Blondie, No. 4 - Blondie Brings Up Baby (1939)

Okay...Next!

Blondie Brings Up Baby was the last Blondie movie – of 1939. You didn’t think I meant forever? By no means! A full two dozen more films would still follow this one. As there’s no point justifying why each episode of a television series gets made, there’s no point examining the reason for each Blondie movie’s existence. So, as per usual, in what ways is this one unique?

At this point, I am completely ignoring the opening previews and titles. For what it’s worth, the preview this time is an outrageous jumble that makes absolutely no sense at all.

The traditional opening gags involving the paperboy and the mailman combine into one this time. That is, the nameless mailman is present to witness the ceremonial newspaper transaction between the paperboy and the Bumsteads’ dog Daisy, and gets the bright idea to do the same with the mail. Like all dogs in cartoon-based media, Daisy is untrusting of the mailman, and refuses to aid in this wicked scheme. Instead the mailman opts to do something he’s surprisingly never considered before (…eh, maybe in the Sunday strips): he will use the back door, and thus avoid a trampling by Dagwood as he races off to work. (Who delivers the mail this early in the morning?)

Inside the house, Dagwood’s morning antics reveal him to be stupider than ever, putting two socks on one foot and generally unable to clothe himself. His character is slowly de-evolving into a cartoon much in the same way Homer Simpson did, only replace Homer’s appetitive traits with Dagwood’s far less endearing whiny, narcissistic spinelessness. And because it is early in a Blondie movie, neighbor kid Alvin joins the family for breakfast. Alvin’s character has changed over the series too, as has everyone’s, so he is definitively no longer here to serve as the butt of Dumpling’s physical tortures – Baby Dumpling has evolved beyond pointless violence. No, now Alvin is a precocious egghead, and he rightfully badmouths the entire Bumstead family to their faces for their collective idiocy. Of course criticisms of stupidity wash off of Dagwood’s back like...uh, an appropriate simile. Rather than humor Alvin, Dagwood engages in a lengthy comic bit with the daily newspaper, and the movie fails to make the obvious funny page in-joke a modern viewer would expect.

Following about 10 minutes of this, the mailman is still creeping around the alleyways on his way to the Bumstead homestead. Since fate realizes he is in the backyard, the front door will not open. As a result, Dagwood races through the back door, predictably trampling the mailman, that plaything of the universe.

And here is the point where series dogma dictates we follow Dagwood to his office, working for J.C. Dithers. Dithers buzzes Dagwood to meet with him, but since Dagwood is functionally retarded, he intentionally antagonizes Dithers before finally meeting. It turns out that Dagwood’s position at Dither’s construction company is to help design buildings, as he has a massive, hideous apartment building model set up in Dither’s office. Jeez, if Dagwood can do this job, then I’ve wasted my past few years of (architectural) grad school for nothing! Naturally, Dagwood has added countless ridiculous features to the proposed apartment, raising its costs outrageously. This is all due to an over-complicated real estate deal Dagwood has made with a private middleman (Robert Middlemass), something that cannot be adequately recapped here.

Back at home, Blondie tries to repair the busted front door, ignorantly rejecting Alvin’s intelligent solutions in favor of pure, brute strength. Even though Alvin soon shows her up by fixing the door easily, it is at this point that the movie takes a sudden, unwelcome slide into pronounced anti-intellectualism. Dagwood, Blondie and Dumpling are all presented as proudly moronic, and we, the lowly theater goers of the thirties, are meant to sympathize with their willful ignorance. Alvin the egghead is held up for our boos and hisses.

This comes to a fore when the very instant the door opens a random salesman barges into the house, presumably to seduce this young boy. When Blondie arrives, this unnamed peddler explains he is a traveling intelligence tester (?!). Soon Baby Dumpling is pitted against Alvin in a battle of wits, provoking conflicted emotions from mother Blondie – who has also become notably stupider throughout this series. Game over (and Alvin thankfully gone), the salesman announces out of the blue that Dumpling has an IQ of 168 – Blondie thinks this means he’s going to die soon! But the salesman has the one and only cure – books. Boo! Hiss!

