Tars and Stripes (1935)

If the majority of the Educational shorts are middling, does that change the curve for them?  No, not really, because you still can’t help but measure them against Buster’s best (his independent period) and worst (the horror that is Free and Easy,) and stacked up like that, it’s reasonable that most of these shorts – inoffensive, somewhat tepid, each with its bright moments – will fall in the middle.  It does make it hard to compare them to each other, though.  It’s been a while since I watched all the Educational shorts together, and there are only a few that I really remember standing out from the others, for either good or bad.  As such, Tars and Stripes is fairly par for the course.

Here, Buster plays a hapless apprentice seaman at a Navy training station.  He’s forever tormented by the strict Chief Gunners Mate, who’s bound and determined to “make a sailor out of him.”  Buster’s clumsy work at training is enough to keep him in the Gunners Mate’s crosshairs, but things get even worse when the officer’s girlfriend takes a shine to Buster.

A handful of good gags here.  I enjoy the recurring joke of Buster being constantly thwarted in his attempts to enter the mess hall for dinner – it reminds me little of Go West, though as usual, it was funnier in that film.  I also get a kick out of Buster practicing his about-face and, because he’s unable to get into the mess hall, employing all his cunning to swipe a pie from the window sill.  And when the Gunners Mate’s girlfriend – who’s just warned him to stop getting jealous – breaks the heel off her shoe, it’s blatantly obvious that the Gunners Mate is going to catch Buster in what looks like a compromising position, but the execution of the bit is still good.  Buster’s actions in this scene are fun, paying such careful attention to the heel and being completely unaware of how he’s shimmying the girl into such cozy-looking closeness with him.

By now, you know the drill – apart from these good gags, there’s not a whole lot to say.  This one feels a bit on the duller side, and the lack of music as a backdrop for the action is strongly felt.  Also, there are a couple places where the no-dialogue interactions seem conspicuous.  Normally, I appreciate Buster’s instinct to only use dialogue when he needs it and not cram the film with jokes (a lesson MGM outght to have learned,) but here, there are moments where it feels unnatural, like the scene is forcing silence rather than the scene lending itself to it.

I know that the short was shot at an actual Navy training station, but I wonder if it was shot using actual sailors as well.  Not for a lot of the main action, but in some of the long shots of the training.  In a few scenes, there are tons of sailors assembled, more than seems likely for a short of this caliber; I know they were made majorly on the cheap.  I notice that, in most of the major scenes, it doesn’t look like there’s more than a couple dozen guys, but then there’s training exercises with row after row after row of sailors standing in formation.  I suppose it’s possible that they got a ton of extras for those long shots, but I have a feeling they were just using the personnel available at the training station.