Blondie on a Budget (1940)

Dagwood wants to join the trout club and Blondie wants a fur coat. Jealousy reigns when Dag's old girlfriend Joan shows up, but nothing else matters when a drawing at the movie theatre provides money for the coat.

Director:

Frank R. Strayer

Writers:

Richard Flournoy (screenplay), Charles M. Brown (story) (as Charles Molyneux Brown)

Stars:

Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, Larry Simms

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Penny Singleton	...	Blondie Bumstead
Arthur Lake	...	Dagwood Bumstead
Larry Simms	...	Baby Dumpling Bumstead
Daisy	...	Daisy
Rita Hayworth	...	Joan Forrester
Danny Mummert	...	Alvin Fuddle
Don Beddoe	...	Marvin Williams
John Qualen	...	Mr. Ed Fuddle
Fay Helm	...	Mrs. Fuddle
Irving Bacon	...	Mailman
Thurston Hall	...	Brice
William Brisbane	...	Theatre Manager

Storyline

Dagwood wants to join the trout club and Blondie wants a fur coat. Jealousy reigns when Dag's old girlfriend Joan shows up, but nothing else matters when a drawing at the movie theatre provides money for the coat.

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Plot Keywords:

jealousy | club | fur | fifth part | false accusation | 

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Taglines:

Balance your fun budget.

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Genres:

Comedy

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

29 February 1940 (USA)

Also Known As:

Blondie redder Pelsen

Filming Locations:

Columbia Pictures, Sunset Boulevard & Gower Street, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Technical Specs

Runtime:

72 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Joan's car is a 1938 Packard Eight convertible coupe.

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Goofs

Dagwood berates Daisy for being a female, but when Daisy later jumps up on a chair, the dog is clearly shown to be a male.

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Connections

Followed by Blondie in the Dough (1947)

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Soundtracks

One Night of Love
(uncredited)
Music by Victor Schertzinger

User Reviews

The sixth Blondie film, with guest star Rita Hayworth

In this Blondie film, Daisy the dog gets drunk on champagne and performs some of the most incredible 'drunken' antics ever carried out by an animal on film. There is one scene where we first see a chair from floor level (the dog's eye view) going in and out of focus to show us how drunk Daisy is, and then in a continuous shot, Daisy leaps up onto that chair, slides off, falls, undergoes drunken contortions, and then leaps up onto the chair again. The only clue I could gather as to how this was done is that the seat of the chair seemed to be covered with oil and hence slippery. But that does not explain the miracles of dog training involved. Also, as anyone who watches Blondie films knows very well, Daisy often lifts both long ears in astonishment, but in this film for the first time she lifts only a single ear, a kind of canine variation on the arched single eyebrow of human wags. However, lest anyone think Daisy is the only person on screen, I rush to assure everyone that the usual crowd are there and just as comical as ever. And they are joined by Rita Hayworth who plays Joan, an old girlfriend of Dagwood's. She is as vampish as possible, in a comedic fashion, and Blondie becomes insanely jealous, from which most of the comic situations of the story then flow. This must have just taken only a couple of days' filming for Lovely Rita, who made several films this year including ANGELS OVER Broadway(see my review). The comedy this time is rather more situational than in the preceding five films, with fewer sight gags apart from Daisy's antics. For instance, much of the story revolves around mistaken conclusions drawn from a coat hanging in a closet, and Joan trying on the coat in a shop while Dagwood watches (Blondie assumes the treacherous Dagwood is buying the coat she longs for instead for Joan, whereas Joan is really only trying it on to make sure he gets the right size for Blondie.) So it is a bit more like a French bedroom farce than we have encountered heretofore in the Blondie films. Also, there is a rather wild departure in that characters impersonate other characters and have the real character's voices dubbed over their lip movements. This is overdone, and not as funny as Frank Strayer the director thought. Perhaps he was getting bored on his sixth Blondie film and watched to lash out with something new. Penny Singleton (Blondie) looks a bit tired for the first time, and Arthur Lake (Dagwood) also looks a bit more dazed than usual, as if he is being given no time off from the relentless schedule of the Blondie series. In this film there are no scenes at the office, and we do not see Mr. Dithers. It must have been his time for a break. Larry Simms as Baby Bumpling has many funny scenes with his chum Alvin, mostly with the two of them standing and watching the crazy grownups as they carry on, and making wry cracks about them such as: 'They're doing it again.' Having the tiny tots acting as if they are visitors to a zoo or a madhouse, and being the only ones who keep their heads, in itself hilarious. But we are nowhere near the end of this series. There are twenty more films to go, and plenty of fun in store.