Topic: The Good Bad Egg (1947) - Joe Derita

[metaldams]

http://www.threestooges.net/filmography/episode/367
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0647322/?ref_=tt_cl_t3



       Well, holy shittake mushrooms, this is a Joe Derita solo short and it is actually.....good.  Very good, as a matter of fact.  No jealous husbands, no dumb situations that could easily be explained, no mindless boudoir chases, what we have here is an actual character driven story with good slapstick thrown in.  What a concept.  I really hope you guys get to see this one, as it's not online.

      This is a remake of Andy Clyde's KNEE ACTION from 1937, which I've never seen.  I'm going to guess there is some stock footage in this one, as James C. Morton gets hit with an object through a window in this 1947 short.  He passed away in 1942.

      Joe Derita is a lonely guy who finds an advertisement for a wife....written on an egg.  He contacts the girl, played by Dorothy Granger and then marries her.  After the marriage, he finds out she has this very bratty son, and he basically gets away with anything.  No matter what this brat kid does, be it a slingshot on his step dad's butt, name calling, or destroying Derita's dish and clothes washing machine before demonstrating them to potential buyers, his mother lets him get away with it all.  I cannot stress enough how annoying this kid is to Derita.  Actually, the kid's annoying actions and attitude go a long way in establishing empathy and siding with Derita.

       The slapstick is great.  There is this one brilliant shot of a hole being blasted through a wall.  The camera stays on the hole in the wall, and we see a felled Derita through the wall.  The washing machine bit where soapy wet clothes fall splat on everyone's face is great too.  If I have one complaint, the it's a few unbelievable reactions, definitely a fault of some Jules White films.  Emil Sitka laughs at Derita spilling egg on his shoe for no reason at all.  Dorothy Granger even laughs as Joe's washing machine doesn't work and people are getting splattered by clothes.  Never mind she's losing money as a wife with Joe's sabotaged invention, there's people getting hit with stuff, time to laugh.  Yeah, again, these unbelievable reactions do sometimes show up in Jules White films, but they're minor here.

       As for Derita, he's got some life in him in this short.  He acts well, he gets temperamental at times and excited at others, showing much needed personality.  One thing I always say about Derita is the man can take a fall, better than any other Stooge, actually.  Check out the fall he takes while singing, "We're in the money."  His feet end up waist high before he falls on his side, physically very hard to do.  Also a delight seeing Derita and Vernon Dent act drunk at the end of this one.

      A surprisingly very good short, and easily the best of the four Derita solos.  I'll tip my cap to the future Curly Joe for this one, and for Columbia to have the decency to give him a good script.  Too bad Shemp got so few of those.

9/10
       

[Paul Pain]

C'mon, metaldams!  What about Joe drowning the kid in the invention before the flashback ends?  Joe seems almost insane with hatred as he dunks that dummy in the tank and sits on top of it.  Great stuff.

I can tolerate the kid's behavior knowing the end result for this scenario.  Emil Sitka and Dorothy Granger are horrible, though.

8/10

[Desmond Of The Outer Sanctorum]

One thing I always say about Derita is the man can take a fall, better than any other Stooge, actually.

Wow, Derita was the best Stooge at something? Who knew?

I'll have to see this one again sometime if I can. I saw it once years ago and don't remember it well.

[Paul Pain]

       As for Derita, he's got some life in him in this short.  He acts well, he gets temperamental at times and excited at others, showing much needed personality.  One thing I always say about Derita is the man can take a fall, better than any other Stooge, actually.  Check out the fall he takes while singing, "We're in the money."  His feet end up waist high before he falls on his side, physically very hard to do.  Also a delight seeing Derita and Vernon Dent act drunk at the end of this one.     

I reiterate: I think he does so well because he acts like an ordinary person would.  You see almost 0 actors like this in anything... in fact, DeRita is the only actor I know with such a personality.

[Big Chief Apumtagribonitz]

As I've said before, none of these men and women are comic geniuses.  They're actors, and they're only as good as their writers.  The stooges are exceptions to the extent that their personalities were strong enough that the writers could start to write to the laughs that the actors could generate with their own mannerisms, ie the slaps and pokes and Curly's eccentricities.  Again I say that very little ad libbing was allowed on set ( it was just too expensive, not even Groucho was allowed to ad lib on set to any significant extent, which is why many of the Marx Brothers' movie scenes were tested out on the road ), but certain moves and performance attitudes which occurred naturally and got a laugh would naturally be picked up and repeated by the writers.  Thus Derita, write him something funny, and he's funny,with maybe a nice little twist of his own, write him nothing special or nothing at all ( which we'll talk about ) and that's what you'll get.  I really wish I could see this one, Derita solo at his best, because I am a fan, but if it's not on line,  I lose.
     By the way, Metal, I bought the Snow White.  You?

