#gingervsblondie
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Blondie Goes Latin (1941)
2:27 AM, Thursday, 12 December
Y’all ready for this, buh buh buh bah bah bah ok let’s watch a Blondie.
2:28
Welp, in looking this one up to watch it, I’ve spoiled for myself that this one features Dagwood dressed as a woman. Let’s see how I feel about that once it’s in context.
2:31
Watching it on Prime again for better picture quality, but I’m not falling for their tricks a second time so I skipped the 4 minutes and 20 seconds (nicenicenice) of inexplicable preview footage spoiling the rest of the movie.
Although I’ve already spoiled that Dagwood goes Dragwood so who cares anymore.
2:44
GOT MY SNACKS LET’S GET STARTED
2:46
The usual theme song’s back, and it’s just occurred to me: The lyrics go
“Life with us is fun and crazy,
Baby Dumpling, (read: Alexander Hamilton Bumstead) us and Daisy
What a family
Incredible
Bumstead-able”
Now I know that later on, Cookie Bumstead, their new daughter, will be introduced. I wonder if they adjust the theme song when that happens.
2:56
Starting off strong with a pretty basic continuity error. Dagwood, with shaving cream on his face, runs outside, realizing he’s packed his razor into his luggage which he gave to the cab driver. As soon as he’s outside, the shaving cream is gone from his face.
HOLY SHIT I SPOKE TOO SOON. It wasn’t a bad continuity, it was a good visual gag! He runs into the postman, as per usual, and when they get up, the shaving cream has swapped over onto posty’s face!
Apologies to Blondie Goes Latin. They did a good and I assumed it was a bad because I guess I don’t think highly enough of the standard of production in the Blondie film franchise.
3:01
AND they followed it up with a SECOND solid visual gag! The posty puts his hat and mailbag on Dagwood, goes into the doorway, and runs towards Dagwood, either to get the shaving cream back onto the right face or just out of pure vitriol and malice. He misses, we hear him crash, and the camera cuts to the cab, which is flipped on its side.
That got a full laugh out of me.
3:04
AnD ThEn ThE ShAvInG CrEaM swaps over to the CaB DrIVeR’S FaCE!!!
3:06
AHB*: Mommy, is Mr. Dithers going with us too?
Blondie: Of course, dear, he’s taking us along as his guests.
AHB: Why?
Blondie: Because he needs a rest.
AHB: Why doesn’t he take Mrs. Dithers?
Blondie: Because Mrs. Dithers needs a rest.
AHB: I don’t get it.
Man they always go so hard with the infidelity angle in these fuckin’ flicks.
*Alexander Hamilton Bumstead
3:08
There’s a character Wikipedia tells me is named Manuel Rodríguez, played by one Tito Guízar. So this could be some more (relatively) positive representation, like that guy in Servant Trouble.
3:12
Manuel Rodríguez fuccin immediately seducing Blondie. Nah yeah this is accurate representation.
3:20
This movie got me AGAIN, this time with a kinda surrealist goof. So they’ve found out that Dagwood has to stay behind to close a deal, but Blondie, AHB and Daisy are going with Dithers. Dagwood and Blondie start crying at the thought of being apart. Daisy cries, and how they got that shot I’ve no idea.
At first Dithers is telling them not to act that way, but then he starts crying too. Then Dagwood meets a man at the door who’s there to tell them “All ashore that’s going ashore,” and HE starts crying too. And then as the ship’s whistle sounds, it cuts to this:
3:24
Man and another good goof, Dagwood looks at Blondie and AHB and says he’s gonna shut his eyes so he can remember them just as they are now while they’re apart. Then he runs out the door, immediately crashing into someone.
Is this movie genuinely funnier than usual or am I just in a better mood?
3:28
‘Nother laugh. Dagwood fell while carrying a bunch of drums (in a series of misunderstandings that will eventually lead to him in Dragwood playing the drums with a band that the film is currently introducing, and which is actually kinda interesting and likeable so far) and slid clear across like 20 feet of floor.
3:30
There’s a singing quartet in the band that sounds exactly like the Let’s All Go To The Lobby song.
3:32
The female lead of the band is called Lovey Nelson, and I think I’m in love with her. She’s sassy af.
3:34
I think Michael Jackson might’ve plagiarized some lyrics off Blondie Goes Latin.
3:36
Upon the development that Dagwood’s playing the drums in this, I considered noting that it would be harder to edit that into a Whiplash parody than that one I did with Hop on my YouTube channel.
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But then Dagwood did an intense drum solo for like 45 seconds and now I’m not so sure.
3:44
ALERT, ALERT, SENTIENT DOLL, I REPEAT, THERE IS A HAUNTED DOLL IN THE MOVIE, SOMEONE CALL A PRIEST, OR ELSE JUSTIN MCELROY, EITHER WILL DO
3:45
So you’re saying that you don’t have rhythm.
BUT LISTEN WHAT YOU’RE DOING RIGHT THERE-
This Blondie is a musical and I’m down.
3:47
Oh God they’re holding on the doll for soooo loooong
3:58
Alright sun’s getting real low, (Future Euan note: wow, great Avengers: Age of Ultron reference, past Euan.) by which I mean it’s 4 am and I’m gonna go to bed and finish this in the morning.
1:36 AM, Friday, 13 December
Back to it! Looking forward to this given how much I enjoyed it last night.
1:38
Dithers: Falls
Blondie: “Oh, Mr. Dithers! Here’s a drink for you.” Hands glass of water.
Dithers: Drinks, then scrunches up his face in disgust “Oh, that’s water isn’t it?”
1:42
Tito Guízar is now singing in Spanish. It’s interesting, cause it feels totally out of place. Like when Ben Platt sings at the end of the first episode of that show The Politician; it’s clearly just “This person can sing so we better let him sing.” Not so much in a bad way though. Like he’s doing what he’s good at and I like that it’s a bubble of a different culture inserted into this white suburban family sitcom I’m inexplicably exposing myself to.
1:46
This movie’s fuckin’ neat. Blondie’s listening to the song and gets sad cause she misses Dagwood, so she goes out on the deck of the cruise ship that this is all happening on. Tito Guízar follows her out, (I’m pretty sure they’re in front of a projection background) and she says she liked the song but didn’t understand a word of it, so he offers to sing it again in English. And now he is!!! I like that.
It also reminds me of that one creepy Aardman short tho.
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1:51
Oh but then Blondie starts singing with him, and it gets to a point where they’re singing simultaneously but Blondie definitely hasn’t heard the words yet. So it morphs from a realistic enough scene to musical rules where people sing at the same time when they’re on the same page.
1:53
HEY how come it hasn’t come up yet in past movies that Penny Singleton (Blondie) can sing this well? Like the intro song is basically just talking, but she can sing.
1:58
Hey, a Dagwood sandwich! DAGWOOD SANDWICH WATCH 2019 that’s what I do when those show up, right? Been a while since one of those has shown up! It, um… fuck, it actually looks pretty good I’d probably take a stab at eating that.
2:00
And the crossdressing begins. Lovey needs Dagwood to get to the orchestra and play the drums, but Dagwood knows he’ll get recognized by Blondie or Dithers or AHB. (He’s not supposed to still be on the boat.) So Lovey opens her closet and hands him a dress.
2:02
Haha, the Dagwood sandwich is actually a plot element. A steward brings it away on a tray down the hall and Blondie sees it, adding to other clues she’s gotten that Dagwood’s on board. There’s a great overly dramatic shot of the sandwich coming into focus as he walks it towards the camera.
2:05
Blondie just barrelled the lens so hard that I felt her looking into my soul.
2:07
This movie continues to be a full on musical. Blondie’s singing the same song from earlier, but without guitar-man there, just on her own sadly. I wonder if this keeps being a thing in later movies or if this is just the one musical Blondie movie.
2:11
Welp, Dagwood’s crying at the emasculation of wearing a dress.
Coooool.
2:13
I like Lovey’s singing. Ruth Terry’s the singer/actor who plays her, looks like she did a lot of movies.
2:15
The quartet had a nice little choreographed routine during this song. I liked it. I like this one you guys! Maybe you should watch it???
Never thought I’d get to that stage with a Blondie movie.
Future Euan Note: I cannot in good conscience recommend the viewing of any Blondie feature film. Statements made within a Blondie watch are subject to fits of madness and delusion.
2:18
Wow um. Blondie said to guitar-man the sentence “Will you do me a favour? Make love to me.”
I mean I talk about how hard they go in these movies with adult relationship drama, but there’s something so direct about “Make love to me.”
2:20
Blondie’s trying to make Dagwood feel bad by making a show of being involved with guitar-man.
Dagwood’s arc better end with becoming a strong independent woman who don’t need no Blondie.
2:25
Man okay but there’s an extended dance sequence and it feels so long and it’s making me want this to be over.
Penny Singleton’s a decent singer but a crap dancer.
Maybe that’s unfair actually. She’s kind of in character and needs to convey intentions and that. Not easy to do when you’re also performing a choreographed dance routine.
I just can’t stand when they play the sound of tap-dancing over an actor who’s clearly not tap dancing.
2:31
Welp. That wasn’t how Dagwood’s arc ended.
2:33
Hehe, they had a satisfying pay-off to earlier gags. First, they had Dagwood run into a steward, the way he does with the posty every movie. Then, just like posty, the steward tried running into Dagwood to get even. But he misses, goes down one of those big ole cartoon ventilation pipes, which leads him to the music hall where he shoots out a grate and penguins across the floor like Dagwood did earlier. Double pay-off.
THEN Dagwood’s being chased by sailors, so he goes down the pipe, penguins as well, as crashes into the steward a second time.
2:41
Recently, for my annual Christmas watch, I watched It’s a Wonderful Life, but for the first time I watched the colourized version. It was really weird seeing this movie I’d watched in black and white on a VHS tape on an old CRT for the first time in full HD on a big TV, and also with the extra dimension that colour lent it.
It’s gonna be some time before we’re gonna be able to do that to any of the Blondie movies, because
A) Nobody’s going to meticulously go frame-by-frame painting in a Blondie movie, and
B) I doubt somebody saved the masters, so these movies probably don’t and won’t exist in HD.
