Showing posts with label billy gilbert. Show all posts
Showing posts with label billy gilbert. Show all posts

Sunday, April 6, 2025

Stan Blockhead & Oliver Blockhead

 

 (imdb)

BLOCKHEADS-1938-Laurel & Hardy are Dough boys in the trenches during WW 1. Ollie goes off to fight and Stan is left to guard the trench. Unfortunately, no one tells him when the war ended so he stands guard for 20 years! Ollie, happily married but under the thumb of his wife (Minna Gombell), sees a newspaper article about Stan and he goes to the hospital to bring him home. Along the way, they get into various jams. First, Ollie thinks Stan has one leg. Then Stan dumps a truckload of sand on his friend. Stan eventually wrecks the car and garage. Ollie has a fight with an uppity tenant (L & H regular James Finlayson) and runs afoul of a bratty kid (Tommy Bond; Butch from “Our Gang” shorts) and his bully father (William Boardway). When they finally get to the apartment, Mrs. Hardy gets mad and leaves. Ollie tries to cook dinner but thanks to Stan destroys the kitchen. Next door neighbor Mrs. Gilbert (Patricia Ellis) tries to help but she winds up in Ollie's pj's pretending to be a chair. Then Mrs. Hardy returns. Billy Gilbert appears as big game hunter jealous husband. 

Director James Blystone, who kept the team from ad-libbing too much, died suddenly of a heart attack four days after completing BLOCKHEADS. He was 43. He had previously directed the team in SWISS MISS (also 1938).

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Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Night Waitress


NIGHT WAITRESS-1936-Helen Roberts (English actress Margot Grahame) is a waitress on probation. She gets involved with schooner operator Martin Rhodes (Gordon Jones, the future Green Hornet) after he gets mixed up with some “secret cargo”. After some misunderstandings and a quick chase and fight (the whole thing is less than an hour!) Rhodes discovers the “cargo” is an armored car filled with money lying underwater. 

Marc Lawrence and (un-billed) Anthony Quinn are two gangsters after both of them. Western star Don “Red” Barry is a murder victim. Comedian Billy Gilbert is a bar owner. 

Director Lew Landers had previously directed the Boris Karloff/Bela Lugosi horror story THE RAVEN under his real name Louis Friedlander. He went on to direct (as Landers) many B-movies including THE BOOGIE MAN WILL GET YOU (with Karloff) and THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE (with Lugosi).

Star Margot Grahame was England's highest paid actress before she came to America to co-star in THE INFORMER and THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1935 version).  

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