When Dagwood learns at work that Dumpling has an IQ of 168, he too laments his son’s imminent death (what idiocy!), and races home to somehow rescue him. And Dagwood’s first action upon getting home? To viciously tear all of Dumpling’s new books to shreds. None of that there fancy book-learnin’ for his son! Blondie beside him, Dagwood’s next proposal – and I am dead serious here – is to burn the books. Egads! Careful with these icky notions here, people, it is 1939. Still afraid for their son, the Bumsteads consider a truly rash solution, something they’d never thought they’d do – send Dumpling to school. No! Dumpling himself if verbally opposed to such pretentiousness, but nonetheless his parents proceed to carry him off – filmed like a prisoner walking to the chair. Daisy the dog is herself aghast that Dumpling is to be educated, and physically shivers at the notion. Yeesh, this section seriously offends me, far more than anything in the Ilsa movies. Excessive boobs and buckets of blood is one thing, but espousing stupidity as an ideal is truly beyond the pale!

Stepping foot onto hallowed school grounds – my mind goes back to Damien entering chapel in The Omen – the Bumsteads meet with the principal. Cementing just how much of an unreconstructed man-child Dagwood is, the principal thinks he is the child to be enrolled. Blondie reveals Dumpling and explains the error, further crowing about what a good job she’s done educating the child – teaching him the whole alphabet, “from A to B”...Wow! So Dumpling is taken away...to class!

Dumpling returns from his first day of school in a tremendous funk, scratching his brow vainly as he tries to grabble with his newfound knowledge. Dumpling is also sporting a nice shiner on his eye – the result of an off screen physical assault, as much as I’d love to see that sort of thing. Bonding with Dagwood, Dumpling reveals his fellow students have beaten him up because of his name: Baby Dumpling. I mean, my God man, he introduces himself to his contemporaries as “Baby” and expects nothing to come of it?! Maybe “Dumpling” should have gone by his actual birth name, Dagwood Jr. Hmm, on second thought...How young can an emancipated minor be?

Dagwood returns to the office and celebrates his child’s imminent learnin’ by passing out expired cigars. Then Dithers calls Dagwood to his office, where he reveals that for ridiculously complicated reasons their investor Mr. Cartwright has pulled out of Dagwood’s unlivable apartment proposal. Thus Dithers fires Dagwood. This is the third time in four movies that Dagwood has lost his job – How often can they successfully go to this particular well?

Meanwhile, Blondie has allowed Dumpling to wander off to school unescorted – in today’s society, every one of the Bumsteads would be jailed for negligence. In fact, the only member of Dumpling’s family with enough concern for the child is the dog. Yes, Daisy has followed Dumpling to school, and watches him through the playground fence. At this point the town dogcatchers arrive to see Daisy waiting outside the school gates like a man with so much candy. They quickly give a lengthy Looney Tunes-esque chase, which is the best part of this movie – because, as usual, the dog is the best actor, and because it has nothing to do with anything else. Despite Daisy’s clever rouses, they eventually capture her and haul her dog butt to the pound.

You know, this plot line is almost completely random. Events vaguely follow from each other with little rhyme or reason, much like a proto “Simpsons” episode, except not funny – okay, so like a recent “Simpsons” episode, then. So series plotting has gone from overly-complicated to sitcom generic to simply random. We’re well over halfway through this thing now, and the central plot concern hasn’t even occurred yet. And all that anti-intelligence stuff has been completely dropped, thank all the Jesuses!

Dagwood returns home, opting not to tell Blondie he has been fired. (“Is it Thursday already?”) Rather, he decides to nearly crush her to death with his architectural model through sheer negligence. Then Dumpling saunters in, funkier than ever, loudly lamenting Daisy’s disappearance. And now, with the missing dog plot in place, we can forget everything about Dumpling’s schooling too – it seems most of the lengthy plot contortions so far were just an excuse to get Daisy dognapped. That’s some rather inefficient storytelling right there. And so the Bumsteads enact a short and fruitless hunt for the hound, and then retire to bed. Dumpling prays to his God for Daisy’s safe return, in a mawkish moment meant to distract us from the character’s innate selfishness.

In a nice little series meta-joke, the paperboy arrives in the morning, unable to deliver the paper since Daisy is not there. The mailman has dressed himself up as a paperboy to fool Daisy, except with Dagwood now unemployed, there is no trampling for him to avoid.

Meanwhile, in an incredibly random scene, a nurse obtains Daisy from the pound as a gift for a little girl named Melinda (Peggy Ann Garner). With 15 minutes left in the film, it’s way too late to start introducing new characters (and this is the important plot thread).

Elsewhere in the streets, Dagwood tracks down Mr. Cartwright and beats him violently. This provokes an actual sane response from the local police, who arrest Dagwood.

Oh, and Dumpling, despite his near-suicidal depression over Daisy’s absence, has once again been allowed to toddle off alone to school. Soon enough the school contacts Blondie – Baby Dumpling is missing...again. (They’re batting four for four on this particular twist, and I fully expect to see it many times more.) And despite all these recent developments, it’s at this point that the plot really seems to meander. The first duty is to pay Dagwood’s prison bail, provided by Mr. Dithers, who seems to have come down with a sort of Stockholm Syndrome for his on-again, off-again employee.