Just gotta wait for upscaling technology to advance real fast, and then for some kind of automated colourization process to get invented. But you know, once those things become possible and accessible, I’ll be on the forefront remastering Blondie.
2:46
And that’s the end of Blondie Goes Latin. An above-average Blondie, and an out-of-the-ordinary one. There were laughs-a-plenty, a crying steam whistle, a creepy-ass haunted doll, Dagwood in Dragwood, and a handful of solid musical numbers.
My Dagwood Sandwich Rating is: a really pleasant sandwich. Like a posh one you’d get at a food court when you’re on vacation. With spices and shit. And you don’t know what the bread is called but it’s not the usual kind of bread you have at home and it’s a bit tough but the sandwich is good. Hell yeah.
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Blondie Plays Cupid (1940)
1:54 AM, Monday, 25 November 2019
Whoops it’s been more than a month since I did one of these WHOOPS
Been really busy working on my short film for college and I didn’t find time to keep doing this. But now it’s finished so back to the Blondie grind! There was a point a while back where I had the thought “I’d like to be watching a Blondie right now,” so I guess it may have gotten to the point where these are somehow a comfort thing for me. But hey we’ll see how long that lasts when I’m actually watching one again.
This time it’s Blondie Plays Cupid.
1:58
AAAHHH WTF THEY’RE NOT PLAYING THE THEME SONG! I WAS ABOUT TO START TYPING IT OUT AND NOW IT’S DIFFERENT! THIS IS NOT A GOOD TIME TO BE THROWING CHANGE AT ME!
2:00
Dick Flournoy is credited in the intro but not on the Wikipedia page. Wonder what the deal is there.
2:02
There’s a bunch of dogs in the Bumsteads’ house chasing Daisy right now. Shenanigans, not important, but one who’s got its head stuck in the pet door just did two barks that were definitely played backwards. I have no idea why they were played backwards, but I’m sure I can hear the echo before them.
2:07
Hey, movie got a laugh out of me!
Dagwood found one of Daisy’s bones in his bed.
Dagwood: What have I got in my hand?
Blondie: Why, it’s a bone.
Dagwood: Oh, I’m coming apart!
Blondie: Nonsense, you don’t come apart til you’re 40.
Just looked it up, Arthur Lake would’ve been about 35 when he was playing Dagwood in this. I look forward to seeing him come apart in a few films time.
2:10
The dog’s such a good actor. The way it emotes just by looking where it’s been directed sells the anthropomorphism so well.
2:12
This movie’s called Blondie Plays Cupid, but it’s set around the 4th of July, not Valentine’s day. Future Euan, write in a joke about that, I can’t think of one.
Future Euan Note: What does Dagwood call the day when he has to travel and take his photo of his loving wife Blondie with him? In-da-pendant’s day!
idfk man
2:13
I know for sure that within this blog I figured out why old movie crossfades have abrupt shifts in brightness, but I absolutely do not remember. Guess I gotta re-read to find out.
Future Euan Note - The Empire Strikes Back: It’s because each of the clips are fading to black and then superimposed over one another, so it starts and ends at a different opacity than it was.
2:15
Did paint have glue in it in the 40s? Dagwood’s getting stuff stuck to him because he’s touching wet paint, but that’s not a thing wet paint does.
Future Euan Note - Return of the Jedi: A cursory Google search doesn’t show me any evidence that paint ever had glue in it.
2:17
Blondie: Gets Dagwood’s foot unstuck from wet paint using a plate.
Dagwood: “Now how’re you gonna get the plate off?”
Blondie: removes the plate without hesitation and walks off.
Dagwood: Looks confused. Inspects the wet paint where she took the plate off. Touches it with his hand. Gets stuck.
What a fuckin’ dumbass.
2:18
Dagwood and Alexander Hamilton Bumstead are hiding fireworks and firecrackers from Blondie, but I don’t really get why. To surprise her? This seems like a bit of a stretch to get in more hilarious misunderstandings that are easily avoided if anyone even for a moment tells the truth.
2:20
Okay, the reasoning is that Blondie made Dagwood promise he wouldn’t buy firecrackers.
So they were going to light off some incognito firecrackers.
Stealth firecrackers.
Yeah.
2:23
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2:30
Okay, so: the Bumsteads lit a firecracker by mistake. Shenanigans ensued, and they threw it out the window, exploding the mailman, who was trying to evade being run into. Then, to get his revenge, the mailman bought a second firecracker off Alvin the neighbour and threw it through the door at the Bumsteads.
I think Dagwood accidentally bullied the mailman so hard he became a terrorist.
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2:38
Dagwood runs out the door in his boxers
Blondie: Dagwood! Dagwood! You come right back here.
Dagwood: What is it? Now I missed my bus! What do you want?
Blondie: (Holding a pair of pants) Haven’t you forgotten something?
Dagwood: What?
Blondie: You forgot to kiss me goodbye.
Dagwood: Aww.
I forgot that Blondie and Dagwood are a sweet couple sometimes. It’s kind of hard to remember when they joke about her divorcing him CONSTANTLY.
2:46
They just had a bit where Alexander Hamilton Bumstead told Daisy to jump over a suitcase repeatedly. Over and over and over. And each time the footage is played slightly slower until it’s in full slow motion.
It’s times like these where I’m convinced these movies are deliberately trying to put me to sleep.
2:55
Ooh, scrolling ahead, this one has some time spent on a train. That resulted in my favourite Blondie scenes last time, so that’s a good sign.
2:57
Hey, Alexander Hamilton Bumstead just told the truth, handing over a firecracker he was hiding to Blondie without her finding it. That was A) a really sweet moment, and B) really satisfying for someone like me who’s crossing their fingers that the fireworks shenanigans weren’t going to continue into the rest of the movie.
Alright I’m gonna pause and continue this tomorrow morning.
3:07
Hey have you seen Final Space? It's on Netflix in Canada. I really liked the first season and the second just went up. It's an animated sci fi comedy, and my take from the start has been that it's not a very good comedy, but it's legitimately great sci fi TV. Season 2 episode 4 made me giddy, it was fantastic. It's all about half of the main cast's spaceship getting trapped in a "time shard," where time passes differently. So it jumps ahead 60 years where part of the cast is cut off from the rest. And one character has a hologram of his dead father that says whatever he types into it in his father's voice. Which I friggin adore. It's so cool. The whole episode was just cool writing. I want to try to achieve that with the Blondie script I'm gonna write. There were moments when I was writing my Sonic script that were really satisfying because I'd read it back and be like "hell yeah, that's cool writing." I have no idea how to explain that in sane terms. I don't mean the things that are happening are cool. I don't mean the Terminator, in sunglasses and a leather jacket with a minigun. I mean the imagery and the ideas feel new and striking and interesting and COOL, ya know? I think I feel that way about really solid set-ups and payoffs. It makes movies like the Spider-Man trilogy and The Darjeeling Limited where dialogue is repeated to signal character growth really satisfying. Or The Truman Show. I just rewatched that recently and that has cool writing in the form of a perfect beginning and a perfect ending (the light falling from the sky in front of Truman, sparking his suspicions in one of the clearest inciting incidents I can think of, and Truman finding the door at the edge of the world, the single coolest visual in the movie.)
Some would say I should channel this passion into something other than Blondie fanfiction. And they're probably right. I'm gonna go to bed and rethink my life.
Tomorrow Morning, 12:23 PM
Aight back to it.
12:30
They stepped up their visual gag game a lot in this movie. There was just a scene where the Bumsteads are at a train station, and Dagwood goes off to get the tickets, then comes back and gets on the wrong train, and when it shows us Blondie and Alexander Hamilton Bumstead sat on the train, you can see Dagwood on the opposite train through the window, and vice versa. Really good framing. Then when he realizes what happens and runs after the train as it’s leaving, there’s a shot of various things getting knocked into the air as Dagwood barges through the crowd. First it’s some letters, then a spilling suitcase and some balloons, and then a full set of bagpipes flies through the air, still making the sound as if it’s being played just so you get that it’s bagpipes.
12:35
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12:36
No-one will be seated during the Dagwood spends a long time trying to find something in Blondie’s purse because it’s so full of junk scene.
12:39
No chill train storytime scenes in this one, unfortunately.
1:15
The shenanigans as they’re unfolding right now are that the Bumsteads hitchhiked with what turned out to be a couple in the midst of eloping, and now the bride’s father has arrived with a shotgun in the middle of the ceremony to try and prevent it.
I like these shenanigans.
1:20
Snort watch 2019:
Blondie and the groom couldn’t get a car started, so the owners’ advice was to turn the switch off and “make like you’re going to get out,” and then right as they’re getting out, the car starts.
1:30
There’s a scene where, while pretending to drive the car, Alexander Hamilton Bumstead inadvertently starts it (by making like he’s going to get out) and starts driving it around as Dagwood chases after him. But every shot they show of the car moving, it’s quite clear that there’s a dummy of Alexander Hamilton Bumstead sat in the front seat.
1:32
He’s still driving the car. This scene feels soooooo looooooong.
1:38
I’ve liked a lot of this one but I’m 10 minutes from the end right now and I want more than anything for it to be over.
1:43
Dagwood punched out shotgun dad. Hurray for punching?
1:47
This movie ends with Alexander Hamilton Bumstead accidentally striking oil with a firecracker.
If this were a video and not a blog, I’d find a way to work in my Daniel Plainview impression. But it’s not. So I won’t.
Milkshake.
1:50
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And that’s the end of Blondie Plays Cupid. I rather enjoyed it. I’d have enjoyed it more if the jokes it had weren’t stretched out across an hour and 7 minutes, but what’re you gonna do. I wouldn’t be doing this in the first place if I were watching every episode of a 20 minute Blondie TV series.
My Dagwood Sandwich rating: a sandwich containing ham and cheese. It’s fine. It’s rather nice actually. I’ve had it before many times but hey, it’s been a while.
