Mat 1 Bomba

Welcome to the Matinee!

A trip to the movies. It’s not what it used to be, is it, Balconeers? Most of us have childhood memories of 2, sometimes 3 movies at a matinee on weekends. If you go back a bit farther than that, you’ll find a whole program of short subjects followed by a feature attraction. Sadly, those days are gone in most theatres – but not here In The Balcony!

Today, we’re kicking off a new special feature called Matinee in the Balcony that is going to spotlight vintage shorts and features. We plan on posting a new installment every weekend for the entire summer, so join us for a retrospective of all-but-forgotten movie palace memories. And then visit a special area of our Message Board set up just for you to chat about the films on our program, and share your own Matinee Memories!

Program 1 (And by the way, hold your curser over each picture for additional background info about the films, and/or smartass comments from the Narrator.)

Personally, I always found jack-in-the-boxes to be horrifying creatures. If we believe one thing about movies, it’s that each program should start with a cartoon, so our show begins with something called Stupidstitious Cat, directed by Seymour Kneitel and released on April 25, 1947 by Famous Studios (Paramount).
It’s a colorful tale of a superstitious cat that is trying to eat a crow named Buzzy. The cat, who speaks all in rhyme “(If you go under a ladder, your day will grow sadder and sadder”) is thwarted by the wiseguy bird, who tosses salt, mirrors, and ladders at him. Nice logo, folks, but he's not drawn that well in the actual cartoon.
Anybody else as disgusted by this picture as I am?
The kicker to this cartoon is that the cat is made to sound like Jack Benny, while the bird talks like Eddie "Rochester" Anderson (he’s actually voiced by Jackson “Bluto” Beck). At one point, the poor cat is coated in ink, making him an unlucky black cat. It’s not that great a cartoon, but I think little kids would like it, although they’d miss the Benny/Rochester comparison. Mostly, I liked the opening “Noveltoons” logo and Jack-in-the-Box; good ol’ Jack adorned some of my favorite funnybooks when I was a kid (the Harvey line with Casper, Spooky, Richie Rich, Baby Huey, et al). Buzzy would go on to make 6 or 8 additional appearances before retiring in the mid-1950s. He still plays the Catskills from time to time, I've heard.

The cartoon is available on the Lost Cartoons Vol. 2 DVD from GoodTimes; a good, colorful print, although for some reason it contains the opening credits from the 1950 cartoon Pleased to Eat You. Was the title "Stupidstitious Cat" deemed inappropriate for children? Is that better than "Pleased to Eat You"?

Next up, naturally, is a comedy short, and this week we’re going to present the unforgettable comedy team of Monte Collins & Tom Kennedy, since nearly everybody has forgotten that they ever were a team. Collins & Kennedy was an early attempt by Columbia Pictures to create an in-house comedy team, and they appeared as such in fewer than a dozen shorts subjects from 1935-1938. They’re both well known comics separately, and their pairing is not bad at all.
Kennedy & Collins or Collins & Kennedy? Actually, they used to take turns in the credits!
And here I always thought GUMSHOE was one word! Today’s 2-reel attraction is their film debut as a team, Gum Shoes, directed by Del Lord and released on March 1, 1935. Monte and Tom are a sleepy pair of house detectives roused to action when a mystery burglar robs several ritzy suites in the hotel. Turns out the burglar is a trained gorilla named Kongo!
Collins & Kennedy are a couple of funny guys, and their personas – respectively a nervous little mouse and a big dumb blustery oaf – make for an interesting combination. There are some solid laughs in this short, such as when a man calls the front desk to report a robbery and says, “I’ve had my pants pockets turned inside out! No, I’m not married!” The foil for the team is the hot-tempered hotel manager, the always funny James C. Morton, who turns up as a blustery cop, judge, or hotel manager in countless films of the 1930s and early 1940s (including a great part in the serial The Iron Claw). James C. Morton: I know, you are all smacking your foreheads and saying, OH, I KNOW THAT GUY!
The gorilla is the one on the left. The comedic highlight of this short is when, with the gorilla bearing down on them, Collins tells Kennedy, “You look something like a gorilla! Beat your chest and growl at him!” Kennedy does, and it works. The climax, in which our heroes end up on the end of a broken flagpole, was later copied in a Stooges short. Gum Shoes is not a great comedy short, but a good piece of comic nostalgia.

