I hope it wasn't "Bridge Over Troubled Water" or "Singin' in the Bathtub", but seeing the first film in the series of this wacky family, I wouldn't be surprised. Pop James Gleason is a hardworking advertising man, bringing client Paul Harvey home for dinner, just in time to hear his wife Lucille Gleason scream. No, she's not in jeopardy. She's just in the middle of one of her drama club meetings. Son Russell Gleason is tinkering with the broken telephone which is now connected to the doorbell, and complaining sister Lynne Roberts and grandfather Harry Davenport are rather aggravated. No Judge Hardy or the pie making ma to keep siblings Andy and Marian in line (although Robert's here is named Marian), but grandpa is a dilly, unseen sneaking the steak off of guest Harvey's plate. William Bakewell plays Roberts' love interest, overwrought by her acting ambitions. Unlike other battling on screen siblings, Gleason and Roberts argue a bit more realistically, truly being there when real problems arise.
Pretty much every studio had a series about a particular family, with the Jones family at 20th Century Fox second to the Hardy's, and Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland playing parents dealing with wacky relatives in a series of cute Paramount comedies. At RKO, the Mexicans Spitfire series focused on a dysfunctional family with Lupe Velez and Leon Errol a terrific wacky team defying their individual spouses with their zany antics. The Blondie and Dagwood series at Columbia focused on a younger family.
This came from Republic, and for some reason, the series isn't easy to find. I've been searching for them for years, and only just found the first entry. The comedy here comes at the viewer a mile a minute, with gag after gag making it often difficult to catch everything. The second half of the film becomes a bit more serious when Papa walks out after Mama humiliates him and causes him to possibly lose his job. But it's obvious when they end up in divorce court what will occur as the film reaches its conclusion. The real life Gleason family work well together, and fortunately the films are under an hour, pretty much a two-part sitcom episode and easy to get through, the mix of comedy and drama a bit more realistic then the cliched antics of the Hardys.
Pretty much every studio had a series about a particular family, with the Jones family at 20th Century Fox second to the Hardy's, and Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland playing parents dealing with wacky relatives in a series of cute Paramount comedies. At RKO, the Mexicans Spitfire series focused on a dysfunctional family with Lupe Velez and Leon Errol a terrific wacky team defying their individual spouses with their zany antics. The Blondie and Dagwood series at Columbia focused on a younger family.
This came from Republic, and for some reason, the series isn't easy to find. I've been searching for them for years, and only just found the first entry. The comedy here comes at the viewer a mile a minute, with gag after gag making it often difficult to catch everything. The second half of the film becomes a bit more serious when Papa walks out after Mama humiliates him and causes him to possibly lose his job. But it's obvious when they end up in divorce court what will occur as the film reaches its conclusion. The real life Gleason family work well together, and fortunately the films are under an hour, pretty much a two-part sitcom episode and easy to get through, the mix of comedy and drama a bit more realistic then the cliched antics of the Hardys.