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Blondie Has Servant Trouble (1940)
11:51 PM, Saturday, 19 October 2019
What a title, eh? The biggest first world problem of the 20th century. Needless to say, there are bigger problems in the world in 1940 than Blondie’s servant trouble, but here we are. I’m not in the best mood so why not take it out on this totally well-meaning but inconsequential piece of light entertainment from 80 years ago?
11:55
Hey so: the mailman Dagwood runs into in the intro isn’t the mailman he runs into in the movies proper. I don’t know if it ever was. Maybe in the first movie, I honestly don’t remember, but I don’t know who that guy in the intro is. He’s not the mailman I know and love from these great great flicks.
11:58
Hey, noir detective newspaper guy is back! I guess whatever drama I decided was going on behind the scenes last time is resolved now.
We may never know how much blood he has on his hands, how far he went, interrogating petty criminals in alleys, following the trail that ended at the dog-catchers, God rest their souls.
12:01 AM
So… I think a lot of what I’ve seen so far is stock footage, which isn’t something they’ve done to any noticeable degree in the previous movies. Maybe it isn’t though? I don’t know! I don’t trust myself. Maybe these movies are just so repetitive that I can’t believe that they filmed this stuff a second time anymore.
(Future Euan note: I’m pretty sure it wasn’t stock footage.)
12:03
So far, this entry seems to be about superstitions. You know, black cats, walking under ladders.
I’m kinda checked out. Which I can only apologize for. If you’re reading this I want to give you my all, but I mean YOU KNOW WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN. YOU’VE SEEN OLD CARTOONS. Man I miss Dagwood and Blondie just chilling on the train.
12:07
Blondie: “Poor Daisy. Maybe she’s tired of doing the same thing over and over. I know I am.”
Holy shit, the movie heard me. I’m scared now. I’m feeling very vulnerable and I’m not ready for Blondie Has Servant Trouble to Sonic.exe me.
12:09
Dagwood just electrocuted himself atop a ladder at the top of a flight of stairs, which he then fell down. And all I can think is “man I wish Dagwood could die.”
12:15
Alexander Hamilton Bumstead has a kite.
Kinda like how Charlie Brown flies a kite.
...
You know, What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown has a really interesting sequence of World War II footage that’s hand-tinted in bright stylized colours. I could be watching that right now.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3x6rhf
12:28
I promise I’ll go easy on the next movie. I’ll look on the bright side for that one.
12:30
The mailman says he transferring. It’d be weird if the movie where I finally notice that there’s a different mailman in the intro is also the last movie with the mailman that actually is in the movies.
12:32
There’s a gag where Dagwood, through a series of hilarious events, runs into the mailman while caught on Alexander Hamilton Bumstead’s kite, and we see the kite flying in the air with the mailman’s hat stuck in its string. And all I could think was “that must have been a very hard shot to get and it was not worth it.”
Dark Side Euan has entered the chat.
12:38
Apparently people said “no offence” in 1940. Did not know that.
12:39
You know, I was in a good mood last night. Maybe things’d be different if I did this then.
See, like: Dagwood just kicked his boss in the ass so hard that he slid clear across the room. And I feel nothing.
12:44
Turns out the mailman transferring was just more “ooh, is the mailman gonna avoid getting run into this time? No. He’s not.” The mailman’s transferring to a neighbourhood where Dagwood’s boss is going to put him so that he and Blondie can have servants. Shenanigans. Malarkey. MALARKEY I SAY.
12:48
Somebody died. I’m pretty sure this is the first allusion to death in the Blondieverse. So people can die. By that token, Dagwood can die, assuming he’s a human.
But you know what they say about assuming: don’t do it if it’s not funny.
Is Dagwood an alien? That would explain what I’ve taken to be the strangely pointy bits of his hairdo, maybe they’re actually antennae. Perhaps he’s some kind of god, or an angel, a being from a higher- wait I’m just doing the Mr. Bean lore now.
12:56
Dagwood, Blondie and Alexander Hamilton Bumstead (to say nothing of the dog) are on the car-ride over to the house they’re going to stay in, where a magic trick manufacturer died (more malarkey incoming.)
While Blondie was getting all horny at the thought of having servants (I don’t know how else to describe it, she just keeps saying the word “servants” with satisfaction,) Alexander Hamilton Bumstead cut her off and said “Daddy, are we still in the United States?” I thought, true to his abolitionist namesake, he was condemning his mother for indulging in the privilege her position in the class hierarchy provided her. But apparently he was just commenting on how long the car-ride was taking.
1:08
They’ve arrived at the house, and it doesn’t have electricity.
Alexander Hamilton Bumstead: “This is a mess, how are we going to eat?”
Blondie: “We have plenty of candles, dear.”
Alexander Hamilton Bumstead: “Only eskimos eat candles.”
Never mind, Alexander Hamilton Bumstead isn’t a progressive in the realm of race politics after all.
1:16
Alright. The movie’s acting like there’s a ghost in the house. They’ve shown us someone under a cover, cartoon ghost style. I’m betting you right now it’s the magic trick manufacturer and he’s still alive and that’ll be the shenanigans and in fact death remains an unconfirmed theory in the Blondieverse. And if I’m wrong, I’ll just go back and delete this paragraph.
1:18
I’m wrong. But anyway I’m pretty sure they used stock footage for real this time, for a shot of Daisy running into a door and hitting her head because there’s no dog door. Unless maybe Daisy had a catalogue of tricks she could do, and so they’re filming them more than once to get the most out of having trained the dog to do that.
1:23
So! The guy under the sheet was a black man by the name of Horatio Jones, played by Ray Turner. I note that he’s black because of our experiences with Willie Best, the only other black representation in these movies up until this point. Horatio’s in the house because he’s being initiated into a lodge, and he has to spend a night in a haunted house. So maybe these movies are improving at representing black people?
(Future Euan Note: Horatio is still a pretty stereotypical character, and has his eyes wide practically every second he’s on screen, but he’s presented as equal in class to the Bumsteads so I guess I can count that as progress.)
1:36
Shenanigans alert: the servants just arrived, or rather two people purporting to be the servants, but they reacted oddly when Blondie said “you must be the servants,” and haven’t said anything, instead letting Blondie talk for them, so I suspect they’re not actually the servants. Maybe they’re there to rob the dead magic trick manufacturer’s house? I’m determined to figure out the shenanigans before they happen.
1:40
The “servants,” on their own:
Servant A: “This is my house, it always has been my house.”
Servant B: “But those young people are harmless.”
Servant A: “Harmless? No-one is harmless!”
Servant B: “...Sometimes I think your mind is-”
Servant A: (Turning, putting his hands on her neck as if to strangle her,) “You’ll never say that again!”
These bastards are straight out of a completely different movie.
1:45
Blondie has her fur coat from the last movie. Continuity! Wooooo.
1:47
Please make this movie be over.
1:51
I hate you
You hate me
Let’s team up and kill Barney
With a baseball bat and a two-by-four
No more purple dinosaur
1:54
Dagwood got a flashlight stuck in his mouth and can’t get it out. Which is upsetting more than it is comical. Reminds of that one bit in The Empty Child.
Gross.
1:57
After getting it out, Dagwood promptly got the flashlight stuck in his mouth again, while demonstrating to Horatio how he managed to get it stuck the first time ‘round.
What a fucking dipshit.
2:03
Eric the fake servant dude just grabbed a kitchen knife and walked menacingly in the direction of the Bumsteads, before fake servant lady stopped him.
Don’t tease me like that, Flournoy!
(Future Euan Note: Wow that’s dark, I’m sorry.)
2:07
The guy playing Eric, the demented mystery man masquerading as a servant and repeatedly holding his head in anguish, is named Arthur Hohl, and a cursory glance at his Wikipedia tells me that he’s a fairly serious actor. And I mean I’m down. I’m struggling with this one but I am down for the introduction of a thespian playing a violent and dangerous man losing his grip on reality.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s Dick Flournoy’s self-insert character.
2:15
There was just a bit where Dagwood ran to get water to douse on fake servant lady, who’s unconscious.
...Which reminds me of this one scene in A Boy Named Charlie Brown, which I’d also rather be watching.
https://youtu.be/E7ID_E-SYbQ
Snoopy’s an asshole and I love it.
2:24
15 minutes left. My eyes are doing that thing where they feel bad to keep open. You know. When one is sleepy.
2:28
https://youtu.be/AQE4bwA6EF4
This movie is weird you guys.
2:30
Welp, the movie broke me. I laughed.
Blondie: (reading a newspaper clipping with a picture of the crazy fake servant dude) “Man eludes police after knifing attorney.”
Dagwood: “Euh- with a knife?”
2:35
This movie’s never gonna end I wanna SLEEEEEEp
2:37
Ignore this entry, I’m just typing something so I don’t fall asleep.
2:38
Dagwood just yelled “Blondie, I’m shot!” What actually happened is he burnt himself with a candle, but if I was a real sociopath, I could edit that line with gunshot sound effects either side of it. Like Dagwood’s Crazy Frog and I’m on Newgrounds circa 2005.
2:42
I think Dagwood just got stabbed. I think Dagwood has a knife in his back. I think Dagwood just got STABBED.
2:43
Nah the knife was just stuck in his jacket. But if I was a REAL sociopath, I could-
idk, edit in a punchline when you’re not so tired, Future Euan.
(Future Euan Note: I dunno, painstakingly animate CGI blood dripping from his back? I don’t really know what you were going for here, Past Euan.)
2:47
Okay it’s done! IT’S DONE! It’s done.
Quick quick quick, wrap up: This movie was good, probably, maybe? I was miserable watching it but it had weirdly life or death stakes and a psycho killer (qu’est que c’est) which is almost interesting by Blondie standards. It’s even the kind of movie I could see myself stumbling on and enjoying if it wasn’t a Blondie movie, or if it was but I wasn’t on this crusade. The kind of movie I’d find on some weird DVD collection of public domain or cheaply licensed old movies, like a favourite of mine, The Answer, a 1955 episode of Four Star Playhouse that felt very profound when I was little.
