The Olsen and Johnson Files

Capital Times, 6/5/28

Capital Times, 6/11/28

Capital Times, 5/23/30 A comedy team smorgasbord!

Capital Times, 5/25/30

Evening Huronite, 9/13/30

Wisconsin State Journal, 12/14/30

Wisconsin State Journal, 12/16/30

Syracuse Herald, 3/26/31

Syracuse Herald, 5/5/31

Havre (MT) Daily News, 8/1/31

Wisconsin State Journal, 2/24/35

Charleston Gazette, 5/5/36

Lowell Sun, 11/20/36

North Adams Transcript, 12/5/36

Mansfield News-Journal, 6/14/38

Syracuse Herald, 10/25/38

Reno Evening Gazette, 11/12/38

Evening Independent, 3/16/39

Winona Daily News, 9/9/65

Olsen and Johnson at Republic

by Paul Castiglia

I recently got the two films that Olsen & Johnson made for Republic in the mid 1930s, Country Gentlemen and All Over Town on DVD. These films were made after their initial stint in movies at Warner Brothers, where they made a few films trying to "find their feet" as movie comedians (having already conquered the stage); and made before their legendary and innovative Universal classics like Hellzapoppin' and Crazy House, which went on to influence later comedy such as TV's Laugh-In.

The Republic O&J films, while a bit more madcap than Abbott & Costello movies (I've never felt like Lou's character was insane the way I know Chic Johnson's is), are more standard in general from O&J's later fare and to my eyes, they seem to have foreshadowed (and maybe even had a hand in influencing?) the energy of the A&C films of the '40s, especially those where A&C find themselves having to use their wits to con or be conned (Hit the Ice, In Society, Here Come the Co-Eds, The Noose Hangs High). The Republic O&J's really reminded me of those A&C films, despite the over-the-top zany touches.

This isn’t to say that other comedians of the ‘30s didn’t deal with con men and shady gangster types. The Stooges came up against such adversaries a lot, and Laurel and Hardy had their share of run-ins, too. But these encounters were almost always against characters who were exaggerated and played to comic effect, as opposed to being played “realistically,” which would render them believable threats. One notable exception in the 1930s is Laurel and Hardy’s classic Our Relations, featuring some real, unnerving hoods. The Marx Brothers and Wheeler and Woolsey vacillated between antagonists who played it straight and those who were decidedly tongue-in-cheek, but played against the Marx’s level of surrealism and Wheeler and Woolsey’s unbridled lunacy, the “serious” threats rarely registered.

For the most part, the Abbott and Costello canon is loaded with dramatic rather than comical villains (with the exception of some comic relief henchman). In the 1940s, away from Hal Roach Studios and under the aegis of Fox and MGM, Laurel and Hardy would start rubbing shoulders with “real” threats; more than likely a result of their new studios’ response to Abbott and Costello’s winning formula.

If you have a chance, watch Olsen & Johnson’s ‘30s films. They are readily available on the cheap from various public domain DVD outfits like Alpha Video. You'll notice that they breeze through these films with the same confidence and energy that Abbott and Costello will display just a few short years later in their initial batch of films, especially Hold That Ghost and Who Done It. They even exchange in some lively double-talk banter that holds up to the best of Abbott and Costello’s verbal exchanges. Consider this transcript of a scene in Country Gentlemen wherein Olsen & Johnson are interrogated by police detectives:

DETECTIVE: Where were you the night of June the 10th?

OLSEN: Out with a beautiful blonde.

DETECTIVE: Where were you on the night of June the 11th?

OLSEN: I was out with a beautiful brunette.

DETECTIVE: Where were you on the night of the 12th?

OLSEN: I was out with a beautiful redhead.

OTHER DETECTIVE: Keep it up Harry, we’re getting somewhere – he’s confessing.

JOHNSON: He’s not confessing, he’s just bragging!

There are other exchanges that are reminiscent of Bud and Lou – watch this scene and imagine Bud doing Ole’s lines and Costello making Chic’s quips, and you’ll know what I mean:



"You wouldn't hit a man with glasses, would ya?"