Don't cha LOVE the script in the opening credits? Next on our program is “The Wrecker”, the first episode (of 12) of the serial The Hurricane Express, directed by J.P. McGowan and Armand Schaefer and released on August 1, 1932. The serial is noteworthy for being the second of three serials made by Mascot Pictures starring a handsome and rugged young would-be star named John Wayne.
A mysterious terrorist called the Wrecker is destroying trains, and when Wayne’s father, an engineer, is killed in one of the disasters, our boy Duke vows to wreck the Wrecker. Nobody is going to bet against him achieving his goal, that's for sure. Dad 'n' Duke, having a few (last) laughs.
Not a dry eye in the house when Wayne's father gets his ticket punched one last time.
The best thing about episode one (which ran 30 minutes) is the opening montage, which traces the evolution of transportation from early American wagon wheels to modern silver aeroplanes. Now, here In The Balcony, we generally worry about films that begin with a lot of stock footage, but this is interesting and well done.
Wayne pilots one of those planes, and shares some good-natured ribbing with his dad about the old man’s "old fashioned" train. Once his father is killed, though, Wayne appears ready to beat the crap out of everybody in the serial to find the Wrecker. Except for his girlfriend (the lovely Shirley Grey), of course. And he might want to question HER: unbeknownst to him, her father is an escaped convict with a grudge against the railroad. He’s a nutty old man who lives in a shed, and he seems to have been an inspiration for the Unabomber. Glenn Strange and Charles King -- and during how many matinees were THEY part of the entertainment!?!?!
...you might not like what you hear! Listening in at doors is bad...
The Wrecker sends messages by tapping out Morse code over the telephone, which is more convenient (if harder to translate) than just disguising his voice. In any case, in the chapter’s climax, Wayne is aboard a train, the Wrecker sneaks on, wreaks havoc, and then slips away via rope ladder from an aircraft above. When the train crashes, Wayne appears to have been killed. We’ll find out next week in chapter 2, “Flying Pirates”. The opening credits were far ginchier, eh?

The Hurricane Express is available, in a surprisingly good print, from Treeline as part of the “150 Serial Chapters” boxed DVD set.

Our Next Attraction! Hey, all those kids who ran for more popcorn or a potty break missed the trailer for next week’s show. Oooh, Donald O’Connor and Lori Nelson star in Francis Goes to West Point, which should be a pip. If I had directed that film, I’d have done a scene in which Miss Nelson dog-paddles in a river while Francis the Talking Mule swims below her. In any case, there will be selected short subjects, too, or so we’re told.

Didja ever notice that BOMBA is an anagram for A-BOMB? Onslow Stevens and Peggy Ann Garner are a team of father-and-daughter photographers in deepest Africa for a pictorial book on which they’re collaborating. When Miss Garner is separated from their safari, she’s found by Bomba, a teenage jungle boy living in a cave atop a high ridge. She shares his living space with him, chastely, for a while, before rejoining civilization.
Peggy Ann played Francie in A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN. The first of 12 Bomba adventures filmed from 1949 through 1955, the books are ostensibly based on the popular series of 20 novels written by “Roy Rockwood” in the 1920s-1930s. Actually, they’re junior Tarzan stories starring Junior Tarzan himself...
Johnny Sheffield had outgrown his part as Boy in the MGM/RKO Tarzan series, and was swinging vines solo at last. Because of the film’s lengthy setup, we only get a glimpse of Bomba in the first 12 minutes of the 70-minute feature, but he’s worth the wait. Onslow Stevens (HOUSE OF DRACULA) and friends.
Anybody seen a kid in a loin cloth hanging around? Although he’s supposed to be a “Jungle Boy”, and although Sheffield was only 18, the kid looks as if he could lift an elephant. Oddly enough, all that jungle living hasn’t seemed to tan him very much: he’s the palest looking fellow in the film.
Africa is well portrayed by a plethora of plastic ferns and trees, although one of the characters tells us that it’s “a land that was old when the rest of the world rose steaming from the slimy sea!” BOMBA has a monkey on his back. Hee-hee, I crack myself up!
So, there's a roadshow rendition of THE DEFIANT ONES available. It's just summer stock, but if you're interested... Mostly, the film appears to be about 20 minutes of new footage intermingled with 50 minutes of stock footage animal frolics.
You can’t believe how many times the cast stops to look at impala, chimps, giraffes, locusts, baboons, lions, leopards, hippos, and cows. Yes, cows. Jungle cows. Herds and herds of jungle cows. Sometimes, the stock footage is shown in slow motion, as if the film needed more padding. Boy, giraffes are selfish -- Barney Fife, Deputy
I hate to say it, but these guys look restless! Favorite line: the native guide points to a track in the mud and says, “Look! A white man’s footprint!” Least favorite scenes: two stock footage scenes of lions being killed. Shiver-inducing.
The Bomba films I’ve seen do have a nice, playful touch of sexuality to them; in this one, when Peggy Ann tears her skirt and asks Bomba if he’s got a leopard skin she could have, he immediately begins to take off his own loin cloth. When she quickly protests and asks for her own leopard skin, he retorts naively, “But this best one!” We’re sure it is, Jungle Boy. Peggy Ann & Bomba share a tender moment.
Having eaten Collins & Kennedy, Kongo is feeling a little sluggish. Bomba and Peggy Ann later share a swim, and some of the monkeys steal Peggy Ann's underpants, leaving her to go commando, apparently, the rest of the film. Steamy stuff for 1949, kids! No wonder the Bomba series was so popular.
Incidentally, I remembered Bomba as having a better vocabulary than the “Me go, you stay” dialog we hear in this picture; maybe it gets better as the series progresses. In any case, it is an entertaining film, especially if you enjoy seeing impala and monkeys larking about for reel after reel. Our cast bids farewell, as Bomba heads for his next jungle adventure and Peggy Ann heads for a K-Mart in Cincinnati, Ohio for some underwear.
Drive safely! See you next week! A boxed set of all 12 Bomba films is available from downunderdvd.com.