My Dagwood Sandwich rating is: one sandwich containing ice cream. You appreciate the ice cream, but you weren’t exactly expecting it in your sandwich. And when somebody asks you how it was, you’re like, “Well, it was ice cream, so good I guess.” And they say, “Did you enjoy it?” and you say, “Well, no.”
AHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I’m gonna go to sleep.
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Blondie on a Budget (1940)
11:31 PM, Wednesday, 2 October 2019
Here we go again. What are we watching this time? Let’s see…
Blondie on a Budget.
LET’S GET HYPED Y’ALL READY FOR-
Nah I can’t get into that wedding MC vibe. “ARE YOU EXCITED? I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!” That’s because I’m at a wedding.
So! Let’s watch Blondie on a Budget like civilized people. No hooping and hollering, just a quaint suburban american family and some comedic misunderstandings.
11:42
Alright, I just bought my ticket to go see Joker tomorrow NOW LET’S WATCH THE REAL JOKER, DAGWOOD BUMSTEAD
And we’re going to be VERY careful this time not to let Mr. Amazon spoil the movie for us.
...Never mind this one isn’t on Amazon.
youtube
11:45
Hey hey! Dick Flournoy’s back in the writer’s chair! Is that a saying? Probably not. I mean everyone has a chair if you think about it.
First shot of the movie and Willie Best is back. (For real this time.) Now instead of working at a hotel, he’s delivering newspapers. Not to be confused with the young guy who said he was gonna look for Daisy on his bike last time. Come to think of it, did anyone tell him they found Daisy? Maybe Willie Best got his job because he didn’t come to work the next day. Maybe he’s still looking for Daisy. Maybe he’s gone all noir detective, questioning dames and drinking from a flask, sitting under a window so the shades throw stripey shadows over him.
“Someday I’ll find Daisy. Or I’ll find the hoodlums that put her out of the picture. Then I’ll make ‘em pay. Until then, I just gotta keep looking. On my bike.”
11:54
Alexander wants Blondie to read the funnies to him from the newspaper. I absolutely won’t be able to tell from the picture quality, but how much do you wanna bet that there’s a Blondie strip in there? I think superhero movies can get away with comic books existing within their universe, but I can’t think of a way that Blondie the comic strip can coexist with a real Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead.
Although Dagwood’s reaction to finding his life in the funnies could lead to some interesting The Truman Show/The Matrix shenanigans.
11:58
When Blondie ignores Alexander’s plea to read him the comics, (she’s busy doing some kind of accounting) he walks away, and then she says “Get daddy to read it to you.” And Alexander says:
“Hm. Heard every word I said. That’s a woman for ya.”
Just a reminder that Gladys Lehman isn’t writing this anymore.
12:02
Dagwood just did a pretty impressive somersault pratfall. I mean, it wasn’t funny, but it was mildly impressive, so good job Arthur Lake.
12:03
HEY OKAY I LIKED A THING! Again, wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny, but:
Dagwood came in, inhaled deeply through his nose, and sincerely delivered the line “Blondie, would you believe it? I could smell that good old coffee all the way in the backyard.” And Blondie replies solemnly: “I’m sorry, dear, I forgot to make it.” And Dagwood does his “Ye-huh?” but the one where he doesn’t make any noise so I don’t mind it. The facial “Ye-huh?” we’ll call it.
Now, Dagwood being his lovably oblivious but well-meaning self, just tried to say something nice, and Blondie interpreted it as sarcasm. Which as a misunderstanding doesn’t put Blondie into any awkwardness, but puts Dagwood in the position of having tried to open the conversation with a compliment and it instead being taken as a snide jab at Blondie for not making his coffee. But Dagwood isn’t about to correct Blondie, so this goes completely unremarked.
THAT’S ACTUALLY A PRETTY NICE PIECE OF WRITING.
12:13
I think they’re trying harder this time to give Dagwood those little hair points he has in the comics. I’d probably appreciate that if I were a Blondie comic aficionado. But as I hope I’ve made clear by now, my only goal is to be a Blondie movie aficionado.
12:18
Blondie: “I was awake half the night, dreaming. I dreamed that you asked me for 200 dollars. We had a violent argument, and I killed you. Wasn’t it silly? Why would you want 200 dollars?”
I’m a little worried about Blondie. And a lot worried about Dagwood.
12:24
Haha, Alexander just did what I’m assuming is meant to be Dagwood’s double-take. It doesn’t look like his, because he’s a small small child, but what it does look like is what would happen if the makers of a Blondie movie tried to explain how to do Dagwood’s double-take to a small small child.
12:28
Um. Okay. What the fuck.
I don’t know if I really want to describe what just happened? But it’s more of “hey look a woman didn’t write this one.”
A woman showed up at the Bumsteads’ door. As Alexander answers it, he looks up at her, and catcalls, he whistles at her. He’s 6 years old in this according to math. She says “I’m an old old friend of your father’s.” He says “You’re not so old.” She says “What a lovely thing to say! I could kiss you for that. Would you mind if I kiss you?” And then she does.
I nEeD aN ADuLT
12:35
Addendum: It wasn’t Alexander, it was Alvin, who pretended to be Alexander so as to talk to this woman. That makes nothing better. Also while we’re at it, Alexander doesn’t actually look like he could be 6 in this?
Man I just had do Google “What does a 6 year old look like.” For one thing I’m absolutely terrible at telling what age any child is, and for another I’m definitely on some kind of list now.
12:36
OK BUT THE SECOND I FINISHED WRITING THAT AND HIT PLAY, it became a plot-point that Alvin is 6, but once he tells the woman that, that’s how she finds out that he isn’t Alexander, because Alexander “couldn’t possibly be 6.”
I’M VALIDATED! I WASN’T CRAZY!
12:41
Alvin just said “Baby Dumpling, meet the woman who was almost your mother,” a line which is absolutely 3000% too real for a Blondie movie, back-to-back with Daisy’s ears going up, and her running over and pushing the door shut so Dagwood and Blondie can’t hear.
Which is maybe the most anthropomorphized and funniest thing Daisy has done so far. I mean, that time she closed a cupboard door after herself was good, but that was self-preservation and fear. This is Daisy actually getting wrapped up in the drama of what’s going on and trying to prevent it from developing.
12:50
My dad just told me when he was in university, he had a picture of Dagwood in a straightjacket, screaming, on his wall.
This is just a reminder that all fan-art is appreciated.
12:55
OH MY GOD.
I just found out Alexander’s full name was revealed in the comic in 1934. It is Alexander Hamilton Bumstead.
I promise you I didn’t know that when I opened the last review with a Hamilton parody.
(I was trying to figure out at what point in the strip he stopped being a baby and started being a teenager. I couldn’t find that on the Wikipedia article.)
1:43
Took a break. Back now.
1:55
Y’know, I guess Blondie is, from a certain point of view, equally demeaning a thing to call a human being as Baby Dumpling is. I decided to check if that was her real name, and found out that it is, and also her maiden name is “Boopadoop.”
2:00
Somebody is doing an impression of Dagwood to try and fool Blondie over the phone. And it’s amazing.
...awwww, he’s just dubbed. Man, I thought he was actually doing a great impression.
2:05
The return of Snort Watch 2019:
Daisy put her hand in her mouth, in the “that’s bad” kinda way.
2:09
Decent joke: A car won’t start. Dagwood, giggling, says “Where’s the tools? I’ll have it fixed in a jiffy.” Hard cut to the car being towed.
2:11
Dagwood just did the “I’m ready to punch someone in the face at the drop of a hat” thing again, and threw his hat on the ground just to emphasize it.
2:13
Dagwood’s a little infuriating. He realizes when the situation he’s in is going to end with Blondie threatening to divorce him again, but he’s such a pushover that he’ll only ever whine about it a little, and then continue on. It somehow makes it feel even more crushing to know exactly how this is going to go when Dagwood also knows how it’s going to go, but isn’t going to stop it.
2:22
It’s also frustrating that Dagwood never learns anything. He lies to Blondie about whatever misunderstanding there is so he doesn’t get in trouble with her, and then the lying just makes it worse and prolongs the drama, and then she finds out the truth and everything’s resolved. And then there’s a new misunderstanding and he starts lying to her again like he’s a goddamn 6 foot goldfish.
2:25
Blondie just said she went to Church off-screen. I think this might be the first allusion to religion in the Blondieverse? Presumably they worship their lord and saviour Richard Flournoy.
2:29
Weird race joke just happened. Earlier Blondie I mean Dagwood (I’m still doing that) was in a movie theater, and he was looking around at people, and then they’d morph into Blondie, glaring at him and making him feel guilty. The last time this happened, it was an Asian mother with a baby that morphed into Blondie holding Alexander. I didn’t notice that they also did it that time, but this time, now that he’s home, he looks at Blondie and Alexander, and they have black hair and what looks like eye makeup to make them look Asian. And then he looks down at Daisy and she’s turned into a Pekingese (which I had to Google dog breeds to figure out was the joke.)
And now I’m concerned what post-Pearl Harbour Blondie is going to look like. (I’m looking at you, 1942’s Blondie for Victory.)
2:43
“That scheming hussy.” -Blondie Bumstead, formerly Blondie Boopadoop, 1940.
2:47
Uggghghhghghg. They just had a scene where Dagwood confessed the truth about everything to Blondie, most of which were things she’d figured out for herself. That might’ve fixed what I’ve been complaining about. Then Dagwood gets a phone call, which is telling him he won 200 dollars in a raffle that we’ve seen him tear up the ticket for, and now he’s decided he’s going to spend the money we know he won’t get on a fur coat Blondie wants. So when he goes back up, he wants to keep who he was on the phone with a secret from Blondie, and starts lying again. And Blondie knows he’s lying, and punches her pillow in frustration.
But then she goes to sleep.
