Because of television, most people in the baby boomer generation and since think of comedy shorts as restricted to Laurel & Hardy, the Three Stooges, the Little Rascals ("Our Gang"), Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and that's about it. Actually there were plenty of short subject comedians about (Burns and Allen, W.C. Fields, Clark & McCullough, Thelma Todd with either Zazu Pitts or Patsy Kelly, Edgar Kennedy, Leon Errol, Grady Sutton, and Robert Benchley to name some of the better known ones). In the 1940s two other series were created. One was Pete Smith's series of shorts (wherein Mr. Smith was the wise guy narrator), and the "Behind the Eight Ball" or "So You Want To Be..." series by Richard Bare - starring George O'Hannion as "Joe McDoakes" (Bare's comic turn on "Everyman").
In Bare's series, O'Hannion/McDoakes gets involved in some situation or is attracted to some job or hobby, that turns the short into a comic form of "How to" or better "How not to" do something. The entire idea is that no matter what you ("Everyman") would like to accomplish, most of the time the average fellow (or woman - sometimes a woman is involved) can't really do it. This seems shortsighted, but unless we accept the inevitable failure of poor McDoakes attempts...well we won't have an amusing short before the feature then, will we? Other episodes of the series included, "So You Want to Be a Detective", and "So You Want to Be a Dancer". No matter how much poor Joe tries to do things by the book he always comes a cropper. He either is not smart enough, or lacks the imagination to see what is around the possible corners of his actions.
Here we start off with Joe in the shower. The narrator (the always dependable Art Gilmore) catches his attention, but Joe does not want to be seen by an audience while bathing. Gilmore reassures Joe that only men are in the audience, so Joe allows Gilmore and the camera to see him getting washed (of course from the middle of the back up) - but Gilmore (sotto voce) tells the ladies to just restrain from laughing for a moment or two). As I said, Joe lacks imagination - like some stranger might lie about who sees you naked.
It turns out that Joe is using a bad choice for a shampoo, and as a result he is losing hair (actually most people lose dead hair when they are washing in a shower or bath). Although Joe has a good head of hair he becomes concerned about massive hair loss. So he asks his barber about this. His barber (Paul Panzer) insists that he shouldn't massage his scalp. But a second barber (Leo White) insists he should massage his scalp! So it goes, with it soon apparent that on the subject of hair and baldness nobody really has an answer.
The series shows Joe trying everything "the experts" suggest, and even seeking the help of books on baldness. But nothing seems to work. He even goes to a specialty hair institute where he is given the works (quite literally) with electricity. In the end...well you can watch it and see the result.
It is fairly amusing (the one possible catch is a running gag with "Iron Eyes" Cody as an Indian (get it...nudge, nudge..."scalp treatment")) several times in the episode. That seems rather dated. But if one keeps in mind it is set in 1946 the general amusement of the short is still effective. Oddly enough, although now sixty years old, the central issue of the short is still true: there is still no real cure for baldness. Of course, they did not mention that heredity really plays a major role in people having hair into old age - there is nothing really funny about heredity. The only addition to the short, if done nowadays, would have been to have Joe experiment with getting hair plugs, as the late Senator William Proxmire did. But one wonders if there is much humor in that either.
In Bare's series, O'Hannion/McDoakes gets involved in some situation or is attracted to some job or hobby, that turns the short into a comic form of "How to" or better "How not to" do something. The entire idea is that no matter what you ("Everyman") would like to accomplish, most of the time the average fellow (or woman - sometimes a woman is involved) can't really do it. This seems shortsighted, but unless we accept the inevitable failure of poor McDoakes attempts...well we won't have an amusing short before the feature then, will we? Other episodes of the series included, "So You Want to Be a Detective", and "So You Want to Be a Dancer". No matter how much poor Joe tries to do things by the book he always comes a cropper. He either is not smart enough, or lacks the imagination to see what is around the possible corners of his actions.
Here we start off with Joe in the shower. The narrator (the always dependable Art Gilmore) catches his attention, but Joe does not want to be seen by an audience while bathing. Gilmore reassures Joe that only men are in the audience, so Joe allows Gilmore and the camera to see him getting washed (of course from the middle of the back up) - but Gilmore (sotto voce) tells the ladies to just restrain from laughing for a moment or two). As I said, Joe lacks imagination - like some stranger might lie about who sees you naked.
It turns out that Joe is using a bad choice for a shampoo, and as a result he is losing hair (actually most people lose dead hair when they are washing in a shower or bath). Although Joe has a good head of hair he becomes concerned about massive hair loss. So he asks his barber about this. His barber (Paul Panzer) insists that he shouldn't massage his scalp. But a second barber (Leo White) insists he should massage his scalp! So it goes, with it soon apparent that on the subject of hair and baldness nobody really has an answer.
The series shows Joe trying everything "the experts" suggest, and even seeking the help of books on baldness. But nothing seems to work. He even goes to a specialty hair institute where he is given the works (quite literally) with electricity. In the end...well you can watch it and see the result.
It is fairly amusing (the one possible catch is a running gag with "Iron Eyes" Cody as an Indian (get it...nudge, nudge..."scalp treatment")) several times in the episode. That seems rather dated. But if one keeps in mind it is set in 1946 the general amusement of the short is still effective. Oddly enough, although now sixty years old, the central issue of the short is still true: there is still no real cure for baldness. Of course, they did not mention that heredity really plays a major role in people having hair into old age - there is nothing really funny about heredity. The only addition to the short, if done nowadays, would have been to have Joe experiment with getting hair plugs, as the late Senator William Proxmire did. But one wonders if there is much humor in that either.
