It Happened One Day (1934) User Reviews

How Charley Succeeds

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 24 February 2009]

It Happened One Day finds young Charley Chase, a veritable Sammy Glick of the Thirties, getting hired by a firm headed by Oscar Apfel. Two problems with that, Apfel had some unpleasant run ins with the bumptious Chase. Chase even makes an offhanded comment about marrying the boss's daughter and the other employees immediately take it in their minds to put the upstart in his place.

Popular Chase leading lady Betty Mack is Apfel's daughter and on a train trip back from Long Beach the two of them meet and do fall for each other. Life does take some funny turns.

Chase was perfectly cast as a bumptious type. Thirty years later I could have seen him doing How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. This was one short which depended more on character than gags for laughs and Chase succeeded admirably.

How To Succeed At Business

[boblipton · 8/10 · 16 August 2021]

Charley Chase has been hired as a clerk at Oscar Apfel's firm. After blathering on about hard work, the other men in the office talk about him becoming a manager, and marrying the boss's daughter. Apfel, hearing this, ships him to Long Beach, where he meets Apfel's daughter, Betty Mack.

One of the joys of the classic Chase short subjects was his ability to compress a three-act plot into two reels, with plenty of time and talent for classic slapstick gags. In the sound era he would throw in a song or two, usually written by himself and house musical director, Leroy Shield; we get one here, a variation on "The Man on the Flying Trapeze". We also get plenty of well-timed gags, from Chase and Apfel tripping over each other and busting hats, to a full-fledged fire, with inept firemen trying to put it out. Enjoy!

One of the very best Chase sound shorts.

[larry41onEbay · 8/10 · 2 November 2004]

SPOILERS: Our hero Charley Chase reports for work at his new office job full of enthusiasm and big ideas. He boastfully predicts his imminent rise in the company to his co-workers. They good-naturedly go along and joke that he's sure to marry the boss's daughter! The boss, A.L. Void (Oscar Apfel), we've learned from an earlier scene, is highly protective of his pretty daughter, Betty Mack. He overhears the conversation and discovers that the new employee with designs on his precious prodigy is the same fellow he had a run-in with that morning and he is fit to be tied. Void's assistant suggests they put Charley in charge of the Long Beach office (apparently some kind of Alcatraz) to get him out of town. Charley, along with the rest of the guys in the office, is surprised that his prophecy came true so quickly, but he happily heads for the train station. Later, Void learns that his daughter has headed for Long Beach (of all places) herself! He sends a wire ordering Chase to return immediately. But of all the coincidences, Charley meets Betty by chance (not knowing who she is) before he reads the telegram. The encounter calls for a charming song ('He Peddled His Bristles to Women') and a gag involving a mailbox, a trashcan fire and Charley getting drenched by fire hoses.

The two, obviously smitten with each other, find themselves seated together on the return train ride. A series of circumstances lead the other passengers to believe they are newlyweds and they are showered with flowers, rice and gifts. When Mr. Void meets the train at the station and sees them depart together, he assumes the deed is done and decides to make the best of it. He promptly presents his new 'son-in-law' with a generous check, thereby making all of Charley's predictions of the morning come true!

Not one of Charley's best but enjoyable.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 25 May 2021]

"It Happened One Day" is a pleasant Charley Chase comedy that he also directed. It's not among his best films he made for Hal Roach Studios, but it is enjoyable.

The story begins with a grouchy man tripping over Charley. Soon, the guy is spitting mad and the man also turns out to be Charley's new boss. Oddly, although the man hates him, he doesn't fire him but sends him to run the Long Beach office (Long Beach is in the suburbs of Los Angeles). However, after sending Charley, he learns his daughter is also heading to Long Beach and the boss tries to stop get a hold of Charley, as he's afraid the pair will meet and he'll be stuck with an idiot for a son-in-law!

There are some funny bits here and there, such as the final few minutes of the picture. But a few gags had poor timing and were over-used...such as the sneezing and tripping bits. Overall, a mixed bag but a mostly pleasant little film.

By the way, the title to this is a parody of the VERY successful "It Happened One Night"....which also came out in 1934 and garnered five Oscars!

Watch it one day

[hte-trasme · 9/10 · 13 January 2010]

"It Happened One Day" contains what must be one of the most fun of the musical numbers that Charley Chase included for himself in many of his shorts, as he sings bouncily about the man who stole his love while accompanying himself with the horn of a taxi cab (a part eventually taken by the cab driver). It's one song, but this whole short, which has one of Chase's funniest farce-like plots as, after annoying his new boss, he is sent hither and yon to avoid the possibility of his marrying his daughter -- before he comes home looking coincidentally as if he'd married her anyway, plays out in something like the jolly exaggerated style of a musical.

Hal Roach Studios was known for injecting a little bit more realism (often cut by one big unrealistic comedy catalyst) into comedy, but in this it's replaced by ebullient unreality. Charley's boss is A. L. Void of the firm of Null and Void, his co-workers react to news in perfect sequence, the train conductor shouts humorously impossible names ("Los Property!"), and long, hilarious gab sequences such as Charley's constant accidentally tripping of Mr. Void and his baroquely complicated problems that result in the fire-department hosing him down when he tries to mail a letter are impossibly unlikely but none the less funny.

It also has a more expansive feel than a lot of Chase's work -- scenes jump back and forth between places and jump ahead in time. It feels like what a Charley Chase feature might feel like if it weren't twenty minutes long. Betty Back is a good actress as Charley's leading lady, though she doesn't quite have the look. Edgar Kennedy has a funny cameo, looking strange with hair even if it is meant to be patently false.

In all a very funny and lavish-feeling short from Charley Chase's Hal Roach heyday, with Charley getting the chance to wrap one of his excellent stories and some of his excellent comedy scenes around the chance to play an exaggerated go-getter type.