AGAIN she sees where this is going and DOESN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT WHICH MAKES ME FEEL LIKE I’M GOING INSANE. EVERYTHING IS FUTILE, THESE ARE THE THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN EVERY BLONDIE MOVIE AND EVEN WHEN THE CHARACTERS INSIDE THE MOVIE HAVE BEEN READING BLONDIE COMICS IN THEIR MORNING NEWSPAPER, EVEN WHEN THEY CAN SEE THE CODE OF THE MATRIX, THEY DON’T DO ANYTHING TO DISRUPT THE LOOP. THEY KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING AND THEY KNOW THEY CAN’T STOP IT. THIS ISN’T JUST FATALISM, THIS IS OPENING A GUN, SEEING THAT IT’S LOADED, CLOSING IT AGAIN, AND LOOKING DOWN THE BARREL TO SEE IF IT’S ACTUALLY LOADED. AND THEN SHOOTING YOURSELF IN THE FUCKING FACE AND TELLING ST. PETER “yeah it was loaded.”
I’m going to bed.
10:56 PM, Friday, 4 October 2019
It’s been 2 days. Whoops! Let’s get back to it.
11:03
There’s a featured extra that just delivered a line in a way that’s funny, but the line itself isn’t actually funny. Blondie’s buying a bus ticket, I think to leave town because she thinks Dagwood’s cheating on her again. Blondie’s on the brink of tears, and the cashier selling her the bus ticket starts tearing up, and says “I know just how you feel. I wish I could sell a ticket to Niagara Falls…”
I don’t get it. Was there something going on at Niagara Falls in 1940 or is it just a total non-sequitur?
11:09
I think… Blondie might’ve skipped town, but left Daisy.
11:13
And now Daisy is drunk, through a chain of events that left booze on the floor. I don’t know how to feel about this development.
11:19
There’s something different about the way Flournoy shows Dagwood’s loneliness in this one. I think this is the first time where Dagwood hasn’t had anything to do while Blondie thinks he’s cheated on him. He’s not in jail, he’s not off trying to get a good deal done selling property to some mogul, he’s just at home, alone, and completely defeated. A lot of it has been silent, like right now he’s stacking pillows in Blondie’s twin bed, because he can’t get to sleep without her there. The pathos is through the roof compared to the other movies.
11:30
Blondie: “Oh, I’ve been such a fool.”
Dagwood, hugging her: “Oh, that’s alright. Everybody’s a fool.”
Is that a sweet moment? I think that’s a sweet moment. Something about that is sweet to me.
11:33
A minor twist at the end involved a trout club burning down. I suspect pyromaniac uncle.
11:36
And that was Blondie on a Budget! Took me longer than usual to get through it, I’ll try not to do that again too often. Got real mad at it in the middle, but it was inoffensive and of typical quality for the second half. Maybe a little above average, because Dagwood sad and alone at home was something new.
My Dagwood sandwich rating is: one sandwich that is practically identical to a sandwich you just ate a minute ago, which annoys you, but then once you’ve finished eating it, you can appreciate the minute details that distinguished it from the previous sandwich.
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Blondie Brings Up Baby (1939)
8:38 PM, Thursday, 26 September 2019
Nineteen. Ni- Ni- Nineteen.
Ni- Ni- Nineteen.
Nineteen thirty-nine.
How does our favourite zany
Nuclear familial vignette
Get themselves into another casse-tête?
Dagwood’s filled with sandwiches while Flournoy’s filled with regret
And Alexander’s traumatized
You ready for more yet?
Blondie Brings Up Baby. Let’s get into it.
By the way, we’ve got a new head screenwriter, Gladys Lehman. Our old friend Dick Flournoy’s still on the Wikipedia page as “story by, (uncredited)” though.
8:40
I don’t know if I’ve only just noticed this or if this movie just gave the first indication of it, but Dagwood is really bad at his job.
8:42
8:43
UHHH. There’s a woman in the Bumsteads’ house. There hasn’t been a woman in the Bumsteads’ house before. I have no idea who she is and the movie moved swiftly on without explaining who she is.
8:46
UHHHHHHHH. They cut from a scene of Dagwood and Blondie at a police station telling a receptionist that Alexander is missing, after he didn’t show up to school, to a scene where Dagwood is in a shed, and COMPLETELY INEXPLICABLY, a bunch of police with tommy guns have him surrounded and start firing on him and throwing tear gas bombs.
I have no fucking clue what is going on in this movie.
8:51
UHHHHHHHHHHHHH. All of that was the build up to the intro. The intro is playing now.
The movie hasn’t even started yet.
WHAT.
WHAT IS HAPPENING.
They haven’t had anything before the intro on any of the other movies.
8:52
OKAY. SO.
The last few movies I’ve watched on YouTube. They’re in the public domain anyway as far as I can tell. But I couldn’t find a version of Blondie Brings Up Baby with good enough quality, so I switched to Amazon Prime.
Turns out, I’ve just discovered, all the Blondie movies on Amazon Prime have 3-5 minutes of scenes with ABSOLUTELY NO CONTEXT pinned onto the beginning before the intro. So I just watched 4 minutes and 40 seconds of Blondie Brings Up Baby SPOILERS.
And I’m furious about it.
9:05
There’s a “huh?” that Dagwood does in these whenever he does a double-take, and it’s gotta be my least favourite recurring bit. They use it like a rimshot or a catchphrase to punctuate jokes, and 100% of the time it just extends something that wasn’t funny.
9:11
See okay: He just did one, but silently. There was no “huh?”, just Dagwood looking confused. And it was a little bit funny! That’s all it took. No “huh?”.
9:16
K, this time Blondie’s the one being a bad parent. A guy showed up at the door offering a free IQ test for Alexander. Is that a thing that happened in the 30s? No idea, but it’s what’s happening in the movie so let’s just go with it. Alvin, Alexander’s friend/enemy/neighbour who he occasionally brains with a fucking brick, has been over and has been calling Alexander (and also Dagwood) a dumbbell all day. So to get revenge on Alvin, Blondie is getting all competitive about the IQ test, telling Alexander that he has to beat Alvin.
It’s giving me flashbacks to a music teacher I had in high school. We were going to a concert band competition in another province, and she told us she wouldn’t accept us bringing home anything other than gold. In the middle of the performance, we lost time with each other (because we’d never played in an auditorium and weren’t used to the acoustics) and had to start the song over. We got bronze. On the bus ride home, she didn’t talk to us. I don’t think she even looked at us.
The next year, I took drama instead of music.
9:27
Ok. So. The dude with the IQ test watched Alexander build a house out of toy blocks. Based on that, he told Blondie that Alexander is a genius, and that his IQ is 168.
(What follows is me disassembling the logic of this, which I’ll shortly learn was a pointless endeavour.)
First of all, no way can he determine an IQ that specific based on a house Alexander built out of toy blocks. Secondly, I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t be telling a child they’re a genius, since they’d end up developing less motivation, thinking that their accomplishments are a result of natural gifts rather than hard work. And third, UNLESS they turn around and reveal that the IQ test, which I’ll note happened off-screen, was somehow wrong and Alexander isn’t actually a genius, then I am going to spend the remaining movies in this series frustrated at their continued insistence on calling him “Baby Dumpling.” Which, you know, I already am anyway. Although maybe demeaning him like that will balance out them telling him he’s a genius.
9:34
Oh ok. The test wasn’t wrong. The IQ dude is just a con artist selling encyclopedias.
Should’ve seen that coming.
9:38
Dagwood thought IQ meant temperature, and came rushing home thinking Alexander was terribly sick. It cut to him ripping up the encyclopedias Blondie just bought, saying “This guy’s crazy, coming around here with books at a time like this.”
What an insufferable doofus.
9:41
I’m not a fan of Blondie entirely falling for this con artist’s BS. I feel like she hasn’t been that gullible before. She’s gotten mad at Dagwood based on comical misunderstandings, but that’s been understandable based on the context she didn’t have. But we as an audience are given just as much context as Blondie is to know that this dude is swindling her. It just makes her seem stupid.
9:48
Teacher: “Well, how do you do young man? So you want to start to school?”
Blondie: “NO MA'AM!”
Mood.
9:51
Man, elementary school is a bonkers institution. Just send your small child to a building they cannot leave full of strangers who have absolute authority over them, and are sometimes totally insane people, where they’ll be taught things they not only cannot use but definitely will not remember because they’re tiny tiny children. And sometimes the insane adult strangers will yell at your child. For not behaving. And they’re not behaving because they’re in a place they don’t want to be and cannot leave where strangers have the authority to yell at them for mistakes they’re making FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THEIR LIVES BECAUSE THEY’RE SMALL SMALL CHILDREN.
10:11
Huh. I think they just broke the canon? I’ve been calling Baby Dumpling Alexander because the Wikipedia for the first movie listed him as Alexander "Baby Dumpling" Bumstead, but in Blondie Brings Up Baby, they just had this exchange:
Alexander: “[They beat me up] ’cause my name’s Baby Dumpling.”
Dagwood: “Well, your real name’s Dagwood, after me. Maybe we’ll call you that now that you’re going to school?”
Alexander: “Noooo. Guess I’ll stay Baby Dumpling.”
I dunno if his real name’s Alexander in the comic strip and they just forgot while they were writing this? They haven’t called him Alexander in the other movies, I was just basing that entirely off the Wikipedia article. I can’t believe they’d make 28 movies without a clear story bible.
(Future Euan looked it up. In the comic strip, Baby Dumpling grew up into a teenager, and became Alexander.)
I’m still gonna call him Alexander by the way.
10:17
As these movies have gone on, I’ve been increasingly concerned about the wellbeing of the dog. Like, the real dog, behind the scenes. I really hope they weren’t abusing her to get her to do all the stuff she does. But I can’t say I’d be surprised if they were. She kinda gives the vibe of “dog doing impressive tricks because they’ll punish her if she doesn’t.” Maybe I’m wrong though. Maybe they had, like, a super good treat to give her every time she did a trick.
10:23
10:24
God I wish I were watching Peanuts.
10:25
Or reading Peanuts.
10:26
You ever notice how in old movies when they cross-fade between two shots, there’ll be an abrupt change in the brightness of the footage right before it fades, and then again after it stops fading? One day I’ll learn why that was.