Little Dumpling happens to come upon Daisy in his aimless wanderings through the wealthy neighborhoods of this unidentified town. Indeed, Daisy is behind the gates of a wealthy palatial estate – soon Daisy has viciously cornered Dumpling, having been trained by Mr. Burns to be an attack dog. Wait, I’m thinking of “The Simpsons” again. Actually, Daisy is on the mansion grounds playing with Melinda, who happens to be wheelchair bound – Oh come on! This is such a cheap emotional ploy, a shorthand way of seeking unearned audience sympathy, and I’m almost as offended as I was by the intelligence stuff.

Dumpling, selfish ass that he is, promptly barges onto the grounds to scream as poor Melinda for stealing his dog. One minute’s worth of pure exposition later, and the mansion’s staff has agreed to let Dumpling has his beloved Daisy again. There is one catch. Dumpling has to play with Melinda for a short while. The staff then leaves the crippled girl in the responsible care of this 4-year-old they’ve just met, as they all head into the mansion. Sensing a cheap plot opportunity when he sees one, Dumpling then promptly wheels the helpless Melinda off into the streets. These movies are just mind boggling, and if all of America actually acted like this in the thirties, it’s no wonder we’ve had to put up with such oddball PSAs since then.

So which characters shall we follow now? Dumpling? Dagwood? Blondie? Dithers? How about the mansion staff? Okay, it’s the mansion staff. They meet with Melinda’s father, Mr. Mason (Roy Gordon), who berates them savagely for the effrontery of – buying a dog. For you see, Melinda has been wheelchair bound for two years due to...a sickness. Never mind what kind. And Mr. Mason is opposed to letting her have any fun now, be it doggies or other children, for that somehow distracts her from the cure. The obvious character arc they’re setting up for Mason would be far more effective it they’d brought it up at some point before the final tenth of the movie!

Okay, soon enough all the adults are desperately searching for their children, and I am actively watching the running time count down on the DVD player. In an event too bizarre to recount, somehow Dagwood finds himself caught up in a brief shootout with the police. Sadly, the cops use non-lethal force.

Then, for various reasons, all the characters have converged in the Bumsteads’ backyard, where they predictably find Dumpling, Melinda and, most importantly, Daisy. Mr. Mason is there, where he learns that suddenly, for no apparent reason, his daughter Melinda can walk...Oh come on! The soundtrack actually starts quoting “Oh Come All Ye Faithful,” and if the only heartwarming movies you’ve seen from the studio era are Frank Capra’s, then this is the knock-off Asylum equivalent. That is, it’s cloying and unsuccessful. The nurse announces that Melinda was cured purely by “playing with other children.” [Sound of my head repeatedly hitting the drywall.] She then delivers a blatantly scripted “Message” speech, because seemingly this plotless, fascist movie has a point. And so, idiocy following upon idiocy in an incredible domino effect, Mr. Mason proclaims to the heavens that he shall use his incredible wealth to create a place where children can play, because apparently these things don’t exist yet. Naturally, Dagwood can reinsert himself into this vomitous story by presenting Mason with his hideous apartment model. Yeah, yeah, Mason will build it, and Dithers will hire Dagwood back. And Blondie never even knew Dagwood got fired in the first place. Where’s my tequila?

As a final punch line, Alvin throws a gas bomb at Dagwood in the living room...Yeah.

Ouch! That was bad. It’s as though the people making these movies knew they could just do whatever they wanted, devise unconnected scenes sans plot, and the series would continue undisturbed. Just throw in a little “heartwarming” stuff that surely must have worked on some of the weaker-minded viewers of the thirties (the same viewers likely to agree with the sickening anti-intellectualism), and you’ve got yourself an audience. This thing, somehow even more than its predecessors, is unmistakably stuck in its era. I’d like to think audiences today are too intelligent and sophisticated to fall for such calculated, plotless tripe, except...you know...Crash.


Related posts:
• No. 1 Blondie (1938)
• No. 2 Blondie Meets the Boss (1939)
• No. 3 Blondie Takes a Vacation (1939)
• No. 5 Blondie on a Budget (1940)
• No. 6 Blondie Has Servant Trouble (1940)
• No. 7 Blondie Plays Cupid (1940)
• No. 8 Blondie Goes Latin (1941)
• No. 9 Blondie in Society (1941)
• No. 10 Blondie Goes to College (1942)