His Bridal Fright

I noticed as I watched Volume Two of the Charley Chase shorts from Columbia Pictures that the final half dozen or so shorts in the collection were simply terrible. I can only assume that whoever compiled the films did this deliberately--as if you watched the bad ones first, you might give up on seeing the rest!

Charley goes to his girlfriend's home only to find that her father has barred him from setting foot inside the place. He thinks (rightfully) that Charley is an idiot and that trouble follows him. So, to get on the man's better side, Charley decides to help the guy obtain a rare stamp from Pidgmania. He pretty much spends the rest of the film chasing about town, finding the stamp, losing the stamp again and again. However, after he gets the stamp and gets the man's blessing to marry his daughter, a really dumb plan of Charley's blows up in his face and ugly women from all over the world start showing up to marry him. What follows is a badly filmed chase scene that isn't funny.

This is the final film on the disc--and it made me HAPPY there were no more! It's a shame, as many of the earlier ones in the set were nearly as good as many of the films Chase made for Hal Roach Studios-- though none came close to his best films (such as "Mighty Like a Moose").

Watching this short is a little depressing, given Chase passed away soon after. While he appears a bit older than his 46 years and had been in bad health, he actually seems full of pep. His search for postage stamps is rather cute (especially to this stamp collecting-fan!), with some good, silent-era style gags, but the last part of the film, where he attempts to get married, slows things down too much.

If only he had lived longer, who knows what he could have done for screen comedy, if only behind the cameras...

Charley wants to marry Iris Meredith -- I guess his regular Columbia co-star, Ann Doran, was busy -- but her father, philatelist Bud Jamison, insists that Charley get a rare pigeon stamp from Pidgemania first. The hijinks that ensue are far more typical of the Stooges than Charley's work, but Chase could do just about anything in film comedy. In fact, once you accept the premise, the film even makes sense, although why Iris Meredith wants to marry Charley in this mode is beyond me.

This was Chase's last season of work. He would die soon after, in no small part because he had drunk himself to death. While working, though, he was always professional and generous to his co-workers -- the biggest laughs here are given to other performers while Charley does big reactions -- although he once dressed down a performer who was not prepared for his role.

Although this is the weakest of Chase's three appearances in 1940, it is very amusing. Heck, you might prefer its reliance on Stooge-style logic. They have a lot more fans than Charley.