Simply A Masterpiece

Let's be realistic.

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

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Patsy Kelly and Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams incite both charisma and comedy in director Guy Meins' laffer "Kelly the Second," a riotous farce about a roughneck truck driver who is turned into a prize-winning boxer. This lively, black & white, 1936 comedy starts out with Molly (Patsy Kelly) getting carjacked in the wrong direction when a dim-witted truck driver accidentally rear ends her coupe and inadvertently careens around town with her in tow. When he finally pulls up near a pool hall, Cecil Callahan is surprised and amused that he has dragged this scrappy, irate dame across town. Mind you, Molly gives him 'the dickens' until a well-meaning, innocent bystander intervenes in patronizing fashion and tries to help her out. Immediately, our heroine tells him off, but not before the gentleman slugs Callahan in the snout. All hell breaks loose on the sidewalk. Fists fly as Callahan plunges into a knuckle-busting Brannigan. Knocked backward out of the fight, Molly triggers a photograph and it plays the venerable tune 'The Irish Washerwoman.' This music revitalizes Callahan and his fists into veritable tornados. He flattens virtually everybody in sight, and the ensuing fracas galvanizes the local flatfoots into action. They summon the paddy wagon. Sirens howling as the police rush to the scene of the fight, our heroine and hero hightail it, after Callahan puts Molly's car into the back of his truck. They flee the scene of the donnybrook and take refuge in Dr. J. Willoughby Klum's (classic silent movie comedian Charley Chase of "Public Ghost # 1") drug store where Molly serves food at the counter. The disgruntled police officers show up not long afterward, and they haul Callahan off to court for creating a public disturbance. They haul in Dr. Klum and Molly on a charge of harboring a fugitive. The judge convinces the top cop to drop the charges against Dr. Klum and Molly. Dr. Klum goes to bat for Callahan, and the judge releases the truck driver into Klum's custody to the tune of $1000 dollars. The judge warns Callahan that if he creates another public disturbance that he will land in jail. Klum pledges his drugstore on Callahan's behalf and worries about his future. Outside the courthouse, Molly sees the number one prizefighter, Butch Flynn (Maxie Rosenbloom of "Gangs of New York"), and decides that Callahan can fight, but in the ring for the big bucks. Callahan's first fight doesn't last long because he tried to fight on a full stomach after he made the weight to qualify for the boxing match. Initially, Dr. Klum thought that he had a surefire winner, and another guy, a gangster named Ike Arnold (Edward Brophy of "The Invisible Woman"), listens to Klum's chatter and drops a grand on Callahan to win. Although he doesn't win the fight, Callahan makes a believer out of Ike when he decks the champ and sends him backwards, smashing through a wall, with one punishing pile-driver of a punch.Ike strongarms Klum into a partnership with Callahan, and Molly serves as the trainer. The secret of Callahan's success is his ability to thrash anybody in sight once the "The Irish Washerwoman" tune is played. Molly trains Callahan, and they surge to the top of the fight racket. Of course, it is basically a lowest common denominator comedy, but the timing and the physical action succeed in generating laughs if you're willing to chuckle. Look for Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer in a cameo as a kid with a stomach ache who swallowed two dimes and a nickel. There is another cameo by Harry Myers who co-starred with Charlie Chapin in his immortal comedy "City Lights" (1931) as a millionaire drunken who befriended the Tramp. Of course, "Kelly the Second" contains a cheerful happy ending.

This was my first Patsy Kelly film. I am almost fifty and I've heard her name for years from my parents. But I've never seen her in anything before unless you want to count "Rosemary's Baby" which I didn't even care for.So I watch the film and at first you're not sure what to make of her. But as someone else posted here, yes, she begins to grow on you.As the movie progressed I could not help but keep watching. She made some funny facial expressions that can't hold a candle to Lucille Ball, yet I couldn't help but giggle at them.I like old films from the 1930s. So this helped to keep my interest going. At the times the film/storyline was a bit lame, yet before I knew it I found myself chuckling out loud and I didn't know why. Like when Kelly, Guinn and the Charley Chase's car stopping right in the middle of the train tracks. How many times have we seen this train tracks gag before? Yet they managed to pull it off with Kelly's pant leg getting caught on the gear shifts and the car pulling out just in time, in front of film screen of a train whizzing by! I had a good laugh on that one.This was also my first Big Boy Guinn film and he reminds a lot of Nat Pendleton, a favorite of mine. So I'll be keeping an eye out for more films of his on TCM.I walked away from this film a Patsy Kelly fan and I am now on the hunt to see more of her. I may even rent "Rosemary's Baby" to appreciate her in that role.A friend who saw this with me didn't laugh much except when I laughed. So a film like this might not appeal to all. But I am glad I watched it and hopefully this will get released on DVD sometime in the future.My next goal is to check out Judy Canova and see what the big deal was about her. Stay tuned.

