Blondie Takes a Vacation (1939)

Absolutely Brilliant!

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

In the space of a little over a decade, a couple dozen Blondie and Dagwood films were made. Obviously, they were very popular B-movies and after having seen quite a few of them I can understand why. They were fun little pictures...with likable characters and stories. Plus, they managed to have the same three actors play their roles...and you get to see Baby Dumpling go from early childhood to his teenage years...something very unique for any series of films.Here in "Blondie Takes a Vacation", the story picks up exactly where it left off in the previous film. The Bumsteads FINALLY get to go on the vacation they were supposed to take in "Blondie Meets the Boss". However, as you'd expect, the family's trip turns out to bring all sorts of surprises. First, on the train they meet up with a very nasty guy. And, when they arrive at their hotel, they find this same guy is the owner...Mr. Morton (Donald McBride...who made a career out of playing grouches!). Morton is a spiteful guy and refuses to honor their reservation and so they are forced to stay in the only other hotel...a place that is practically deserted. Why? Because Morton's been working hard to destroy his competition and stands to cheat these nice people out of their hotel. As a result, Blondie and Dagwood promise to help them try to make a go of it.The best part of the film is how Baby Dumpling manages to do so much to help the good guys...and so much to destroy bad Mr. Morton! I especially liked when Baby met up with that bad kitty! Well written and fun...and well worth your time.

This is the third in the Blondie movie series. Dagwood, Blondie, Baby Dumpling, and Daisy are finally on their two-week vacation. Unfortunately, it's not too soon enough for Mr. Beasley, the postman. On the train, they encounter a man who doesn't like them because of Daisy's presence-dogs aren't allowed-and turns them away at his hotel in the woods, which they didn't know about. So they end up at the abandoned one at the other side owned by an elderly couple who are in financial straits. Oh, and there's another man in the story who's revealed to be a pyromaniac...Despite many contrivances, this was another funny Blondie film in the series with a touch of real drama concerning the temporary disappearance of one of the characters. So on that note, I recommend Blondie Takes a Vacation. P.S. This is the third time this month I've seen comic screen drunk Arthur Housman in an old movie, the others being the first Judge Hardy's Family outing A Family Affair and the Marx Brothers' Go West.

The amusements are plenty in this third installment where Blondie, Dagwood, Baby Dumpling (oh that name starts to rake the nerves after a while) and Daisy head to the country, stirring up all sorts of trouble yet saving a failing countryside inn from closing. The chaos begins on a train where, while hiding Daisy, they incur the wrath of a passenger (Donald MacBride) who turns them in for having a dog outside the storage compartment then denies them entry to the lavish country inn he owns. They end up in another nearby inn where the phone is shut off, the electricity is about to be, and one of the guests (a very funny Donald Meek) is a secret pyromaniac.This entry is a bit darker than the rest because it involves a hotel fire and the fear that the lost Baby Dumpling may be inside along with the beloved pooch Daisy. It is also a bit touching as Blondie and Dagwood forsake the fun they intended to have so they can help the elderly couple who own the inn they check into. It turns that MacBride (who actually had my sympathy in the train sequences) is out to foreclose on their loan so he can take over the property and will stop at nothing to achieve his nefarious goals. The lighthearted first third becomes intense towards the ending, and an unlikely hero is revealed. Even though most of the film takes place away from the Bumpstead's house in the city, there are still brief repeats of old gags as the rather adult conversation between tots Larry Simms and Danny Mummert, as well as frazzled postman Irving Bacon's determination to deliver the mail without being knocked over.

This BLONDIE film is full of laughs but mostly takes place away from the Bumstead family home, and J. C. Dithers and the office do not appear in it at all. Most of the film is set beside a lake at a summer holiday hotel. The amazing series of incidents and highly complex twists of plot are every bit as intricate as in the previous film in the series. Daisy the Dog gets more and more endearing, as she learns more and more cute tricks for the camera. At one point she even leaps into the air and flies right past Dagwood and Blondie's heads as if she had been shot out of a cannon. I really don't know how they did that stunt. She also turns backwards somersaults to express her dismay. Baby Dumpling (played by the unforgettable Larry Simms) is getting wiser and wiser as his parents get stupider and stupider, and he sits pontificating like a Taoist sage, expressing his disdain at their childish behaviour and lecturing them about how they should behave. (Remember, he is only four years old!) The results of this are hysterically funny. At the very beginning of the film, he and his friend Alvin from next door exchange ponderous and droll remarks like two old codgers sitting on a porch in the evening chewing their 'baccy', and commenting upon the hopelessness of the world, or I should say at the hopelessness of Dagwood and Blondie, who are in a sense a world of their own, after all. Often in these films, Blondie is the sensible one and it is Dagwood who is the idiot. But in this film, both are idiots. After all, Blondie locks herself in the bedroom when they are supposed to be leaving for holiday and sobs and pouts because Dagwood did not express sufficient enthusiasm for her weird new 'holiday hat'. (To their credit, Daisy raised her ears in horror at the hat and Baby Dumpling did a horrified double-take as if he had become disillusioned in humanity at large.) People who do not know what a skunk is will miss part of the plot of this film. A skunk, for those who do not know, is a small furry black and white animal found in the woods who when disturbed emits a stink so horrible that if one gets in the house you have to burn the carpet and furniture to get rid of the smell. Baby Dumpling does not know what a skunk is, so he plays with them and calls them 'pretty kitties', with malodorous consequences for all. There is a guest appearance in the film of a St. Bernard, and a scene where Baby Dumpling is discovered asleep in the baggage car of the train taking them on holiday with Daisy in his arms and his head resting on the St. Bernard as if it were a huge four-poster bed, all three of them sleeping soundly in an idyllic pose. There is a horrid man in the story, played by Donald MacBride, master of the slow burn, who turns out to be a genuine villain, and it is, you guessed it, not Dagwood or Blondie who gets the best of him, but Baby Dumplng, the four year-old Hercule Poirot of this wonderful comedy. Donald Meek is delightful in a guest appearance character role in the film. The series marches on, and fortunately there are 25 more to go, which means thousands more laughs are on the way. I saw the whole series once years ago, and now am enjoying seeing it again even more than I did the first time. It seems to get funnier with time. That is because it is so genuine, and without affectation. The plots may be incredibly complicated, but the humour is as simple as, well, Dagwood. Really, the Blondie series is a truly great classic series in the history of American situation comedy.