For the Love of Joe
As with so many subjects related to film history, I am thoroughly indebted to film critic extraordinare Leonard Maltin.
Like (probably) most modern-day moviegoers, I had not known of the Joe McDoakes comedy series, only of two major connections to it. Star (and frequent story contributor) George O'Hanlon is best known to a generation of baby-boomers as the voice of George Jetson, in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon-cum-sitcom "The Jetsons." And I knew of writer-director Richard L. Bare, mainly because I read his directing credit so many times on one of my favorite TV series, "Green Acres."
(Because of the series' inside-jokey nature, Bare's credit often appeared in places that the actual characters saw, such as a chicken egg, prompting Lisa Douglas [Eva Gabor] to ask who Richard Bare was.)
But a couple of years ago on his blog, Leonard Maltin posted a rave review of the McDoakes series, which had just been released on DVD by Warner Archive. Then, a year or so after that, I saw the one and only McDoakes short that seems to get away with being posted on YouTube: So You Want to Be a Detective (1948), the series' hysterical take-off on private-eye characters such as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. Then I bought the DVDs myself, and I was hooked.
And so comes this site, whose main purpose is to get the word out about these short subjects to people who haven't been lucky enough to enjoy them in any form. (I don't subscribe to Turner Classic Movies, but I understand TCM broadcasts them intermittently.)
I'm not a McDoakes expert by any stretch of the imagination. So on this site's "Links" page, I've listed several sources that provide the complete story of the series, in a far better way than I could tell it.
I can't resist posting a few of my own observations, though...
Observations
* If you have the DVD set, I recommend watching them in chronological order. It's interesting to see how the series started off in an almost mock-informational tone (a la the Pete Smith series of the day), only to settle into screwball comedy once O'Hanlon was allowed to start talking in these shorts.
* Interesting Trivia: George O'Hanlon was the ex-boyfriend of Phyllis Coates, who was (at the time) married to writer-director Richard Bare and was the second of three actresses to play Alice McDoakes (see below). The series' theme song is "I Know That You Know," a song dating back to at least 1927; here is a link to a vocal version of the song by Nat "King" Cole.
* At various times, three actresses played Joe's wife Alice: Jane Harker (in the first eight shorts), Phyllis Coates (for the longest time period of the three), and Jane Frazee. My favorite is Coates, who seems to know just how to nag Joe without coming off as too shrewish. Harker was too plain in every respect, and Frazee hardly seemed to enjoy herself at all.
* The Laurel & Hardy Connection: It might be just a coincidence, but I can't help wondering if Bare was a L&H fanatic and cast their co-stars whenever he could. The most notable such actor is frequent L&H nemesis Charlie Hall, who made his final movie appearance in the penultimate McDoakes short, So You Want to Play the Piano. But there are plenty of others as well. Iris Adrian, who played a goodtime gal in L&H's feature Our Relations, turns up in a similar context in a couple of the shorts. Fred Kelsey, the assertive detective in the 1930 short The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case (and played similar roles in many other movies), is an unsung supporting actor in many McDoakes entries. And actors who supported L&H in their later, much-maligned features for Twentieth Century-Fox -- Ralph Sanford, Edward Gargan, Douglas Fowley, and Philip Van Zandt -- are all over the place in this series.
* There are a lot of other great character actors to look for, too. Arthur Q. Bryan is often recognizable, if not by his face, then definitely by his pipes; he voiced Elmer Fudd in the classic Looney Tunes cartoons (which, like the McDoakes series, were released by Warner Bros. and seem to share the same spirit). Many others that you should get to know if you don't already include Frank Nelson (fakily enthusiastic -- he was famous for uttering, "Yessssssss?" on the old Jack Benny series), Fritz Feld (always an excitable foreign type), and Fred Clark (bald and condescending).
* Another interesting connection to the Looney Tunes cartoons is William Lava, who is credited for scoring all of the shorts. Lava's work is familiar to Looney Tunes aficionados mostly for his mediocre musical contributions to the later-entry cartoons (from about 1960 to 1963). So it's really surprising to hear how lively his work is in these shorts. His musical commentaries on the unfolding plots often contribute to the comedy.
* It's said that George O'Hanlon did a lot of uncredited scripting of the shorts. Later on in the series, he frequently receives a story credit. That credit seems to mark a turning point in the series; once O'Hanlon started contributing the stories, the series got a lot broader than it already even was.
* For what it's worth, I have rated each short subject on a scale of one to four...8-balls, that look like this:
I don't expect my ratings to have any value beyond this website. However, if you want to begin by watching the best McDoakes shorts first, this at least gives you a starting point.
* Finally, it must be said that not every one of the McDoakes shorts is a gem. Some of them take either the broadest or oldest story lines possible and weave them into gold; others take a promising bit of plot and run it into the ground. But when the series is working on all cylinders, there's nothing funnier to be had in American short subjects. As critic Manny Farber once said of Looney Tunes, the best McDoakes shorts are masterpieces, and even the bad ones aren't a total loss.
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