Despite the odd choice to make Olsen a romantic love interest during Country Gentlemen, there is a lot to like in this short offering. And All Over Town throws in a delightful bonus: perennial Laurel & Hardy nemesis James Finlayson in a major role! As if that weren’t enough, there’s also a scene of Olsen and Johnson sharing a roller coaster ride with a seal that is one of the most laugh-out-load punchlines I’ve ever enjoyed. I won’t give the joke away; you really owe it to yourself to seek these films out. They offer an interesting look into both Olsen and Johnson’s development as well as their influence on (as we learn in their still-to-come classic Crazy House) “Universal’s #1 comedy team.”

This scene from All Over Town affords us a rare glimpse at Chic and Ole's musical skills, the foundation of their original vaudeville act:



This clip from the PBS series Matinee at the Bijou features a mid-50s trailer for a re-issue of Country Gentlemen. That's Rudy Vallee singing the MATB theme:

HUGHZAPOPPIN'

by Geoff Collins

By one of those strange firks of quate, Kevin's article on the virtues and vices of Olsen and Johnson's Hellzapoppin' has more or less coincided with this neglected classic's long-overdue release on DVD in the UK. Readers may recall that we at the Third Banana have been lamenting its unavailability for many a moon, but in a quiet, unassuming way: "WHEN WILL THE BASTARDS WHO OWN THE RIGHTS RELEASE IT ON DVD???" - that sort of thing. Presumably the legendary crazy-com has been frozen in the same type of legal tangle that kept Animal Crackers out of sight for forty years (a recent Daily Telegraph appraisal of Hellzapoppin' calls it "almost a lost film"). But now, thanks to Hollywood Classics Ltd., Second Sight Films Ltd., and the bastards we castigated earlier (thanks guys; I take it all back), Hellzapoppin' is back - in the UK at least - in a lovely clean print.

Yet as Kevin points out, Ole and Chic do hardly anything in their own film. There are quite a few good musical numbers - as you would expect from any early 40s Universal movie that doesn't include monsters - and a supremely cool jazz interlude from Slim Gaillard, Slam Stewart and the Duke's chubby cornettist Rex Stewart; but most of the original, ground-breaking comedy comes from the supporting cast. Actually, let's be honest: Chic and Ole are the supporting cast, so what we have is a movie about making a movie of Hellzapoppin'. As Kevin has also noted, 75 minutes of plotless gags from the stage show would get awfully tiresome on film, and wouldn't make for an effective 40s movie. You get the feeling that the argument on-screen between Chic, Ole and "director" Richard Lane was at some point played out for real in the Universal front office:

Chic: Listen, buddy, for three years we did Hellzapoppin' on Broadway, and that's the way we want it on the screen.

Lane: This is Hollywood. We change everything here - we got to!

Ole and Chic: Why???

Lane (exasperated): Listen to the story!!!

Chic's beautifully resigned, disgusted expression was probably glimpsed in the front office, too. The boys have to accept that in order to make Hellzapoppin' work as a movie, compromises have to be made; and we must be grateful, Kevin, that Olsen and Johnson did have Nat Perrin (Duck Soup, Roman Scandals) to adapt their Broadway gag-fest for the screen, and not, say, Irving Brecher (At the Circus, Go West). So the love story's there, but it's quirkily undermined and sent-up. It's certainly true that the many this-is-a-movie special-effects gags work much better than all that stuff transported from the stage version ("Oscar!" "Mrs. Jones!"); and I have no quibbles (or qualms, or cumquats) with the "official" supporting comedians. We all love Shemp; and unlike Kevin, I do have a lot of time for Martha Raye. This is probably her best effort, along with Keep 'Em Flying (for which I have an irrational fondness, probably because Bud and Lou both get the girl); but the real star, let's not make any mistake here, is Hugh Herbert.

