Silver Screenings

We loved newspaper comic strips as a kid.

We felt there was something Grown Up about reading a newspaper, even if it was just the funny pages. Lots of adults read the funny pages, too, we told ourselves. They just don’t admit it.

One comic strip that baffled us, though, was Blondie, the series about a beautiful housewife/caterer with two growing children and an unremarkable husband. We never read Blondie because, to us, it lacked charm and wit. (Such was our Literary Taste at 10 years old.)

You’re likely familiar with the comic strip, created by cartoonist Chic Young, which was first published in 1930, and is still being published today.

We recently developed an interest in the Blondie universe when – lo and behold – we discovered a set of Blondie DVDs in our collection.

Columbia Pictures produced a series of twenty-eight (28!) Blondie movies between 1938 and 1950, with a two-year hiatus from 1943-1945. That’s a pretty grueling schedule, especially when you consider the actors also starred in a weekly half-hour radio show from 1939-1950.

Penny Singleton is the titular Blondie, and she’s perfectly cast as a woman equally exasperated and enamored with her husband. Dagwood is played by the very funny Arthur Lake, who bravely adopted the hairstyle of the comic strip husband.

One thing is immediately established in these films: These are comic-strip characters with comic-strip lives. Even so, we want the problèmes du jour to be sorted out satisfactorily, and for the Bumstead marriage to remain intact.

That marriage is remarkable for its longevity. The kind but dim-witted Dagwood finds himself in countless scrapes, while Blondie tidies up the mess. Yet, on screen, the chemistry between Singleton and Lake is palpable. For all their predicaments, the attraction between this on-screen couple always finds a way through the débacles.

As you probably guessed, these films are episodic in nature. Each “episode” runs a little over an hour, with plots that develop and resolve quickly. It’s a marvelous series to binge-watch, especially the early films, but be warned: As funny as he is, too much Dagwood is too much.

The Blondie movies are an unexpected comfort in our greatly troubled world, as they may have been to folks Back in the Day. The biggest reason is the amusing, optimistic scripts.

Consistency is key, too. The sets in the Bumstead house are virtually unchanged throughout the series; even the telephone is the same in 1950 as it was in 1938.

The children are the only characters in these movies that undergo physical changes. The producers cast the same youngsters in each film, and their characters age and grow just like the children in the comic strip. Everyone else, happily, remains the same.

In our opinion, the best character in the early films is the couple’s son. Four-year-old child actor Larry Simms was cast as the toddler known as “Baby Dumpling” (a.k.a. Alexander). This kid handles his lines like a pro and, at barely three feet tall, he steals every scene.

The Blondie movies are surprisingly engaging and charming, with running jokes borrowed from the comic strip, such as Dagwood’s multi-layered sandwiches, the nosy neighbour kid, and the mail carrier who gets knocked over by Dagwood running to catch his bus.

We’ve become enchanted with these films. The characters, sans deep psychological motivations, are who they are, and we love them all the more for it.

If you’re ever stuck indoors during a blizzard – like we were – we hope you’ll take the opportunity to enjoy these lighthearted films.

FYI: In terms of production quality, some Blondie films are better preserved than others.

This post is part of the FILM. RELEASE. REPEAT. BLOGATHON, hosted by The Midnite Drive-In and Hamlette’s Soliloquy.

Blondie Series starring Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Written by Norman Krasna. RKO Radio Pictures, 1938-1950, B&W.