(Here’s the answer, courtesy of future Euan: https://www.quora.com/How-did-movies-do-a-cross-fade-with-real-film)
10:36
Only moment I’ve liked so far: Daisy’s gone missing (because a dogcatcher caught her and brought her to the pound). The mailman, a young guy on a bike who’s had a recurring bit through every movie where he whistles and Daisy comes running to take the paper from him, just whistled, and instead of Daisy, Alexander came to take the mail and tells him Daisy’s missing. And he says “As soon as I’m finished delivering, I’ll look for her. I’ll look on my bike.”
That’s kinda sweet. No sweet moments between Dagwood and Blondie yet this time, but one sweet moment between a mailman who’s barely talked before and a dog.
10:42
There’s a lot of punching in these movies. Like, just Dagwood suddenly becoming infuriated and decking someone in the face.
What a violent doofus.
10:47
Dagwood got arrested for assaulting the dude who got him fired and didn’t have enough to pay it off so he got put in jail. His boss, Mr. Dithers, came to pay it off for him, while the dude’s in court.
Dithers: “How much is it your honour?”
Judge: “Ten dollars.”
Dithers: “Is that all that cost?”
Judge: “Mm.”
(Dithers punches the dude out)
Dithers: (offering money) “Here’s another one, your honour.”
I don’t want to hear another word about video games inciting violence in young people. Goddamn the rest of culture is responsible for glorifying violence.
10:53
Alexander: “You’re a girl. I don’t like girls.”
Girl: “Why?”
Alexander: “Oh… Don’t know. I learned it in school.”
Ho-ly shit. Movie spitting straight truth.
10:59
Might as well drop this here:
I’ve decided that once I’ve watched all the movies, I’m gonna write my own Blondie, A 60 page screenplay with all the hallmarks and the structure of the other ones. I mean, if I’m gonna be dragging them through the dirt, it’s only fair that I see if I could do any better.
11:02
I Want a Dog For Christmas, Charlie Brown. That’d be a good one to be watching right about now.
11:07
No, I tell you what:
There are Blondie movies for every year between 1939 and 1950, EXCEPT for 1944. So that’s when I’ll write my script. Once I’ve watched the first 14, every Blondie movie between 1939 and 1943, I’ll write the Blondie movie to have come out in 1944.
11:10
I now have the context for why the police surrounded the shed that Dagwood was in. It still doesn’t make sense though. He was trespassing on a rich guy’s yard, a gardener knocked him out with a shovel and dragged him into the shed, and then presumably called for all of the police to come pick him up, and bring enough weapons to keep a city-wide riot at bay.
11:13
So the police thought Dagwood was somehow responsible for Alexander and the rich dude’s daughter going missing?
Well I’m riveted.
11:16
Or Why, Charlie Brown, Why?
11:19
“You see, playing with other children is the solution. Oh, if only this city had some place where this sort of thing could be carried out. Where the weak children could get courage from the strong, and the strong could learn compassion.”
So not school then.
“Why, I could do something like that. A sort of home for children! I’ll build it myself. It’ll be light and airy, with plenty of windows and playgrounds.”
THE ORPHANAGE
11:25
This movie ends with Dagwood getting insulted again by Alvin. He finds a tear gas bomb that he put in his pocket earlier when the police were attacking him, and says “Here’s a nice ball for you to play with.”
Dagwood just tried to tear gas a child.
What a dangerous doofus.
And once again, no Dagwood Sandwich Watch 2019. However, I’ll give the movie a rating all the same.
Turns out Willie Best isn’t in the movie. Wikipedia was wrong. I’m guessing somebody copied and pasted the cast from the first movie, so that they could put in the regular cast, and forgot to take him out. And the movie wasn’t, as I assumed from the title, about Dagwood being a stay-at-home father. Which, I’ve only just realized, is still me thinking Blondie means Dagwood because he’s so much more prominent in the franchise, and I somehow still haven’t managed to internalize that his name is Dagwood. It’s like I’ve learned nothing since I started this. ANYWAY point is the movie wasn’t racist or sexist. It was just boring. Terribly terribly boring.
My rating is: One Dagwood Sandwich with some ham on the outside and nothing on the inside. Blame Amazon.
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Blondie Takes a Vacation (1939)
1:59 AM, Sunday, 22 September 2019
ALRIGHT LET’S GO BLONDIE 3
2:04
Dagwood said Blondie’s new “vacation hat,” which looks like a dropped ice cream cone on a wicker basket, “scared him,” and now she’s run off crying.
That is currently the conflict in Blondie Takes a Vacation.
That’s where we’re at.
Just thought you should know.
2:11
“Now listen: the creator made us with two ends. One on which to sit, and the other with which to think. Our success depends on which one we use the most. Heads, we win, tails, we lose.” -An EXTREMELY SMALL CHILD.
Apparently that’s taken from Ann Landers? Which apparently isn’t a real person but a pen name for a column. I’unno. Anyway I’m getting big time Peanuts vibes from the small kids saying stuff like this. I think it’s somehow more charming in animation though, since you can’t see the kids visibly struggling with the lines.
2:16
There’s a regular bit where Dagwood runs out the door and runs into the mailman, sending all his letters flying in the air. It’s even in the intro. (Yeah, these movies all share an intro sequence. It’s basically a theatrical TV sitcom.)
I guess this is a common thing for comic strips, because Peanuts had Lucy pulling the football away, and Calvin and Hobbes had Hobbes pouncing on Calvin as he came in the front door. In Peanuts, it made for wonderful dialogue as Lucy played her mind games and somehow managed to keep convincing Charlie Brown that this was the time he’d kick the football. In Calvin and Hobbes, it allowed for visually dynamic and extreme art, some of the most purely cartoonish in the strip.
In the Blondie film series, the mailman gets run into a lot.
2:24
There was just a scene where the Bumsteads are on a train. Daisy starts barking. When people look over, Dagwood starts barking, I guess to cover for Daisy? It escalates until Dagwood, Blondie and Alexander are all barking. And I can’t help but feel like if this was in something else it would be a very cute scene. I can imagine a TV family with real chemistry pulling it off, like the Brockmans from Outnumbered or the Durrells from… well, The Durrells.
Ahh, the train doesn’t allow dogs. That’s why they were covering for her. See that could’ve worked if they’d set it up better.
2:33
Blondie and Dagwood just started reminiscing about the night when Alexander was born, and Dagwood got soaking wet waiting outside the hospital as it rained, and the night they met, when Dagwood teased Blondie about her hat.
I didn’t think I’d be getting that kind of backstory. It’s neat. I like it. If I’m watching all of these, I’d like these characters to feel a bit more real than the genre and demographic or whatever requires them to be.
2:37
Now they’re talking about when they’re going to get old. The fact that this is from 1939 struck me. They do feel like they could be grandparents.
Blondie: “And when Baby Dumpling grows up… He will grow up, you know. And get married. And poor Daisy…”
Dagwood: “Daisy won’t get married!”
2:41
A fellow passenger just delivered this monologue to Blondie and Dagwood, after borrowing matches from Dagwood to light a cigarette:
“Do you realize that fire is man’s best friend? Why, we couldn’t exist without fire. It cooks our meals, it heats our houses… It turns the wheels of industry. When you have anything that has to be destroyed, what do you do with it? Burn it! Why, where would civilization be without fire? For that matter… Where would the firemen be?”
...That's some shit a fire-themed Batman villain would say and I love it.
This is the first time I’ve really felt Dick Flournoy reaching above the constraints of writing a Blondie movie, aspiring to something higher. I’m happy for him. He’s gone from wallowing in misery, writing subliminal cries for help into family comedies, to channelling his frustration into making the best of what he has to work with.
I’m also liking that this movie has some breathing room. There’s been quite a stretch so far of no major misunderstandings driving conflict, just Blondie and Dagwood chilling on a train, talking. And it’s nice. I’m into it.
Oh boy. I just scrolled through to see if the rest of the movie would be equally laid back, and saw a shot of a large fire.
2:51
Every time there’s a scene where Blondie and Dagwood look on, contented, as Alexander sleeps and violin plays, it makes me feel nice.
2:54
The guy who delivered the fire speech, Jonathan N. Gillis (played by Donald Meek) just watched a hotel receptionist throw out the Bumsteads, and told him they were his friends and to burn his reservation. To burn it. That’s some spicy dialogue callback.
3:00
Innkeeper: “Here’s the bath. Both spigots are marked cold, but the one on the right is hot… if you let it run long enough.”
Dagwood: “Well the spigots in our bathroom are like that too, only the cold comes out of the hot. Oh, we’ll get used to it.”
Somehow this exchange is so mundane that I’m super in love with it. Again, makes this feels realistic, in contrast with the way Alexander talks and the dog getting his ears pulled up with strings when he’s surprised and Dagwood mugging for the camera with his double-takes and all the cartoony slapstick. It’s really endearing to me.
I’m liking this one a lot. Gonna call it a night now and finish it in the morning, but this is shaping up to be my favourite so far. Maybe in the morning I’ll realize I stayed up too late and started to go crazy.
3:28
Large fire! There's a large fire at the end of the movie because Gillis is obsessed with fire! Maybe?
6:23 PM (next day)
K let’s keep it going.
6:26
By the way, the intro theme was stuck in my head earlier today. “Pretty face funny hat, that’s what my Blondie is.” “Loveable feet both flat, that’s what my Dagwood is.”
6:28
Yep, Gillis is fire-obsessed. Went into the Bumsteads’ room and lit the fireplace, looking like a little kid.
6:31
Dagwood’s convinced the hotel is haunted.
I’m down.
(Note from the future: They didn’t go all Blondie vs. Evil Dead with it, unfortunately.)
6:42
Gillis’s nephew has come looking for him, trying to keep him out of trouble and taking away his matches, which he had several boxes of in in pockets.
Pyromaniac uncle is a blessing.
7:07
Plot twist! It wasn’t the pyromaniac uncle who lit the hotel on fire! It was the hotel owner (who later blames it on Dagwood.)
7:12
Now Gillis, Alexander and Daisy are stuck in the burning hotel.
