough comic momentum builds to show how this could have worked in New York. Hard to imagine many bookings West of the Hudson River.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: *That’d be Joe Smith (he’s a lot like Bud Abbott) & Charles Dale (not a bit like Lou Costello), these two the model for Neil Simon’s THE SUNSHINE BOYS/’75. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-sunshine-boys-1975.html
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