By the time the cameras rolled on Hellzapoppin' in late '41, Hugh was fifty-four years old. He'd been around Hollywood for years with his fluttery hands and his high-pitched hoo-hoo-hoo giggling, brightening up the product of Warner Bros. such as Dames, Colleen, and an oddity called The Merry Wives of Reno in which he has a pet sheep that follows him about. Hugh was a supporting comic at Warners and, much later, a star of Columbia two-reelers, but Universal gave him some good opportunities, particularly his multi-role showcase in La Conga Nights and, of course, Hellzapoppin', where he keeps a-poppin' up all over the place in a succession of wild and surreal sight gags. The director H. C. Potter must have had a soft spot for Hughie; all his gags are beautifully crafted, specifically a special-effects masterpiece where he repeatedly appears from behind a tree, each time in a different costume, to substantiate his claim that he's a Master of Disguise ("Don't ask me how I do it, folks! Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!"). He's a detective and also a magician, which he also proves by swiftly and nonchalently pulling a small rabbit from his coat and dropping it into a nearby open drawer. ("I used to make guinea pigs disappear by the thousands - I often wonder what became of 'em!") He's within the film but has a pleasant tendency to ignore the fourth wall and address the viewers directly, sometimes peeping out from behind a curtain ("Terrible way to make a living!") or otherwise just wandering into it, as in this much-quoted example:

Robert Paige: Oh. Hello.

Jane Frazee: Can I help ?

Hugh: (interrupts them) Certainly you can, certainly you can. (to Jane) Make him fall in love with you. Make everybody happy - you, and you (turns and points at people in the audience) and y.... hoo hoo! and you! Hello mom! (waves at her) I'll be home for supper - have meat! Hoo hoo hoo!

All this is underplayed and somehow believable; he's not quite on the same planet as us - he's the Ralph Richardson of comedy.

Thanks to Hugh, and all the other inspired elements at work here, Hellzapoppin' qualifies as the seminal 'forties crazy comedy. In the opinion of some critics, including our revered Leonard Maltin, it could have gone a lot further; but who would have sat through it. As we've seen, one of the most glorious running in-jokes is Ole and Chic's appalled reaction to Universal's mauling of their beloved stage classic; it's all true - yet it plays well. There are some regrets: we'd just like to see more of what Olsen and Johnson could do. Their subsequent movies (which I'll admit I haven't seen) are merely retreads with occasional great moments, attempts to cash in on their one big success. (Nowadays they'd just knock out blatant sequels - Hellzapoppin' 2, 3 and 4) In all of these, Ole and Chic are pushed into the background again, as if Universal didn't have the confidence to feature them properly in their own movies. After See My Lawyer in 1945, they gave up. Pity.

As for Hugh Herbert, nobody had the confidence to star him in feature films either, but Hellzapoppin' brought out the very best in him and defined his persona forever. Another regret: that his Columbia shorts are just cheaper versions of the mini-farces Leon Errol was turning out at RKO. But he kept busy and was evidently much-loved.

Due to its internal compromises and its conflict of zaniness versus conservatism, Hellzapoppin' will always divide opinion. Me? I love it - because it catches its time period so well. This important movie - and possibly also the 1948 London stage version - led the way to the Goons, Monty Python and alternative comedy. And now it's available!!! See it soon, folks. Hoo hoo hoo!

HELLZAKINDASORTAPOPPIN’

by Kevin Kusinitz

The worst thing to ever happen to movies was the movie studio. In the beginning, directors churned out two-minute shorts and sold them to theatres. The end. No middleman, no one providing “notes.” At least censors made you clever. Studio heads forced you to be different.

Exhibit A: Ole Olsen & Chic Johnson’s Hellzapoppin’. The Third Banana has already linked to the first ten minutes -- probably the wildest reel ever projected onto a screen in the ‘40s . Very much of its time and way, way ahead of it, as if anticipating the Naked Gun movies and their spawn.

You thought I was going to say that was the best part, right? Well, you’re wrong, because the fun continues for another five whole minutes. It’s only in the following hour or so that an insipid story kicks in, leaving Olsen & Johnson to become -- as John Lennon referred to the Beatles in Help!-- extras in their own movie. As if to drive the point home, they literally disappear near the end. This is how Universal expected to make them into movie stars: take what made them the hottest act on Broadway and pulverize it out of ‘em.