Patsy Kelly and Guinn Williams prove to be a funny and romantic team in their own way Kelly The Second. The title refers not to any order of birth, but the fact that Patsy acts as Big Boy Williams's second in his boxing career.I liked Williams playing a lovable lunkhead of a truckdriver who will goodnaturedly brawl on a given occasion. One such brawl damages pharmacist Charley Chase's establishment so that Chase is owing money big time. It's Kelly who gets the idea to turn Williams's talent for brawling into his becoming a prizefighter.Of course gamblers Harold Huber and Edward Brophy get involved as well as blond golddigger Pert Kelton. The heavyweight championship fight with Williams against Maxie Rosenbloom is something hilarious and pure Hal Roach.The gimmick at the end is that Williams goes into the ring thoroughly soused to the gills. But another thing that audiences today can't appreciate is Maxie Rosenbloom who two years earlier lost the world light heavyweight title after a five year reign. Rosenbloom's nickname as a fighter was 'Slapsie Maxie' because of his tendency to almost paw at his opponent. He was a tough man in the ring, but he rarely knocked out any opponent because of that. Fight fans in 1936 would know that and realize that Williams in his condition might fare better against a Rosenbloom than say Joe Louis. The final scene of course is Williams becoming the heavyweight champion, but the fight itself with a drunk Big Boy in the ring with Slapsie Maxie is hysterical. And of course the help he gets from Patsy and in fact the whole audience really make Big Boy, the People's Champion.

Because he is associated with Laurel & Hardy, Harold Lloyd, and Charlie Chase, and later the Little Rascals, Hal Roach's work with Patsy Kelly (with or without Thelma Todd or Lyda Roberti or Zazu Pitts) is somehow ignored. Roach was pretty good at sizing up his comic talent and balancing it - and his Kelly / Todd films were supposed to be the match of his Laurel & Hardy pairings (in fact in one film they actually turn out to be the girls' boyfriends, but only as a final joke). Strangely it never seemed to occur to him to put Stan and Babe with Patsy and Thelma in a single short or feature from beginning to end. The girls were individually in features with the boys but only as support (Thelma in FRA DIAVALO; Patsy in PICK A STAR). It was like Roach saw a similarity in teams, but never thought of constructing a quartet film (which might have worked - Thelma with Babe and Patsy with Stan). (In the late 1930s, when Roach was having contract problems with Stan Laurel, he announced a series with Babe, Patsy, and Spanky McFarlane called "The Hardys" which sounds promising. Only a still of Babe Hardy holding Spanky - each trying to stare down the other - with Patsy watching them survives).Kelly had always been great assisting on the humor of the films she was in. Some have been critical of her "shouting" all her lines, but her personality is supposed to be hyper, and I really can't understand the nature of the criticism. She still emphasize the jokes in her lines.In KELLY THE SECOND she is working as the breakfast-lunch-dinner counter girl in a drugstore owned by Charlie Chase. One day she is trying to get to her job in time, and her car is backed into by a truck driven by "Big Boy" Williams. Here (instead of his usual side-kick role for Errol Flynn) Big Boy is a good natured lug ever ready for a fight. In particular he fights well when he hears the old tune "The Irish Washer Woman". They are arguing about the car-truck problem when assorted passers-by get involved. Inevitably a donnybrook occurs. Before the police (who fully know Big Boy by reputation) arrive, he drives off with Patsy's car in his truck, and drops her off at her job. But the police come, and arrest him, Patsy, and Chase (the latter two lied about him being on their premises.In court Big Boy is sentenced for creating a disturbance, but the judge is lenient to both Patsy and Chase. Unfortunately for Chase, he tries to get Big Boy out of jail - he succeeds only by putting up a $1,000.00 bond using his store for collateral. The judge he'll lose the bond if Big Boy fights again. But Patsy gets the idea that Big Boy can fight legally in the ring, and she and Chase act as his trainer and manager.In the initial fight, Chase has the misfortune of sitting near Ed Brophy, a local crime kingpin, and his mistress (Pert Kelton) and his henchmen, led by Harold Huber. Brophy and Huber were in several films together (THE THIN MAN is the best recalled) but they have a comic pitch and catch between them that should also have been built on (it was once - in NAUGHTY MARRIETTA - but only as support for Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald). Brophy is clever, but easily flustered and Huber normally calms him down. Here, due to Chase building up Big Boy's abilities, Brophy puts down over #1,000.00 on him as a bet. But Big Boy loses the match, and Brophy wants blood. However, he sees proof that Big Boy can punch his opponents effectively. Confronting Chase (trying to calm his nerves with some patent medicine in the drug store), he offers a choice: make Brophy his partner (he means in Big Boy, not in the drug store!), or be taken care of by Huber. Chase sees no alternative.That is the basis of the film. The actors go to town, with Brophy's hood showing tremendous stupidity mixed with cleverness (look at the sequence about Brophy giving a smart Kelton an "ermine mink"). Huber notes his boss is not always bright, and somewhat dryly (and effectively) he manages to tweak Brophy about how gullible he can become. Kelton is attracted to Big Boy, but really goes after him when Brophy seems to treat her less respectfully than she feels is her due. Chase is constantly trying to balance between his bouts of indignation and anger and his confusion and nervousness (I like him facing total destruction in a boxer's preparation room while wearing a paper hat and making paper dolls). Big Boy's fat headedness is matched by his friendly banter (sometimes close to coming to blows) with Patsy, who returns it as they slowly realize they really like each other a lot. Patsy does well in several scenes, one dealing with a crowded little car where the breaks are in a pair of difficult places for her to reach, and another where she finds she can't make friends with any animals on a farm Brophy has them training on.It's an amusing film, and one wishes Roach might have tried a sequel or two.