Keeping Up With Kibbee

Hey, remember when I gave you a heads-up about Turner Classic's Guy Kibbee-thon?
(A good answer here would be, "Yes, Cultureshark, we do, and in fact we taped the whole day.")

Ahem. At any rate, I recently watched a few of the films they screened, and here's my initial report: Out of 3 films, I saw no certifiable Top 100 classics, but I did enjoy 3 solid, fun programmers, each in and out in just over an hour. One showed Cranky Kibbee, one showed Gentle Kibbee, and one showed the prolific character actor somewhere in between.

Let's start with that one first, "Havana Widows," in which our guy Guy plays a vacationing hubby carousing with women (gasp) who are not his wife! Yes, that was the Thirties, folks. Not everyone was Depressed, you know. Anyway, the real stars are female co-leads Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell, two saucy broads who go down to Cuba to get free health care and embarrass the Republican administration at home.

I'm kidding, of course, as these ladies are looking for love, or at least wealthy husbands. It turns into a big farce, of course, with the real standouts for me being the great Allen Jenkins as a jealous boyfriend and Frank McHugh doing a good old-fashioned drunk act. Today's movies need more of this: A guy just walking through the whole movie being tipsy the whole time. It's a fun movie that would overstay its welcome if it were just 10-15 minutes longer, but fortunately it's not, and we can just sit back and enjoy that lost classic premise of mantrapping females on the prowl.

Guy Kibbee is a little brash in "Havana Widows," but he becomes all, "Yes, dear," and "Certainly, dear," when confronted by his missus. He's similarly henpecked in "The Big Shot" as a kindly veterinarian who inherits a business from his wealthy uncle. The catch here is he unwittingly becomes head of a local crime syndicate. Hey, it happens. The gangsters think they can string him along as an innocent figurehead dope until they get him to sign over his rights to the biz, but of course complications ensue. Much of the comedy in this one centers around Guy's shrewish wife and her social-climbing efforts. Ultimately good-hearted Guy fights both "the organization" and her in his attempt to live a simple life doing what he loves.

Amusingly enough, especially if you watch these movies so close together as I did, is the 180 Kibbee and his screen wife do from that movie to "Big-Hearted Herbert," in which Kibbee's tightwad (but apparently quite well-to-do) plumber is the resident grouch of his household, with McMahon, as his wife, playing Good Cop with their kids and everyone else the old grump mutters at. It's a testament to their versatility that both leads are equally believable--and more importantly, equally entertaining--in both movies playing essentially opposite personas. Kibbee's cantankerous miser is hilarious spending a good deal of the beginning griping about stuff, primarily any expenditure of his hard-earned cash. "Herbert" was another funny, unpretentious picture, with Kibbee of course getting an awakening of sorts. I will say, though, that after having had plumbing work done in Cultureshark Tower several times this year, the notion of anyone in the trade worrying about money puzzles me.