The Taming of the Snood (1940)

Last of the Columbia shorts today.  Some mild silliness bookending a really nice stretch of slapstick in the middle (there basically for the heck of it – it has no real bearing on the story whatsoever.)  For this run of shorts, I’d say it’s middle-of-the-pack but still enjoyable.

Buster is a hat seller who creates his own haberdashery “masterpieces.”  One day, he gets more than he bargained for when a comely jewel thief slips into his shop to evade the police; she slips the stolen jewels into the lining of a hat and arranges for Buster to deliver it to her home.  The resulting caper, involving a drunk maid, a parrot, and a window sill, sees Buster going far above and beyond the call of typical hat-delivering duty.

Buster’s “creative” hats are certainly that, and the first few minutes of the short are an excuse to have him model his kooky creations with his trademark stone face.  Some of the hats are too ridiculous to be really funny, like the one with a huge braid sticking out vertically from the top or the one made to look like a tiny replica of a washing line, but there’s still some amusement here.  The one that looks like a bug’s head (complete with antennae) toes the line between homely-cute and ludicrous just well enough to work.

Things don’t get cooking, though, until Buster delivers the hat and meets the jewel thief’s maid.  Because Buster pretty much always sidles into places without announcing himself, his sudden appearance startles the maid and she knocks her head on the wall, and he’s naturally distracted in his attempts to revive her with a nip of alcohol; he doesn’t realize the oversight until she’s drained the bottle and is well and truly lubricated.

What follows is an extended sequence of drunken (on the maid’s part) and bewildered/annoyed (on Buster’s) slapstick.  It really doesn’t have anything to do with what follows, but it’s a very welcome addition.  Basically, the maid (played by Elsie Ames, whose brand of over-the-top mostly works here) creates a lot of havoc and Buster runs around trying to fix it all, continually interrupted by yet more drunken antics.  Some really great gags here – I especially love the classic “one leg on the table at a time” move and the moment where Buster is standing on said table (trying to replace a lightbulb) and the maid inadvertently kicks him clean off it.

It’s not as funny when the jewel thief comes home and the plot resumes, but it’s still not bad.  There’s a similar “hanging perilously out of an open window” scene to So You Won’t Squawk, but the quality looks a lot better here; even though you can physically see the wires in a few shots, the composition is much more natural-looking, and I’m a lot more willing to suspend my disbelief for it.

Warnings

Slapstick violence, a little gunplay, and drinking.