I understand the reasoning behind adding a through-line for Hellzapoppin’ -- there was no way to re-create the plotless stage version, if only because musical comedy revues tend to be dull going on film. But did they have to devote said through-line to not one but two romantic mix-ups and the putting on of a show and the pedestrian musical numbers? (Nat Perrin, one of the writers of Hellzapoppin’, helped to similarly emasculate the Marx Brothers in The Big Store the same year.) Only the astonishing swing dance by the Harlem Congaroo Dancers feels at home. Somehow W.C. Fields turned the same movie-within-a-movie shtick of Never Give a Sucker an Even Break into the most hallucinatory movie of the ‘40s, so what gives? Did Universal figured one weird release a decade was enough?

It’s not a total loss. Olsen & Johnson are funny guys, better than Abbot & Costello (who never seemed to like each other, onscreen or off – for me, something of a turn-off for what’s supposed to be a comedy team.) Hugh Herbert comes off well, as does Mischa Auer. (He’s got to be the only actor who was believable in low-budget horror movies of the ‘30s and slapstick comedies of the ‘40s.) I never cared for Martha Raye, but at least she fits, as does Shemp Howard. Even Elisha Cooke, Jr., fresh from playing the degenerate in The Maltese Falcon, looks at home.

Oddly – or perhaps not – the running gags from the original stage show don’t translate well to the screen. However, the only-in-a-movie bits are hilarious. Characters stepping out of the screen, a detective instantly changing disguise behind a tree, jammed movie frames -- no wonder a woman yelling “Oscar!” or a guy calling for “Mr. Jones” seem uninspired. That kind of humor works only onstage.

This was reinforced when I watched the episode of This is Your Life honoring Ole Olsen. In an effort to replicate the team’s zaniness, host Ralph Edwards and his posse replicated a bunch of gags from the original Hellzapoppin’ – and they all flat. A “spontaneous” bit with a stooge in the audience doesn't work when a camera is at the ready with a close-up. (It doesn’t help that Edwards has the timing of a broken stopwatch.) What I found most interesting was that even as late as 1961, people were still fully aware who Olsen & Johnson were and showed their appreciation. Chic gets a huge laugh when, rifle in hand, he turns to the blathering Edwards with a trenchant, “Oh, shut up!”

Universal would do well to release boxed set of the Olsen & Johnson movies. Next month, New York’s Film Forum revival house is running Crazy House on a double-bill with Wheeler & Woolsey’s Hips Hips Hooray! – the ultimate designation into hipster cool. And the alleged unavailability of Hellzapoppin’ makes it that much more desirable. You’d think Universal wanted the bootleggers to make all the money. Which might have tickled Olsen & Johnson to no end.

Elza Poppin

Found this fun obscurity in the archives of one of my favorite blogs, Allan Holtz's Stripper's Guide. Olsen and Johnson had a byline on Elza Poppin, a daily strip that ran in papers from 1939 to 1944. Of course, Chic and Ole weren't responsible for the art, although George Swanson's loose cartooning is a close cousin of the zany doodles the team usually supplemented their autographs with. Holtz suggests O&J didn't write any of the strips, either. This may be true, but it's quite possible that they donated their joke files to the endeavor. For more Elza Poppin strips, check here and here.

"Any similarity between Hellzapoppin' and a motion picture is purely coincidental."

Happily, that's certainly true for the first fifteen minutes or so. Thanks to nycopyguy for drawing my attention to this YouTube clip. It's amazing how many film conventions are trampled here in such short order. Brilliant is the only word for it, and I'm firmly among those who believe that the kind of punctuated, semi-narrative lunacy you'll see following the truly berserk opening sequence could have been sustained for an hour and a half with perfectly crowd pleasing results. It doesn't, though, and Hellzapoppin', while it remains extremely funny, ultimately takes the announced idea that "films have to have a love story" all too much to heart (although it rebounds with that wonderful shock ending). Each of Universal's subsequent Olsen and Johnson pictures also have their own standalone sequences of concentrated weirdness, most notable being the inspired opening of Crazy House (1943), but none of it was ever quite this revolutionary.

