Borrowed Blonde (1947) User Reviews

Pretty similar to most of Leon Errol's shorts.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 23 February 2021]

Leon's boss is having marital problems and Leon tells him that he has a wonderful and happy marriage....and he has a plan. To help the boss' wife to stop being so grouchy and accusatory, Leon invites the boss to come to his house and watch how he and his wife get along. He reasons that then the wife will learn by watching how happy folks interact when they are married. But they accidentally see Leon with a neighbor woman and they assume she's his wife. Not wanting to try to explain his way out of this, she pretends to Leon's wife...and they lay it on pretty thick. Of course, you wonder how long it will take until the real Mrs. Errol shows up and wrecks everything!

This is pretty similar to most of Leon Errol's films. You have the wife who distrusts Leon and thinks he is a carousing bum, you have the innocent moment that makes him look like a carousing bum and you have lots of physical violence...which is supposed to be funny (yeah, ain't domestic violence a hoot??). Overall, good but not great.

Neither A Borrower Nor A Lender Be

[boblipton · 6/10 · 18 October 2019]

Through the usual unlikely series of misunderstandings, Leon Errol's wife, Dorothy Granger, has walked out on him just as a client he wants to land arrives with his wife to learn how a couple can be so lovey-dovey. Peggy Maley's husband has walked out for the same reason, so Leon borrows her to impress the newcomers, just as the spouses are coming back home. All in a normal night at the Errol home in his long-running comedy series at RKO.

This series is a good place to see old comedy troupers at work, and here it's Vivien Oakland as the client's wife. She was a Ziegfeld girl and made her film debut in 1915. The veteran of more than 80 shorts and 70 features. She's best remembered among comedy fans for being the co-star of Charley Chase's MIGHTY LIKE A MOOSE. She retired from films in 1951 and died in 1958, aged 63.

Borrowed Blonde is 17 Minutes of Comic Brouhaha

[Denise_Noe · 6/10 · 14 January 2021]

This short film packs a punch (literally, a few of them). I watched it because I'm a fan of Peggy Maley who was usually a supporting player or even just a bit player but who has a big role in Borrowed Blonde. The short begins with a scene in Brewster Investments in which employee Leon Errol (played by actor Leon Errol!) is trying to interest boss Mr. Brewster (Paul Maxey) in property to be developed. Mr. B. gets a phone call from his wife (Vivien Oakland). The couple have a quarrel over - of all things - a disparaging comment the husband made about the wife's hat. "I didn't say I didn't like the hat," he remarks. "I said the feathers make you look like a pillow coming apart." This leads to a harsh quarrel and wife hanging up on husband. Mr. B's marital woes leave him with scant interest in the proposed development. "What does a man have to do to get along with his wife?" the boss wails. Errol claims he has a very good marriage, adding, "My wife is a little jealous although I never give her cause to be." He suggests Mr. and Mrs. B pay a visit to Mr. and Mrs. E to learn what a good marriage looks like. Brewster agrees he and his wife will do just that. Then Mr. E is walking down a hallway and the slapstick begins as he - literally! - falls over his pretty blonde neighbor, Mrs. Adams, played by Peggy Maley. This leads to Mrs. A trying on a coat Mr. E purchased for his wife. The zipper gets stuck, then Errol's tie gets stuck and then . . . well, it goes on to varied slapstick situations. When the Brewsters arrive to see what a wonderful marriage looks like, Mrs. Adams is pretending to be Mrs. Errol. As the situation gets ever more complicated, an anxious and befuddled Leon Errol must try to keep his true wife from seeing the fake wife and try to keep both women away from the Brewsters. Everyone gets into multiple scrapes by the time the brief film is over. It's a lots-of-laughs vaudeville-style short with no artistic pretenses and is an entertaining way to spend 17 minutes.

"You laughed at that Leon Errol short. I'm going home to mother!" Crash....

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 12 May 2021]

The Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy shorts should have come with a warning, "Do not try this at home." A good majority of them dealt with rascally husbands, interfering in-laws, belligerent bosses and always a nagging wife who for some reason completely misunderstood a situation. Errol is hosting a client and his wife who are having marital problems, and by accident, Leon's wife (Sirius regular Dorothy Granger) sees Errol assisting a neighbor (Vivian Oakland) attempting to get out of a dress that Leon had bought for her. Granger storms out, Oakland pretends to be his wife to host the client and his wife, and out of the blue Granger returns, creating more mayhem.

The always funny Errol does get himself into a lot of predicaments in the name of matrimony and good business promotion, and always encounters women who do exactly the opposite of what he asks him to do which is usually the source of his trouble. I could imagine audiences watching this with the husband laughing hysterically and the woman having a slow boil because of how it present women. Still funny because this is what many sitcoms based their themes on, and the presence of a hysterical side gag at the end makes it even better.