Now that you've shared a fun Balcony Matinee with us, please discuss the films or share your own Matinee Memories at the new area of our Message Board set up just for that purpose!Our feature attraction this week is Bomba, The Jungle Boy starring Johnny Sheffield. It was directed by Ford Beebe and released by Monogram Pictures on March 20, 1949.
Gum Shoes is available with five other Collins/Kennedy shorts from oldiedvd.com. We're going to be doing a feature article on them (Monte & Tom, not oldiedvd, silly) shortly over at inthebalcony.com/shorts.

	If we believe one thing about movies, it’s that each program should start with a cartoon, so our show begins with something called Stupidstitious Cat, directed by Seymour Kneitel and released on April 25, 1947 by Famous Studios (Paramount).
It’s a colorful tale of a superstitious cat that is trying to eat a crow named Buzzy. The cat, who speaks all in rhyme “(If you go under a ladder, your day will grow sadder and sadder”) is thwarted by the wiseguy bird, who tosses salt, mirrors, and ladders at him.
	The kicker to this cartoon is that the cat is made to sound like Jack Benny, while the bird talks like Eddie "Rochester" Anderson (he’s actually voiced by Jackson “Bluto” Beck). At one point, the poor cat is coated in ink, making him an unlucky black cat. It’s not that great a cartoon, but I think little kids would like it, although they’d miss the Benny/Rochester comparison. Mostly, I liked the opening “Noveltoons” logo and Jack-in-the-Box; good ol’ Jack adorned some of my favorite funnybooks when I was a kid (the Harvey line with Casper, Spooky, Richie Rich, Baby Huey, et al). Buzzy would go on to make 6 or 8 additional appearances before retiring in the mid-1950s. He still plays the Catskills from time to time, I've heard.

Next up, naturally, is a comedy short, and this week we’re going to present the unforgettable comedy team of Monte Collins & Tom Kennedy, since nearly everybody has forgotten that they ever were a team. Collins & Kennedy was an early attempt by Columbia Pictures to create an in-house comedy team, and they appeared as such in fewer than a dozen shorts subjects from 1935-1938. They’re both well known comics separately, and their pairing is not bad at all.
	Today’s 2-reel attraction is their film debut as a team, Gum Shoes, directed by Del Lord and released on March 1, 1935. Monte and Tom are a sleepy pair of house detectives roused to action when a mystery burglar robs several ritzy suites in the hotel. Turns out the burglar is a trained gorilla named Kongo!
Collins & Kennedy are a couple of funny guys, and their personas – respectively a nervous little mouse and a big dumb blustery oaf – make for an interesting combination. There are some solid laughs in this short, such as when a man calls the front desk to report a robbery and says, “I’ve had my pants pockets turned inside out! No, I’m not married!” The foil for the team is the hot-tempered hotel manager, the always funny James C. Morton, who turns up as a blustery cop, judge, or hotel manager in countless films of the 1930s and early 1940s (including a great part in the serial The Iron Claw).
	The comedic highlight of this short is when, with the gorilla bearing down on them, Collins tells Kennedy, “You look something like a gorilla! Beat your chest and growl at him!” Kennedy does, and it works. The climax, in which our heroes end up on the end of a broken flagpole, was later copied in a Stooges short. Gum Shoes is not a great comedy short, but a good piece of comic nostalgia.