"More fun, more laughs, and more crushed skulls!"

Here's a real rarity; the first nine minutes of an episode of The Olsen and Johnson Show from 1932. Although Jerry Haendiges has this clip dated to July 7th of that year, all the talk of presidential elections would lead me to believe it's actually from October or November. This is 1930s "nut" humor at its most unhinged as practiced by the undisputed masters of the form. On radio, though, that doesn't really mean a hell of a lot. This chaotic and exhausting clip gives a strong indication of why Olsen and Johnson never clicked in radio. Radio comedy wouldn't be this abstract again until the debut of the Goon Show in 1950, and even the Goon Show had structure. Olsen and Johnson depended as much upon visual gimmickry as crosstalk, arguably more, so their effectiveness is at least halved on radio. The kind of jokes you'll hear in this clip were really just so much window dressing to Olsen and Johnson, who demonstrated for years that it wasn't so much the joke as the telling of it that counted (they even do the "post office" gag here, for godssake). On radio, though, the gag is the gag and without the sight of Chic Johnson nearly collapsing in hysteria over puns that would make Chico Marx cringe, the entire affair falls rather flat. Later, once they had hit their stride with their runaway Vaude-way hit Hellzapoppin', Olsen and Johnson could afford to joke about their failure to conquer radio, but between 1932 and 1934, their inability to make headway on the networks was no laughing matter. Without films (their contract with Warners expired in 1931 after three films) or radio, Olsen and Johnson were left with their touring everything-but-the-kitchen-sink revue, and it appears that that was, at the time, generally regarded as purely for the undiscriminating. The team's marginal pre-Hellzapoppin' reputation is best indicated by the two (enjoyable) micro-budget features they shot for Republic in 1936-7, both of which were clearly aimed at the neighborhood houses and what Variety referred to as "the stix". Ironically, Olsen and Johnson would stage a tremendous comeback by changing not a damn thing about their act and remaining, as Brooks Atkinson put it, "loud, low, and funny".

On a side note, I've long wondered what an Olsen and Johnson version of "The Aristocrats" would have been like. I think all of us have wondered that at one time or another.

"Any similarity between Hellzapoppin' and a Motion Picture is purely coincidental..."

I concur with Nick. Olsen and Johnson are due for a comeback. Heck, they even have the endorsement of Quentin Tarantino, which officially makes Chic and Olie "hip", "edgy", and "dangerous". Universal should slap his mug all over a 2 DVD O&J set and rake in the dough! I keep hearing, however, that there's some ancient legal hangup preventing Universal from releasing Hellzapoppin' to DVD in the US. They had released it on VHS in the UK a couple of years ago, so it's not as if they've been completely sitting on it. All I can say is it must be one doozy of a legal snafu to keep a movie tied up for sixty-four years!

One minor quibble. Personally, I think Olsen and Johnson's Universal features (at least the three I've seen) are far wilder and funnier than anything the extremely methodical Tex Avery ever made. If anything, their comedy bears a stronger resemblance to the anything-goes, emotionally frazzled cartoons Bob Clampett directed in the 40s. There may have been method to the madness, but the infectious abandon of Olsen and Johnson's comedy was heartfelt and real. Just ask any victim of one of their nearly-reflexive practical jokes. And Chic's manic giggle? That's just the way he laughed.

And here's the truth: Olsen and Johnson are hip, edgy, and dangerous. They should have made a hundred comedies.

Hellzapoppin' on DVD? When hell freezes over.

OK, I just watched Hellzapoppin' for about the 3rd time this month, starring the world's most dangerous comedians, Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson, and my question is:

WHY THE HELL ISN'T THIS FILM MORE POPULAR, AND WHY ISN'T IT ON DVD, OR VIDEO, FOR THAT MATTER?