[metaldams]

As I've said before, none of these men and women are comic geniuses.  They're actors, and they're only as good as their writers.  The stooges are exceptions to the extent that their personalities were strong enough that the writers could start to write to the laughs that the actors could generate with their own mannerisms, ie the slaps and pokes and Curly's eccentricities.  Again I say that very little ad libbing was allowed on set ( it was just too expensive, not even Groucho was allowed to ad lib on set to any significant extent, which is why many of the Marx Brothers' movie scenes were tested out on the road ), but certain moves and performance attitudes which occurred naturally and got a laugh would naturally be picked up and repeated by the writers.  Thus Derita, write him something funny, and he's funny,with maybe a nice little twist of his own, write him nothing special or nothing at all ( which we'll talk about ) and that's what you'll get.  I really wish I could see this one, Derita solo at his best, because I am a fan, but if it's not on line,  I lose.
     By the way, Metal, I bought the Snow White.  You?

I may have Snow White on a blank VHS tape somewhere, will look for it first.  If I can't find it, then I will buy.  I also agree 100% about you line concerning writing and most these people aren't comic geniuses.  It's amazing when you throw Derita in a well written short like this versus his other shorts.

[Shemp_Diesel]

Another Derita solo, another good one. I didn't enjoy this one as much as Slappily Married, but good nonetheless. Seeing Dorothy Granger's bratty kid getting stuffed in the machine by Joe at the end was splendid--although I probably got bigger laughs from the chaos beforehand with everyone getting splattered with suds and wet clothes. 

So far, these Joe Derita solos are not too shabby, but I get a sense a marked decline is coming soon. Still, these first two solo outings make me kind of wish Shemp had been given more material like this & also wonder why Derita's solo career was so brief at Columbia?

7 out of 10...

[dukieboy]

Loved this short basically because I love Dorothy Granger.
Am currently viewing the shorts she made with Leon Errol.

[Tony Bensley]

When I viewed this gem yesterday, the kid struck me as a Tommy Bond type, and sure enough, Tommy did appear in the 1937 Andy Clyde original, KNEE ACTION, which is thankfully, extant! 

CHEERS!

[Big Chief Apumtagribonitz]

I just saw this for the first time, and I think that is Tommy Bond.

[Tony Bensley]

I just saw this for the first time, and I think that is Tommy Bond.

Definitely isn't Tommy Bond, as he was a young adult by the time this film was produced (Apart from James C. Morton's 5+ year old archival footage!), although somewhat frustratingly, the child actor isn't listed on this short subject's IMDB page!

Does anyone know the name of the child actor in this film?

CHEERS! 

[metaldams]

https://threestooges.net/cast/actor/1449

Here's the link to the child actor.  Died when I was less than 2 months old and sadly not much older than I am.

[metaldams]

....and the cause of death was plane crash.  Interesting article about a book by his son, who survived the crash as an 11 year old.  Very sad.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/06/30/plane.crash.survivor.book/index.html

[Tony Bensley]

https://threestooges.net/cast/actor/1449

Here's the link to the child actor.  Died when I was less than 2 months old and sadly not much older than I am.

Norman Ollestad was one of the two names on THE GOOD BAD EGG's Wikipedia page cast list that's in the dreaded red, meaning no bio info, so thanks for digging this up, sad as it is to see that Norman died before his 45th birthday!

[HomokHarcos]

When I viewed this gem yesterday, the kid struck me as a Tommy Bond type, and sure enough, Tommy did appear in the 1937 Andy Clyde original, KNEE ACTION, which is thankfully, extant! 

CHEERS!

Wow that’s interesting that Tommy Bond was in a 1937 Columbia short since he was still appearing in Our Gang comedies for Hal Roach during the time. I usually don’t like bratty kids, but Tommy Bond is the exception and I want to seek out that Andy Clyde short for that reason.

As for the Joe DeRita shorts, my thoughts on them are similar. He is playing Lou Costello-type roles and it would have been so much better if Costello himself was cast in these comedies.

[Tony Bensley]

Wow that’s interesting that Tommy Bond was in a 1937 Columbia short since he was still appearing in Our Gang comedies for Hal Roach during the time. I usually don’t like bratty kids, but Tommy Bond is the exception and I want to seek out that Andy Clyde short for that reason.

As for the Joe DeRita shorts, my thoughts on them are similar. He is playing Lou Costello-type roles and it would have been so much better if Costello himself was cast in these comedies.

Unlike many other studio heads, Hal Roach allowed his contract players to work at other studios (Besides loan outs) when they were between projects. That's how we get to see Thelma Todd's appearance in the Marx Brothers Comedy Feature HORSEFEATHERS (1932), made at Paramount, for instance.

CHEERS! 

[I. Cheatam]

Norman Ollestad was one of the two names on THE GOOD BAD EGG's Wikipedia page cast list that's in the dreaded red, meaning no bio info, so thanks for digging this up, sad as it is to see that Norman died before his 45th birthday!

And he also played the child version of Amos Flint in All Gummed Up.

[I. Cheatam]

When I viewed this gem yesterday, the kid struck me as a Tommy Bond type, and sure enough, Tommy did appear in the 1937 Andy Clyde original, KNEE ACTION, which is thankfully, extant! 

CHEERS!

I honestly prefer the original Andy Clyde version, as he really had no tolerance for the spoiled brat kid. It's hilarious how Tommy Bond comes up with so many ways to torment Andy.