Maybe Mighty Joe Young can save them.
youtube
7:14
Okay the model fire is ridiculously tall now.
If that bit of the building is like 20 feet tall, that’s a 100 foot tall fire. Can house-fires get that tall?
7:19
Bum. Bum. Bum. Another one bites the dust.
Blondie Takes a Vacation is definitely my favourite so far. Lost interest towards the end there, when there was a bunch of antics involving skunks in air vents, but little moments of genuinely good writing caught me by surprise.
My rating: One Dagwood Sandwich containing Nutella, multi-coloured marshmallows and an entire puffed rice cake.
Hey speaking of which, no sandwiches in this one! I want my money back.
^ FALSE ADVERTISING ^
Next up is Blondie Brings Up Baby.
Oh dear.
Look forward to more jokes involving Dagwood doing feminine things and how humiliating that is, I guess. Woooo.
8:03
Just glanced at the Wikipedia for Blondie Brings Up Baby. I've been checking the cast every time to see if anybody I know is going to show up as a guest star. And I noticed that Willie Best, the actor who played the dim-witted black hotel worker in Blondie 1, is reprising his role.
Oh boy. Sexism and racism.
Maybe not though. Maybe it’ll prove me wrong. Maybe Dagwood being a responsible parent won’t make him a sissy and a girly girl and isn’t it funny that he’s doing what a mommy does. And maybe Willie Best will play a more respectable and humanized character this time, or maybe there’ll be other black characters in the cast that are sensitively portrayed, so as to balance it out.
Maybe.
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Blondie Meets the Boss (1939)
11:30 PM, Friday, 20 September 2019
Checked Wikipedia. This movie has the same writer, same director, and same actors as Blondie. No regenerations yet.
Welp, I checked the Wiki article for the last movie in the series, same actors still across the board. 12 years later not only was Penny Singleton still Blondie and Arthur Lake still Dagwood, but Larry Simms was still baby Alexander and the same dog Daisy was still playing their dog whose name is also Daisy.
So uh. I mean, variety’s out the window. I have committed myself to 27 more movies with all these same people. And dog.
Guess I should stop stalling then and start the damn thing huh.
OH JESUS THERE WERE TWO TV SHOWS.
So.
So there’s 26 episodes of the 1957 series, which kept Arthur Lake as Dagwood and recast everyone else, plus a pilot with someone named Hal Le Roy as Dagwood. The 1968 series had the child actors who played Charlie Brown and Lucy in A Boy Named Charlie Brown, so as a Peanuts fan I have that to look forward to. Peanuts being a comic strip that I’ve actually read extensively. See I could’ve dedicated myself to watching every Peanuts special. But that wouldn’t be funny. Also I probably have already. That series had 14 episodes, 13 of which aired before the show got cancelled.
Which, all in all, seems… maybe do-able?
Jesus that can’t be right, apparently that’s 13 hours of Blondie.
You know what?
This might take longer than I thought.
But I can’t be defeated yet. It’s day one.
It may take me longer than I thought, but I believe I can do this. I can watch all of Blondie.
Not because I want to. Not because anybody asked me too. Not even because it’s a remotely practical thing to do.
But for the goof.
I’ll do it for the goof.
For you.
So let’s keep going, shall we?
Blondie Meets the Boss.
Once I check Wikipedia and make sure there’s nothing else.
...
Alright there’s a radio series with Lake and Singleton. It was concurrent with the movies. There’s 42 half-hour episodes. They’re all on the Internet Archive.
...Fuck. I’m sorry, I’m not committing to those right now. Eventually I’ll get to them. Eventually.
There’s some animated cameos in Popeye and things like that, I’ll skip those until I get all completionist about this when I’ve watched everything else. And there’s two animated specials that Marvel made in the 80s. Those I can watch. I can watch 2 specials.
You know, after the 28 movies.
But before the 40 episodes of TV.
And the 42 episodes of radio.
This seemed less daunting when all I’d said I’d watch was 28 movies. I mean, still daunting, but the horizon was in sight.
Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. 28 movies. I’ll finish the 28 movies, and then we’ll see about the rest.
ALRIGHT STARTING BLONDIE MEETS THE BOSS NOW.
11:58
So if it’s still the same kid playing Alexander 12 years later, and he’s like 3 in this, that’ll make him 15 by the last movie in 1950.
I don’t think “Baby Dumpling” Alexander can be 15? Unless they go all Outnumbered with it. I’d be down.
12:00 AM, Saturday, 21 September 2019
They got a slow motion camera for this. For a shot of the dog. Not doing like a sick stunt or anything. Just a slow motion shot of the dog walking at regular dog speed.
12:02
Dagwood keeps yelling “Blondie!” in this one. Is that meant to be his catchphrase? Which he didn’t say last time?
12:03
You want to know something funny?
Before I realized what I’d done, I was entertaining the idea of watching, as a follow-up to this endeavor when I’m done with the Blondie movies, every Family Circus special.
But now I know that I won’t be done with Blondie for quite some time.
12:06
Over the summer I watched an episode or two of The Dick Van Dyke Show. I think Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke are probably more talented comedians than the stars of Blondie, but so far the premises in Blondie have been more competent from the point of view of structuring comedy. That Dick Van Dyke Show episode didn’t have any kind of pay-off. It was weird. If I’m remembering right, the conflict was that a guy showed up and was annoying, and then at the end he left.
But on the plus side, I don’t have to watch every episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show.
12:10
Blondie just said “You’ll kill yourself!” Still concerned about ole Dick Flournoy.
12:12
ALRIGHT. I’m 7 minutes and 50 seconds in. I’m going to take a break now. I’ll finish it tomorrow. I mean what’s the rush? I’ve got the rest of my life to watch-
I’m not gonna calculate how many hours of Blondie it is in all. I’m not gonna. You can’t make me.
12:29
My dad would probably hate this thing I'm doing. He's always saying "your life is this long," and holding his two fingers up. If he goes on he says something to the tune of "if you spend this much of it on such and such…"
But on the other hand, that one AJR song said "A hundred bad days made a hundred good stories, a hundred good stories make me interesting at parties."
Well, 28 Blondie movies make one funny statement, that being "I am Euan O'Leary, and I've seen every fucking Blondie movie."
And I don't go to parties, so.
12:38
See I think the thing of it is: I have seen every Godzilla movie. Because I care about Godzilla. Godzilla Raids Again kick-started my love for filmmaking. Every Godzilla movie puts filmmaking as a craft on display, front and centre. And there's a magic in creating giant monsters from rubber suits and model buildings. The magic that makes filmmaking so appealing, so special to me. Suspension of disbelief.
I have no such feelings about Blondie, because I know nothing about Blondie. The Blondie movies are not particularly culturally significant. In a way I think I'm drawn to them because there are 28 of these things, and I could've gone my whole life without knowing. It wouldn't have come up. I've never met anyone who cared about Blondie, actually cared enough to know that there have been more movies about Blondie than James Bond.
And those 28 movies, I can safely bet having seen one now, are totally unremarkable. It's like how Marcel Duchamp's Readymades were objects that he was completely indifferent to, testing the limits of art by removing passion as much as possible.
Not to say I'm not passionate about watching 27 more of these movies. I relish the challenge. It's gonna be fun.
I'm thinking now I’ll just do the movies, because "I've watched every Blondie movie" is a funnier and easier to understand sentence than "I've consumed every piece of Blondie media except for the comic strip, across live action films, TV series, radio shows and animation."
Yeah. No. That's not a premise. Watching all the movies is a premise. And maybe I'll look at the other things if I'm feeling sentimental about the project and don't want it to end.
That is to say, if at the end of the 28 movies I have somehow metamorphosed into a Blondie fanboy.
Anything's possible.
1:03 PM (The next morning)
Okay, I’ve slept on it now. Time to get back to Blondie. Let’s see how Blondie in the morning compares to Blondie late at night.
1:08
Dagwood just lost his job (for the second time so far in the series.) With no bag or suitcase, he went into his office and started packing all his things into his hat.
What a loveable doofus.
1:13
Okay. So.
The dynamic of this series seems to be that Blondie wears the pants. She’s the dominant one. Whenever Dagwood’s in trouble because he can’t just explain the comedy of errors to whoever he’s in trouble with, Blondie resolves it by asserting herself.
There was just a scene where Dagwood came home having accidentally resigned from his job. Once he’s explained everything to Blondie, she takes off her frilly apron, puts it on him, and says “Whenever I’m miserable, I just take a broom and sweep and sweep! You’ll be surprised how quickly your troubles will disappear.” Dagwood looks dazed, wearing the apron and with the broom in his hand. Blondie puts on her coat and hat, walking determined towards the door to go out and fix everything. “And have a good cry, too. It’ll make you feel better.”
A while back I watched Rebel Without a Cause, the James Dean movie, which features a scene where Dean’s character finds his father cleaning up a mess whilst wearing a frilly apron, wanting to clear it away before Dean’s mother sees. And Dean reprimands him. The implication of the scene is that because his father isn’t asserting his masculinity, and because he’s letting the mother dominate him, he’s depriving his son of a masculine role model and thus traumatizing him. I found this scene pretty repulsive. It’s not just a character acting in a sexist way, it’s a deep-seeded thematic sexism on a philosophical level. It supposes not only that Dean has to aspire to be as strong as his father, and not his mother, but also that men who wear anything like this feminine apron, and it would follow any other feminine clothes, are weak, because women are weak.
Now Blondie is indisputably a strong character. And while I think the scene I just watched was meant to be played for laughs, while it’s meant to be funny that Blondie is suggesting feminine methods of coping with stress to Dagwood, she’s not wrong. “Have a good cry, it’ll make you feel better” is Blondie confidently telling Dagwood to vent his frustrations in a healthy way.
Blondie’s a fucking badass.
1:29
Dagwood’s humiliation at being emasculated is indeed being played for laughs as the movie goes on.
Blondie’s still a badass though.
1:33
Um.
1:36
Snort Watch 2019.
Somebody’s breaking into the Bumsteads’ house. Alexander says “Sic’ em, Daisy!” Daisy (the dog) walks into a cupboard. A little puppet dog hand comes around the door and closes it after her.
