So You Want to Be a Detective (1948) Online

Of the Joe McDoakes shorts I've seen this is far and above the best. It is cleverly written, pleasantly acted by George O'Hanlon, and above all wonderfully directed by Richard L. Bare. It's a takeoff of the Philip Marlowe-type detective thrillers so popular at the time, and unlike most spoofs it does not go too far over the top, and the result is like a mini-movie, surprisingly evocative of the very sort of film Bogart was making at the same studio at the same time. A delight. Love that tall man!

This wonderful spoof of "The Lady in the Lake", complete with first-person camera and surprise killer must surely rate as one of the most imaginative short subjects Hollywood ever produced. Not only are the players in rollicking form, but Bare's direction, cleverly aping Robert Montgomery's seeing-eye style and even some of his fist-in-the-lens effects, comes across as remarkably smooth and adept.

Narrator Art Gilmore certainly relishes his finest role in the series (for this outing, he's supplied with even funnier lines than either Young or O'Hanlon), and I just loved that sultry blonde suspect, so seductively played by Warners' top siren, Lila Leeds.

One of the better of the Joe McDoakes shorts has our everyman hero spoofing the private eye genre in So You Want To Be A Detective. The gags are good if not original.

I say not original because Paramount had done this whole thing a year earlier in a feature length film with Bob Hope entitled My Favorite Brunette. It even had one of film's legendary tough guy detectives in Alan Ladd doing a little self deprecation of his own tough guy character.

Still for the eleven minute running time, a lot of good gags are packed in by George O'Hanlon and the cast. So Bogart, Ladd, Duff, Powell, and Montgomery and all the other actors who have played Philip Marlowe, McDoakes is on the case.

On the Matinée at the Bijou site, there was an article about a series of short films that featured a character named Joe McDoakes. George O'Hanlon-later known as the voice of George Jetson on Hanna-Barbera's "The Jetsons"-played this character. In this version, he becomes private eye Philip Snarlow as he and narrator Art Gilmore search for a killer. Many of the visual and verbal gags got some chuckles if not big guffaws from me. Maybe I was a little distracted by the feminine charms (not to mention the shapely figure) of Veronica Vacuum, played here by exquisitely sexy Lila Leeds. It's a wonder the Production Code let her on the screen! Anyway, while no great shakes, So You Want to Be a Detective is worth a look.

Well now, where do we begin? How about with the Giant 8 Ball and Joe McDoakes coming out from behind it. Wait, they all started that way. Every one of these shorts were very much the same. Yet they had a great longevity in the very same era when Short Subject departments of all the studios were either severely cutting back or just plain shutting down.

I can well remember seeing some of these as a young child. In this case, it was at either the old Ogden and or the Hi-Way movie theatres here on the Southside of Chicago (you know, "the baddest part of town!").Being that we're speaking of a half a century or more since that time, it begs the question, why are these so memorable? The answer lies in their sameness, they took the one character, Joe McDoakes, and placed him in situations that were either testing new careers (like this film) or going through some drastic life changes (like quitting smoking or losing weight).

This entry into the series opens typically with a rather high volume Theme Music and quick, fast moving credits, shown over the image of Joe(George O'Hanlon) popping up from behind 8 Ball and conveying total exasperation. There is no wasted time. The series narrator (Art Gilmore) starts the story rolling with plenty of banter about the particular episode. In this one, Mr. Gilmore, is used more in the story via the 'subjective camera lens'. This method has the camera delivering to the screen what would be seen by the character.* Other than that,the film is pretty much the same format as the others.

We look in on McDoakes, now using the obvious spoof name of 'Phillip Shmarlowe'. There is a typical Private I's office**, getting sent out to investigate. He meets up with Beautiful Ladies, Suspicous and creepy Butler, Gangster Types, etc.

We must mention that there are some very inventive gags also. One of our favourite stunts involves a closet door and not one, but several corpse (about 7) falling out of it. This one compels you laugh out loud, by its length and persistence! It just won't quit!

In the end, Joe is awakened from his sleep by the real private dick, and is shown to have been dreaming. After a final gag of a character who was in the dream, fade out back to Joe and the 8 Ball with the high volume theme again.

