Wheeler and Wollsey: "Hold 'Em Jail" (1932)

Yesterday, I wrote about the love my dad and I have for the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey. Unfortunately, we didn't see their "Hold 'Em Jail" (1932) together, but I wish we had. I think even my wife and my mother might have found some chuckles because it's a really good one, possibly the best one I've seen yet.

Before seeing it, I couldn't help but think of the Marx Brothers classic "Horsefeathers" because it was shown as part of a daylong college football theme on TCM. I feared it would fall wayyyy short of that standard. Even that title, "Hold 'Em Jail," sounds pathetically illiterate, a sad reminder of where The Boys fall in the pantheon of movie comedy teams. "Hold 'Em Jail" sounds cheap, crude, maybe a little forced, doesn't it?

After seeing it--dare I say it--I think it stacks up quite favorably to "Horsefeathers." It ain't quite that good, mind you, but it's a very funny movie that reminds me how good The Boys can be--as well as what is great about the best efforts of the Marxes.

Bear with me here. 'Hold 'Em Jail," unlike many other W&W vehicles, does not slow the action down with sappy musical numbers. Unlike many other W&W movies, it doesn't treat the plot (particularly the romantic subplot) as anything more than an excuse for zaniness. The Boys are mostly free to be silly and annoy people, and that's when they are at their best.

Remind you of anyone? Think how good the old Paramount Marx Brothers movie were, how flat-out crazy and hilarious they were before Irving Thalberg got hold of them and gave them PLOTS and MUSICAL NUMBERS and molded their screen personas into SYMPATHETIC PEOPLE. Not that "A Night at the Opera" and "A Day at the Races" aren't great movies, but they're just not in the pantheon that includes "Duck Soup," "Horsefeathers," and "Monkey Business"--wild movies that focused on getting laughs (imagine that).

Getting back to "Hold 'Em Jail," though, it builds to a long climactic football game that is packed with gags, many of which probably appeared in other films before and after. It's a great sequence, and one that actually stacks up pretty well with the similar routines in "Horsefeathers." There are both expected and unexpected jokes, along with good pacing and an effective variety to the comic business in the big game. One of the best gags illustrates the madcap tone of the whole movie, as Bert Wheeler, with chloroform in his back pocket (today's movies don't use chloroform as a comedy device nearly enough), crawling up the line of scrimmage with his butt in the air, causing players to keel over as they get a whiff!

There's also the great Edgar Kennedy, who of course stands out in "Duck Soup" and therefore reminds you of the Marxes in this picture. As the jail's warden, he puts his patented exasperated reactions to good use in his scenes with zany new inmates Wheeler and Woolsey. Bob has some good interplay with Edna May Oliver, and their scenes remind me of the Groucho-Margaret Dumont teaming. There's all this and a young Betty Grable, too, as Bert's love interest. The supporting characters get room to score points, but once The Boys get going in the picture, they are never on the sidelines too long.

Here, as in many W&W vehicles, some of the humor comes from puns, some of them groaners. Of course, the Marx Brothers get away with that sort of thing because they're the freaking Marxes, but if you just looked at the words on a page, a lot of the lines that Wheeler and Woolsey deliver in their movies aren't all that different. For some reason, though, they often appear to die on the screen, whereas if Groucho says it, there might be a much different reaction. Really, though, when it comes down to it, are these comedy teams really all that different?

Well, yes, they are. I'm not saying The Boys are the equal of the Marx Brothers, but "Hold 'Em Jail" at least puts them in the same league, if distant runners-up, and makes me wish they had made more films this good. They didn't have to "be" Groucho, Chico, and Harpo (which would have been difficult, considering there were only two of them) to make fine comedies that hold up today.

I wrote yesterday that many W&W flicks have surreal moments of misfiring comedy, and indeed that's what makes watching them such a kick on one level. But there's another level in "Hold 'Em Jail," and at times in other movies, of legitimate comedy that works. This particular film is an example of Wheeler and Woolsey at their best, proof that they're a top-rate screen comedy team when given the right ingredients.