For those of you who're lining up to see Spamalot on Broadway, or even fans of the glorious grounbreaking Goon Show should get a look see at this movie type motion picture film and see where their inspiration could have come from. Hellzapoppin' is a breathless melange of insane movie trickery, fast paced gags upon gags, and more gags. Yes, Universal put a "story" in the film, but only begrudgingly, and to be honest, it works. Leonard Maltin, in his Movie Comedy Teams, gives plenty of space to Hellzapoppin', but insists that it was a shame that Universal had to spoil the fun by injecting a typical romantic plot. I say HA! First of all, the romance is kind of fun because NOBODY takes it seriously, and if the film were only a copy of the Broadway version it would have become tiresome, and too pointless to sit still for. Even the craziest of the early Marx Brothers' films had a so called plot to hang the gags on. The gags in this film are so brilliantly layered. A gag that occurs early in the picture might not see it's punchline until near the end. The optical department must have worked nights on this film due to their glorious use of the medium itself. Ole and Chic have a running commentary with the projectionist (played by a very funny Shemp Howard) at the theatre where the film is playing. Unfortunately, Shemp is wooing plump theatre usherette, Jody Gilbert when he should be watching the film. This sets off a series of hysterical "film" gags that still amaze me with their cleverness.

Ole and Chic began as musicians in vaudeville playing straight jazz. Eventually they realized that comedy would get them better bookings, and before you could say "nepotism", they acquired a troupe of crazies (including a good deal of family) and toured with them across the country, and into Europe and beyond. This led to their Broadway smash, Hellzapoppin', which was basically a ritzed up version of the shows they'd been doing for years in the hinterlands. NYkers fell all over themselves to get tickets. Olsen and Johnson were now Broadway stars and could write their own ticket. They even became Broadway producers, hiring new team on the block, Abbott and Costello for the Bobby Clark starrer, Streets of Paris.

Olsen and Johnson made a few films before Hellzapoppin'. Warners was the first to sign them, although they really weren't sure how to use them. The best of their three features for Warners was Fifty Million Frenchmen, where they tangled briefly with a bearded Bela Lugosi. Five years later they showed up at Republic Studios, of all places, where they made one pleasant situational film, Country Gentlemen, and an almost precursor to their much zanier Universal films, All Over Town. When Republic didn't ask for any more films (and these were VERY low budget offerings), they went back on the road, and then on to Broadway history.

Universal called in 1941. They made Hellzapoppin' there, and then Crazy House, Ghost Catchers, and See My Lawyer, the weakest of the bunch. Crazy House has some hilarious gags (actually all the films do), especially in the first quarter of the film, and Ghost Catchers is a downright hoot. Unfortunately, the films were loaded to the breaking point with novelty acts (mostly musical numbers by long forgotten performers), which made them less appealing to the average young viewer. Let's face it, most of the kids I watched old comedies with couldn't take one or two of the musical numbers, must less 10! We wanted more Olsen and Johnson madness, and we didn't get it. Their film careers over, they did more Broadway, more touring, even a water show (Hellzasplashin'), and an ice show. They even tried TV with a summer replacement series, Fireball Fun For All. But their intricate gags, and prop laden schtick was too cumbersome for early live television and it came off as forced. These two funny men passed on in the early 60's within two years of each other. They are buried side by side in Las Vegas.

Regardless of their checkered cinematic past, Hellzapoppin' is a pip. It belongs right up on top of the classic comedy list, next to Duck Soup, and Million Dollar Legs. It's so ahead of it's time as be frightening at times. A friend of mine, upon seeing it for the first time asked, "Did Orson Welles see this? He must have loved it!". I totally understand what he meant. It's innovative the way Citizen Kane was innovative (there is even a nod to Rosebud...how hip is THAT?). Most of the gags performed in Hellzapoppin' had to be inspirations to the great animators of the golden era. I could only think, "Wow, this is crazier than anything Tex Avery did up to that time.". It's true. Avery HAD to have seen this movie.

And so should you. It's only around in bootleg copies, but that's better than no Hellzapoppin' at all.

Shame on Universal for not releasing this classic, and shame on the snooty film community for ignoring a film that is funnier than anything made today by a longshot.