Flippen's Frolics (1936) User Reviews

Musical Short

[boblipton · 6/10 · 7 May 2017]

Jay C. Flippen may be best remembered today from his movie roles in the 1950s, when he played a gruff and likable but ultimately corrupt authority figure. However, he came from Broadway, and earlier, radio. Before that, he was a story-telling comic on the vaudeville circuit with a manner that suggested his occasional blackface performances. At the time this movie was made, he seems to have been hosting an amateur talent show on radio -- perhaps that is an invention of this short. Some decent talent appears and it ends.

It's one of the musical shorts produced by Mentone for distribution by Universal Pictures. There were about 80 of them in the mid to late 1930s, mostly directed by Milton Schwartzwald. After the Mentone shorts ended, Schwartzwald wound up in Universal's music department.

"If you're somewhere else, you can't be here..."

[Lilcount · 8/10 · 16 May 2017]

This was the best of five Universal shorts shown at MOMA on May 15, 2017.

According to co-curator Ron Hutchinson, Jay C. Flippen was a radio star in the 1930's, the host of an amateur hour program to rival that of the better-known Major Edward Bowes. So viewers of this short would have been familiar with his talents as an emcee, which he plays in this film.

The acts are pretty good. Rose Marie (yes, that Rose Marie) sings a couple of songs. The Seiler Brothers, "masters of eccentric dancing," do some splits that seem even more amazing than the Nicholas Brothers. Comic Sid Walker, who looks like an escapee from a Russian silent comedy, gets outwitted in quick succession by the girl singer of a trio and Flippen.

Flippen would be best remembered as a straight actor in the 1950's. Perhaps his signature role was the crooked cop in Stanley Kubrick's "The Killing." He and Rose Marie would be reunited years later on an episode of "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

This short will likely be shown only in museums, but it's worth a look.