		Next on our program is “The Wrecker”, the first episode (of 12) of the serial *The Hurricane Express*, directed by J.P. McGowan and Armand Schaefer and released on August 1, 1932. The serial is noteworthy for being the second of three serials made by Mascot Pictures starring a handsome and rugged young would-be star named John Wayne.
A mysterious terrorist called the Wrecker is destroying trains, and when Wayne’s father, an engineer, is killed in one of the disasters, our boy Duke vows to wreck the Wrecker. Nobody is going to bet against him achieving his goal, that's for sure.
		The best thing about episode one (which ran 30 minutes) is the opening montage, which traces the evolution of transportation from early American wagon wheels to modern silver aeroplanes. Now, here In The Balcony, we generally worry about films that begin with a lot of stock footage, but this is interesting and well done.
Wayne pilots one of those planes, and shares some good-natured ribbing with his dad about the old man’s "old fashioned" train. Once his father is killed, though, Wayne appears ready to beat the crap out of everybody in the serial to find the Wrecker. Except for his girlfriend (the lovely Shirley Grey), of course. And he might want to question HER: unbeknownst to him, her father is an escaped convict with a grudge against the railroad. He’s a nutty old man who lives in a shed, and he seems to have been an inspiration for the Unabomber.

The Wrecker sends messages by tapping out Morse code over the telephone, which is more convenient (if harder to translate) than just disguising his voice. In any case, in the chapter’s climax, Wayne is aboard a train, the Wrecker sneaks on, wreaks havoc, and then slips away via rope ladder from an aircraft above. When the train crashes, Wayne appears to have been killed. We’ll find out next week in chapter 2, “Flying Pirates”.

		Onslow Stevens and Peggy Ann Garner are a team of father-and-daughter photographers in deepest Africa for a pictorial book on which they’re collaborating. When Miss Garner is separated from their safari, she’s found by Bomba, a teenage jungle boy living in a cave atop a high ridge. She shares his living space with him, chastely, for a while, before rejoining civilization.
		The first of 12 Bomba adventures filmed from 1949 through 1955, the books are ostensibly based on the popular series of 20 novels written by “Roy Rockwood” in the 1920s-1930s. Actually, they’re junior Tarzan stories starring Junior Tarzan himself...
	Johnny Sheffield had outgrown his part as Boy in the MGM/RKO Tarzan series, and was swinging vines solo at last. Because of the film’s lengthy setup, we only get a glimpse of Bomba in the first 12 minutes of the 70-minute feature, but he’s worth the wait.
		Although he’s supposed to be a “Jungle Boy”, and although Sheffield was only 18, the kid looks as if he could lift an elephant. Oddly enough, all that jungle living hasn’t seemed to tan him very much: he’s the palest looking fellow in the film.
	Africa is well portrayed by a plethora of plastic ferns and trees, although one of the characters tells us that it’s “a land that was old when the rest of the world rose steaming from the slimy sea!”
		Mostly, the film appears to be about 20 minutes of new footage intermingled with 50 minutes of stock footage animal frolics.
	You can’t believe how many times the cast stops to look at impala, chimps, giraffes, locusts, baboons, lions, leopards, hippos, and cows. Yes, cows. Jungle cows. Herds and herds of jungle cows. Sometimes, the stock footage is shown in slow motion, as if the film needed more padding.
		Favorite line: the native guide points to a track in the mud and says, “Look! A white man’s footprint!” Least favorite scenes: two stock footage scenes of lions being killed. Shiver-inducing.
	The Bomba films I’ve seen do have a nice, playful touch of sexuality to them; in this one, when Peggy Ann tears her skirt and asks Bomba if he’s got a leopard skin she could have, he immediately begins to take off his own loin cloth. When she quickly protests and asks for her own leopard skin, he retorts naively, “But this best one!” We’re sure it is, Jungle Boy.
		Bomba and Peggy Ann later share a swim, and some of the monkeys steal Peggy Ann's underpants, leaving her to go commando, apparently, the rest of the film. Steamy stuff for 1949, kids! No wonder the Bomba series was so popular.
	Incidentally, I remembered Bomba as having a better vocabulary than the “Me go, you stay” dialog we hear in this picture; maybe it gets better as the series progresses. In any case, it is an entertaining film, especially if you enjoy seeing impala and monkeys larking about for reel after reel.
		A boxed set of all 12 Bomba films is available from downunderdvd.com.