1938 Directed by Frank R. Strayer
Blondie and Dagwood are about to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary but this happy occasion is marred when the bumbling Dagwood gets himself involved in a scheme that is promising financial ruin for the Bumstead family.
Penny Singleton Arthur Lake Larry Simms Daisy Ann Doran Dorothy Moore Gene Lockhart Jonathan Hale Gordon Oliver Danny Mummert Kathleen Lockhart Willie Best Ian Wolfe Eugene Anderson Jr Stanley Andrews Hooper Atchley Stanley Brown Mary Jane Carey Dick Curtis Edgar Dearing Richard Fiske James Flavin Fay Helm George Humbert Bud Jamison Charles Lane Harold Minjir David Newell Emory Parnell Show All…
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USA
I loved reading comics when I grew up, but I was never a fan of the Blondie series. This is the first time I see the movie version of Blondie, and it's the first of 28 Blondie films made between 1938 and 1950 starring Arthur Lake & Penny Singleton. And my first acquaintance got off on a rough start. Really low production values. Reminded me of those simple Hal Roach Our Gang shorts except with mostly adults, yet with more childish comedy. Though it grew on me. Some sporadic hilarious moments in Dagwood naive world and a rather chaotic climax for the poor man. I'm sure my love will grow along with the series progression.
At times this movie can just be so frustrating! All the guy has to do is open his mouth and explain things! ...but then I guess it would be a very short movie. Oh well, it's still a mostly charming film with a few laughs and a couple of good lines from Baby Dumpling. I think that kid may turn out to be a psychopath when he gets older. Seriously? A brick?????
When I was a child in the 1970s, one of the best things that would occasionally happen was my parents deciding to sleep-in on a Sunday morning, rather than dragging me off to the tedium of church. On those days, I would bring in the massive Sunday newspaper, carefully extract the multi-page, full-size, full-color Sunday Comics section, spread it out on the shag-carpet floor, and lie on my stomach and get lost in the antics and adventures of The Wizard Of Id, Broom Hilda, Beetle Bailey, Hägar the Horrible, Blondie, et al.
Then, this ritual accomplished, I would turn on the televsion to a station (I think it was UHF channel 48 broadcasting out of Philadelphia) that on Sundays aired…
453: The first of many films in the Blondie series was a lot of fun. I mostly remember the daily strip being about Dagwood eating, but this one does a good job of hitting those gimmicks from the strip while also giving it enough plot to carry a film. It’s their 5th anniversary, and Dagwood has not only got himself in money trouble, but Blondie has ordered new furniture so Dagwood gets a chance to earn more by closing a deal for his boss. It’s an excuse for the comedy and situations and to their credit they don’t really play it overboard. It holds up well, the kid who plays “Baby Dumplings” is incredibly good and Daisy the dog gets to steal a bunch of scenes. This was the final film in the TCM B-movie series and I hope they do it again sometime since even with the odd stinker this was a fun series to run.
Frank R. Strayer’s family comedy in which Dagwood loses his occupation on the day before of his and Blondie’s fifth wedding anniversary. Starring Arthur Lake and Penny Singleton.
This is the first in the long-running series of 28 films with Penny Singleton starring as the title character, each distributed by Columbia Pictures.
The studio used these movies featuring actors and actresses would become major stars with the company, like Rita Hayworth, who appeared in Blondie on a Budget, going on to be a star with Cover Girl and confirmed this with the blockbuster Gilda, as well as Glenn Ford, who would achieve his breakthrough with Gilda and made him an actor to look out for at the time, appearing in…
Blondie is based off a popular comic strip and it clearly expects you to know who these characters are which is a bit of a problem 80 years later. That’s honestly the least of the problems this dreadful film has, annoying characters who act like morons and pointless character interactions that make this feel like an episode of a hokey sitcom. I can’t believe they made 28 of these fucking things or that they treat a kid hitting another kid in the head with a brick as comedy.
A rather unassuming start for the Blondie Cinematic Universe. A major part of the plot involves Dagwood Bumstead and another guy tinkering with a vacuum cleaner. Somehow this spawned 27 sequels.
The movie mostly consists of proto-sitcom* domestic hijinks: Job-like figure Dagwood Bumstead is besieged by a never-ending barrage of awkward circumstances, misunderstandings, and poor financial decisions, landing him in hot water with his boss, JC Dithers, and wife Blondie. True to the source material, there’s also a lot of cutesy shit with their dog Daisy and son Baby Dumpling. Very dull, although one bit I liked is that for Dagwood and his co-workers, carrying a packed lunch from home, thereby saving $3 a week during THE GREAT DEPRESSION, is…
B as in Blondie?
No, B as in Boy I'd love to hit Dagwood in the jaw with a 2x4.
I read the strip in the Sunday comics, (my grandma called them “the funny papers”) as a kid. Interesting to see the characters in another medium. Cute for its time
A meandering and occasionally incomprehensible mass of weird 1930s stereotypes serving as a serial pilot. Amid all the weird misogyny and racism and vacuum repair, there are a scattered handful of okay scenes, largely involving the Bumsteads’ weird sociopathic son, but it’s not really worth the effort.
While neither particularly original or uproariously funny or technically complex, 1938's "Blondie" is rather hard to dislike. Back when I had a newspaper subscription (RIP early 2010s Trib), I did read the Blondie strips on Sundays. It did not leave much of an impression. However, I quite enjoyed the live-action rendition of these characters. Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake are so likable and a delight to watch on screen. The highlight of the film is perhaps Baby Dumpling (Larry Simms) and the dog Daisy. Wow, they got great performances out of them! The story is mainly just setting for a series of awkward situations with our characters. The pacing is good even though the story is relatively uninteresting. This is…