A lot of the incidents in all of the series entries were very similar. The Titles all began with, "So, You Want To.....!" They always had this McDoakes at the center of it, often with the wife (Phyllis Coates) involved, if only to say"I told you so!" In the end, what the series, Created by Director, Richard L. Bare and co-written by Bare & O'Hanlon,did was to be liked and enjoyed by the movie going public. Like other screen comedies (like those of Laurel & Hardy) may not have been popular with no one but the public.

Being only one reel in length, they all had a fast paced, rapid fire use of sight gags and verbal puns. As such, they were a veritable 'living cartoon'. Its characters being too exaggerated to be real.

It appears that Richard Bare, George O'Hanlon and company seemed to enjoy making these. Their length and characters were very much like those of the early screen comedies of people like Mack Sennett, Hal Roach and the rest of those pioneers of the silent days.

It's a small wonder that these shorts were so well received. And don't you forget, they made 63 of them!

* The Subjective Lense had been used in the Robert Montgomery vehicle THE LADY IN THE LAKE (1947) and the DuMont TV Network's Series, THE PLAINCLOTHESMAN (1949-1954).

** The Office here looked an awful lot like Boge/Sam Spade's office in THE MALTESE FALCON (Warner Bros.,1941) Maybe it is same set on same studio lot.

This film short was shown on the TCM network, right before a showing of the ultimate detective movie, 'The Maltese Falcon' with Bogart. This short is a spoof of the genre. The private eye talks directly to the camera, to an unseen character he calls 'Gilmore.' The visuals are great in this short. At the start, Snarlowe opens a file drawer, and the body of a woman is in there. Later, when he is investigating a murder, and asks if there are any secret passages, he opens a door and 6 or 7 bodies, one by one, fall forward. He encounters a room filled with kegs of gun powder, and as he exits down below we see he just came from the "powder room." Then we finally see Gilmore, just his hand with a gun. He shoots Snarlowe, who calls the police, "Please cancel my two tickets for the policeman's ball." The short ends with McDoakes the janitor waking up on Snarlowe's desk, it was all a dream. The "real" Snarlowe looks from behind like Bogart in private eye garb.

So You Want to Be a Detective (1948)

*** (out of 4)

Spoof of countless detective films has Joe McDoakes (George O'Hanlon) working as a P.I. under the fake name of Phillip Snarlow. Soon he gets a case working for a beautiful woman whose father has been murdered. If you're a fan of film noir or just detective films in general then you should find plenty to enjoy here including the lead performance as well as others who just happen to pop up. The film does a very good job at laughing at the genre it's spoofing and that includes a very good shock ending where the killer is revealed in a way that comes off very clever and funny. Lila Leeds would have a very short career in Hollywood but her brief scene as the femme fatale Veronica Vacuum is priceless.

I am NOT a big fan of the Joe McDoakes shorts. Most of them are pretty limp but occasionally they made one that seems to hold up very well today...and "So You Want to Be a Detective" is one of them.

When the film begins, Joe is Phillip Snarlowe--a hardboiled detective. A cameraman goes along with him to watch him at work and often Snarlowe is a total washout. What's also funny is that the cameraman himself gets punched in the face for his trouble.

This film is in many ways reminiscent to Bob Hope's film "My Favorite Brunette"...though a heck of a lot shorter. While I'd never consider it top-notch entertainment, it is funny and kept my interest--mostly because it was a nice change of pace for McDoakes.

. . . since SO YOU WANT TO BE A DETECTIVE preceded the 1978 Peter Falk vehicle by three decades. No doubt this genre was being parodied by the 1910s, though many of the flicks from that decade went missing in action. The best thing about SO YOU WANT TO BE A DETECTIVE is the name of the blonde ingénue, "Veronica Vacuum." The second best thing is the girl in "Phillip Snarlowe's" top file cabinet drawer. Third best is the gun smoke coming out of the phone receiver when Veronica's Uncle Vernon is shot mid-call. Other "gags" fall flat, such as Snarlowe's line, "The butler must have done it." Of course, "Snarlowe" turns out to be Joe McDoakes, a Walter Mitty-like day-dreamer who was featured in a series of such 11-minute shorts as this one. Played by George O'Hanlan, McDoakes' obligatory sidekick--Art Gilmore--doubles as the series narrator, under his own name. Gilmore is seldom seen; he's sort of like Google Glass, in that when "McDoakes" orders him to pull down his hat, the hat brim descends over the camera lens, briefly blocking the upper two-thirds of the film frame. What will they think of next?