1:39
They’re playing up really hard how much everyone is mocking Dagwood for wearing an Apron and letting Blondie take charge. Not a fan of that. Meanwhile, Blondie has ended up getting Dagwood’s job at the office, as a result of her showing more strength and confidence than him.
I’m trying to process that.
1:44
Reminds me of that one Rocko’s Modern Life episode where Bev Bighead takes over at Ed’s office job.
1:46
More infidelity.
1:48
Fucking sigh.
I hope not all of these movies are about Dagwood accidentally looking like he’s out with other women behind Blondie’s back and then getting in trouble with Blondie over it.
1:56
Ohp. Nope. This time it’s actual infidelity. Dagwood just kissed some girl.
1:58
Apparently there were horse-drawn taxis in 1939.
Speaking of which: This movie released March 9th. 6 months to go until World War Two starts.
2:02
Blondie and Dagwood sleep in separate beds. Do any couples still sleep in separate beds? I think I’ve only ever seen that in old movies.
2:05
Dagwood Sandwich Watch 2019:
Blondie made this one. It looks like a cake.
2:06
“I’d be tempted to kill. Yes. Drown Baby Dumpling, and myself too.” -Blondie.
Y’okay there Dick? I’m worried about you.
2:11
There’s a bit where Blondie looks at a camera with the initials F. R. written on it. My mind auto-completed Franklin Roosevelt. Blondie asks Dagwood “who goes fishing and has the initials F. R.?” He says “That’s easy, Franklin Roosevelt.”
2:16
Getting film developed. That was also a thing. In the PAST.
2:18
Rotary phones.
Hell, landlines for that matter.
2:24
Dagwood Sandwich Watch 2019:
Alexander made one. It’s really hard to tell what’s in these sandwiches in black and white and 360p.
2:37
Dagwood just accidentally won a swing dancing competition by stumbling on the dance floor trying to run away.
What a loveable doofus.
2:49
Alright, one more down! Blondie Meets the Boss didn’t leave much of an impression beyond the gender politics side of it. More antics. More sandwiches. Life goes on and so does my quest.
My rating is: one Dagwood Sandwich containing a small fish and peanut butter.
Next up is Blondie Takes a Vacation. Which, interestingly enough, follows directly from the plot of Blondie Meets the Boss, which largely revolved around Blondie and Dagwood not being able to take their vacation.
Blondie Takes a Vacation released just 4 months after Blondie Meets the Boss. Which draws my attention to how quickly they cranked these out: There were 3 Blondie movies in 1939, 3 in 1940, 2 in 1941, 3 in 1942, 2 in 1943, 2 in 1945, 2 in 1946, 4 in 1947, 2 in 1948, 2 in 1949 and 2 in 1950. 12 Blondies were released over the course of WW2.
5:54
Hey remember when I mentioned that Blondie and Dagwood sleep in separate beds? Apparently they slept in one bed in the comic strip, and at the time that was shocking. Stumbled upon a list of facts about the strip while I was setting up the blog.
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Blondie (1938)
9:09 PM, Friday, 20 September 2019
Hi. My name’s Euan. Maybe you know me from things. Maybe not. What I’ve just done is open a blank word processor file on my personal computer, and alongside it I’ve opened the 1938 film Blondie, the first in the 28-film-long movie franchise based on the newspaper comic strip, which I haven’t read to any significant extent. In yet another tab, I’ve opened the Wikipedia article for said film, in which I’ve just now learned that Blondie refers to the female lead of the series, something which I was not previously aware of. Every Blondie strip I’ve ever read focused on Dagwood, so I guess I assumed Dagwood was Blondie. I knew that Dagwood was a character but I guessed that he was some wacky side character that I might see if I took a deep dive into the Blondie mythos. WHICH I SUPPOSE IS WHAT I’M DOING NOW, ISN’T IT? Because today I start my journey to watch every Blondie movie ever produced, 28 movies between 1938 and 1950. This... is Ginger vs. Blondie. A minute ago, I didn’t know who Blondie was. Let’s get stuck in, shall we?
9:10 PM
I’ve made a terrible mistake.
9:16
Went to get movie snacks and when I came back and hit play, I accidentally started playing Bombing California St., the third track from the soundtrack for The Last Black Man in San Francisco, on Spotify. It had an interesting effect, adding a dissonant ominous vibe to the cheerful intro, as well as reminding me that good movies exist and I’m gonna watch all the Blondies instead.
9:19
Arthur Lake does look like Dagwood. At this junction I don’t know if there will be different regenerations of Dagwood, but I feel if I’m taking on this endeavour I should get to know the actors’ names.
9:23
“Blondie, oh look! One of my blue socks is green!” -Dagwood, in a black and white movie, based on a black and white comic strip.
9:29
I’m impressed by Larry Simms’ performance as Baby Dumpling (who I will henceforth call Alexander because Baby Dumpling is a demeaning name for a human being) if only because he looks way too young to be able to repeat these lines on cue, as he’s doing. Actually, he seems to have the best comedic timing of any of the actors so far. Lake’s Dagwood and Penny Singleton’s Blondie have delivered a few genuinely funny jokes in such a weirdly timed way that they fell flat. Like it took me a second longer to process them than it should have.
9:35
Just used an inflation calculator to translate a bit where Blondie spends $580 on furniture into modern currency. Then I converted it to Canadian dollars so I could relate to it. Turns out it’s about $14,000 CDN.
9:38
Alexander sits in the time-out chair.
Blondie: “What have you done?”
Alexander: “Nothing, yet.”
https://youtu.be/oCghUlTLKVA?t=178
9:45
There was just a scene where Dagwood asked for advice about being in debt, and someone told him to hang himself, followed immediately by Alexander drying dishes for his mother and saying “When I dry dishes, I hate myself.”
I’m a bit concerned about the screenwriter.
(Who in this case happens to be a man by the name of Richard Flournoy.)
9:51
There was a scene where Dagwood talked to a framed photo of Blondie and Alexander on his desk. It was actually really sweet. And ended with Dagwood saying “Huh? Oh, I thought you said something.” Which made me smile.
That was a good scene in the movie Blondie.
9:54
Alexander just went full Krazy Kat and hit his friend Alvin with a fucking brick. When I saw him hiding the brick behind his back I was QUITE DISTRESSED.
9:56
The movie just made me laugh. Dagwood finds a weight scale/fortune teller, which he puts a coin in, and it tells him he weighs 163 pounds, and that he is “a stupid fellow and not likely to succeed.” He spends another coin and it says the same thing. Another man comes in, gets his weight, and is told he’s about to consummate a successful business deal. Smiling, Dagwood takes out another coin to try again.
None of this was funny.
When he inserts the coin, the scale says “Save your money, sucker, I’ve told you twice already.” And then you hear the coin being returned. That got me.
10:07
Made me laugh a second time. The joke was Guy A asks Guy B-
Guy A: “Where did you leave it?” (It being a vacuum cleaner that’s gone missing.)
Guy B slowly turns his head to look in one direction. Guy A follows suit. Then Guy B points in a different direction than he’s looking.
Guy B: “Over there.”
Stupid joke. I should note that it’s in questionable stereotype area. Guy B is a black hotel worker who I guess is supposed to be a bit dim. But if we’re giving the movie the benefit of the doubt, maybe it’s completely unrelated to him being black and completely unrelated to the unfortunate history of ridiculing black people in early American comedy.
But I mean the black guy’s giving probably the funniest performance in the movie so I gotta give props to him as a comedy performer if not to the writer.
Looked him up, his name is Willie Best. He died at age 45. “In the 21st century, his work, like that of Stepin Fetchit, is sometimes reviled because he was often called upon to play stereotypically lazy, illiterate, and/or simple-minded characters in films.”
The article for Blackface is listed in his “See also.”
Can one appreciate the comedic work of a black man who was reinforcing harmful stereotypes against black men? I didn’t realize such questions would arise when I started the 1938 movie Blondie and indeed the rest of the franchise which I’ve apparently committed myself to.
10:11
Snort. Does a snort count? I snorted. Snort Watch 2019.
Guy: “Dagwood Bumstead. Now your last name, you can’t help that. But somebody is to blame for your first name.”
Dagwood: “That’s right.”
Guy: “Any middle name?”
Dagwood: “No.”
Guy: “Well, that’s a break.”
10:27
Jesus fucking Christ, Dagwood is absolutely traumatizing Alexander. He just told him that if he kept running away from home then maybe his family might stop loving him, and one day he’d come home and they’d be gone. THAat Is NoT HowW youU PARENT DAGWOOD
10:28
The dog is a good actor.
10:30
Snort watch 2019: “General manager? General nuisance.”
I never said I had a high bar for what makes me snort.
10:33
I ship Dagwood and Blondie tbh.
This movie is kind of carried by genuinely sweet moments here and there. Y’know, in between the racism and irresponsible parenting.
10:36
Dagwood Sandwich Watch 2019:
He put a coaster in it by mistake.
10:40
‘Nother sweet moment! Blondie and Dagwood each individually snuck out of the bedroom to go check on sleeping Alexander, meet each other in his room, say “Hello.” “Hello.” And then go over to his bedside.
10:53
Dagwood’s problems came to a head at a surprise reveal in his home, in front of visiting friends. Made me think of Bob’s Birthday, the pilot to Bob and Margaret.
https://youtu.be/k-58TB6-Sy0
10:57
A lot of the conflict right now is revolving around potential infidelity. Which I wouldn’t have predicted, at the very least not in the first movie.
11:13
Thus ends the first Blondie film. It had heart. Not too many jokes landed but it didn’t get boring.
My rating is: one Dagwood Sandwich containing corn chips and turkey.
Strap in folks, we’ve got 27 movies to go. Might watch one more tonight, but I do want to re-watch Bob’s Birthday first.
11:30
I did that. Made for an interesting contrast. Some parallels of marital devotion and infidelity. ALRIGHT HERE WE GO BLONDIE MEETS THE BOSS 1939 GET HYPED EVERYBODY
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