Topic: A Nag in the Bag (1938) - Joe Smith & Charles Dale

[Paul Pain]

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132353/

Joe Smith lived to be 97, and Charlie Dale lived to be 90.  The result?  70+ years of working together as a comedy duo, including two shorts made for Columbia Pictures under Charley Chase's direction.  The first of these is A NAG IN THE BAG, a short that probably ranks in the top-5 all time for "That makes no sense moments" in a Columbia short.

That said, Smith & Dale, a famous comedy team who relied heavily on snarky interactions and some dialectic humor, were not a favorite of Jules White and canned quickly... probably because their comedy wasn't violent enough.  It was an interesting experiment though.  The only reason this short exists in such crisp quality is because it was restored as part of the Charley Chase Columbia set.

Restaurateurs were a common feature of the Smith & Dale skits, so it's no surprise that this short features them as deadbeats running a food stand in the middle of a busy city.  Addicted gamblers, Smith is a good fit for this role, and Dale follows along nicely as the unwitting victim of Joe's schemes.

This short gave birth to the legendary Columbia phone booth that we all know so well: heavy (in this case, Bud Jamison) is in the phone booth, comic gets in with him, and chaos ensues.  Here, however, there is grand climax to the gag.  Smith simply makes his phone call, and they eventually all get out of the booth.  No exploding booths, no fingers getting jammed where they don't belong, and no one biting himself in the leg.

The scenes once Smith & Dale get to the race track are uninspiring and downright stupid at times.  We see firsthand the bad side of Charley Chase: things get a little too farfetched and air-headed for my liking.  I think Charley had the natural ability to be a good director, but he needed a second director working with him until he got his act together.  Charley does play a role in this one; see if you spot him (hint, you can't).

It's an interesting pairing, and I hope their other short is available because Smith & Dale have the potential to be a riot given a better script.

6/10

[HomokHarcos]

I’ve never heard of Smith and Dale before watching this, but I could tell they had chemistry with each other, and over 70 years as a comedy duo is very impressive!

I loved the segments at the hamburger joint, I would like to see them play more roles in workplace comedies, and I thought the plot was interesting. Maybe because Charley Chase was directing, but there was a cohesive and easy to follow along story throughout. “Step on it” and the snarky reply was my favorite line.

I do agree that it did decline once they went to the race track, I would have preferred they just keep listening to the radio and we got to see more stuff at their work.

I’d like to watch the other short somehow.

[metaldams]

That’s right, this is on the Columbia Chase DVD set, like Paul mentioned.  Nice, I can rewatch this one legally.  Will comment soon.

[metaldams]

      I’ve seen this before obviously because I own the Chase sets. One of the setbacks of middle age is you don’t remember things like you used to.  Those Stooge shorts I saw as a young man?  Memorized.  Watch something new now?  I need to see it at least five times for it to last in my brain.  Same goes for music. 

     Now that my middle age rant is out of the way, I remembered nothing of the plot, little of the comedians, and remembered a little bit of the scenery.  So I just got a fresh viewing and these shorts tend to go down better on a Saturday morning for some reason.  I’ll start with Smith and Dale.  Yes, once in a while comic gold can be struck when pairing two journeymen (see Laurel and Hardy), but in more cases than not, the good comedy teams of this era had some kind of stage experience before getting to the screen together.  Smith and Dale I can tell this is the case.  Their rapport together with dialogue really gels and it is a big difference than watching some combination of El Brendel/Harry Langdon/Tom Kennedy/Monte Collins.

      Another thing I want to comment on.  These guys are named Smith and Dale, the most W.A.S.P. (In ye olde sense, not the Blackie Lawless sense), like names imaginable, yet they sound like they come from somewhere between a small village between Greece and Italy.  That ethnic humor with the names, a throwback to different times, I imagine has to be part of the joke.

      The outfits the waitress girls were wearing, were those the same as the basketball uniforms in VIOLENT IS THE WORD FOR CURLY?  Wouldn’t be shocked.

      Overall a pleasant situational comedy light on the slapstick.  It did look like there would be a good food fight early on, but just as things were about to pick up, they cut away.  I enjoyed this, the comedians were pleasant enough and it is always a comfort spotting all the familiar Columbia faces.

[Paul Pain]

Another thing I want to comment on.  These guys are named Smith and Dale, the most W.A.S.P. (In ye olde sense, not the Blackie Lawless sense), like names imaginable, yet they sound like they come from somewhere between a small village between Greece and Italy.  That ethnic humor with the names, a throwback to different times, I imagine has to be part of the joke.

Their birth names are Joseph Sultzer and Charles Marks.  They are picking on their own backgrounds and do so very well. 

[Big Chief Apumtagribonitz]

Sultzer and Marks became Smith and Dale when they were able to buy a box of unused business cards cheap that had been ordered by an act that had since broken up, a certain Smith and Dale.