Hold That Baby! (1949) Online

The habitually unemployed "Bowery Boys" are losers at the laundromat; so, entrepreneurial Leo Gorcey (as Slip Mahoney) decides to "take in" laundry, using the spare room at father Bernard (as "Louie")'s Sweet Shop". As usual, Mr. Gorcey is amusingly assisted by Huntz Hall (as Sach De Bussy Jones), who fantasizes about "Cynthia", his department store wax dummy girlfriend. William "Billy" Benedict (as Whitey), Benny "Bennie" Bartlett (as Butch), and David Gorcey (as Chuck) are also on hand. During the expected washing machine mishaps, a mysterious woman (Anabel Shaw) leaves a baby at "Mahoney Enterprises"...

"Hold That Baby!" finds the comedy team of Gorcey & Hall in fine form. Hall's scenes with "Cynthia" are a highlight, along with the entire "Midvale Sanitarium" sequence - watch as quick-thinking Gorcey passes Hall off as a nut-house hopeful, and poses as a bumbling doctor. The Charles R. Marion & George Schnitzer screenplay is excellent; and, each Jan Grippo performer is perfectly cast, with the entire production running very smoothly. It's ably directed by Reginald Le Borg, and features particularly outstanding appearances by Ida Moore and Florence Auer (as Faith and Hope Andrews), a delightfully greedy old duo.

******** Hold That Baby! (6/26/49) Reginald Le Borg ~ Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Ida Moore, Florence Auer

Ida Moore and Florence Auer almost steal the movie as two sweet looking but actually grasping greedy elderly sisters trying to rob a baby of his rightful inheritance by having his mother committed to an insane asylum. Fortunately, the mother, played by Anabel Shaw, hides the baby in the laundromat attached to Louis' Sweet Shop and run by the ever enterprising (and usually unemployed) Terrence "Slip" Mahoney. The boys are up to their usual antics with Slip getting the best lines and Sach doing the most humorous routines. According to the grandfather's will, the baby or his Mom must be at the reading of the will for him to inherit. So the elderly sisters and their crooked partners want to keep the baby from the reading and the Mom in the asylum while the Bowery Boys want to get the Mom out of the asylum and make sure the baby inherits. The routine in the asylum where Slip gets Sach committed is a highlight. This one is a good entry into a long running series.

The Bowery Boys get involved with the infant heir to a fortune when said infant is left in the laundromat in the backroom of Bernard Gorcey's Sweet Shop where Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall have begun their latest business enterprise. Gorcey, Hall, and the rest turn out to be unexpected white knights in saving the fortune left to the infant and his mother from a pair of greedy old maid aunts played by Ida Moore and Florence Auer. The two of them are straight out of Arsenic and Old Lace but they do have enough of their marbles to form an alliance with gangsters Frankie Darro and John Kellogg.

Even scene stealers like Leo and Huntz have some competition with the baby in this film. Leo trying to change the diapers is something to see and Huntz Hall does a nice imitation of Ronald Colman talking to a department store 'mannequin'.

Fans of the Bowery Boys will like Hold That Baby and this is a good film for others to get acquainted with their comedy and command of the English language.

"Don't interrupt my strain of thought"

The Bowery Boys open up a laundry service in the rear of Louie Dumbrowski's sweet shop and come across a bundle of joy that's been left there by its mom. Turns out the kid is the heir to a fortune and a group of greedy folks would love to get their hands on him. This is a typical entry in the series with most of the good lines and jokes coming in the first half of the picture. Contains a morbid moment where a doctor tries to convince authorities that the mother's crazy and gives her an unnecessary injection.

Standard Bowery Boys fare.

If you can get past Sach putting an abandoned baby in a laundry room dryer and then the boys literally tossing the poor toddler around like a football, you might find some amusement in this enjoyable entry in the series. The plot has them taking in a baby abandoned by its mother and finding themselves as usual involved in so much more. She's running away from her greedy spinster aunts (the rough and tough Florence Auer and the smirking sweet looking Ida Moore) who want control of their late brother's estate and they need the child (whose father is never revealed) to do that. These evil old biddies (ironically named Faith and Hope) who look like church ladies seem as if they were gun molls in the gay 90's as they still keep a newspaper file on every criminal, including the comically named ones who come to demand a reward for finding the baby. Between the two domineering spinsters and the mobsters, the boys have their work cut out for them.

This is one of the more entertaining entries of the series, filled with unlikely bad guys and a cute premise. These are little old ladies you don't want to help across the street because they might push you into an open manhole or an oncoming vehicle as they pick your pocket. Ida Moore's smile could charm the skin off a snake (and she'd poison it with its own venom) so to see her playing a bad girl while looking so sweet is delicious. Florence Auer seems to have been cast since Minerva Urecal (a recurring presence in the Bowery Boys movies) was unavailable. The happy ending provides with the two scene-stealing octogenarians a very funny exit line.

***SPOILER*** Opening a laundromat-Mahoney Enterprises-in the back of Louie Dumbrowski's sweet shop in the Bowery Slip Sach and the rest of the gang get a strange package of laundry in the person of infant Jonathan Andrews III. Young Jonathan was left at the steps of a washer dryer by his mom Laura Andrews who fled without a saying a word. In if she wanted her laundry starched or bleached!

As it soon turns out Laura kidnapped her baby away from her two greedy aunts Hope & Faith Andrews who want both her and her baby out of the way when their brother and Laura's late husbands, Jonathan Jr, dad Jonathan Andrews the First has his will read. In his will he's to leave all his earthly fortune, that amounts to over 3 million dollars, to his grandson Jonathan III thus leaving the two greedy old bags, Faith & Hope, a dollar that they can split up buying Irish sweep-stake tickets.

With Slip & Sach ending up holding the bag or the baby Jonathan III is later discovered by hoodlum Bananas Stewart who dropped in at Slip's laundromat to pick up his clothes. Having seen in the local newspaper that a $25,000.00 reward is being offered for the missing baby Bananas rushes back to his mob boss Cherry-Nose Mason with the news. Cherry-Nose then decided to kidnap Jonathan III and get the reward money by returning him to his rightful guardians Faith & Hope. As things turned out getting Jonathan off Slip & the boys hands was anything but easy.

With both Faith & Hope getting in on the act they try to get Cherry-Nose Mason and his hoods to get Jonathan III away from Slip & the boys and keep him hidden until after their brother's will is read. The two do have Jonathan's mom Laura tracked down and arrested and put away in a sanitarium by paying off a number of psychiatrists to say that she's insane in order to keep her also from appearing at the reading of their late brother's, Jonathan the First, will. Which stipulates that if either Laura and her son the last or latest of the Jonathan Andrews' are present all the money, the three million, goes to them instead of Faith & Hope.

With time running out until the will is to be read both Slip & Sach infiltrate the sanitarium where Laura is being kept against her will to prevent her and her son from being at the will reading. Both Faith & Hope's luck run out with Slip Sach and the Bowery Boys making it to the lawyer's, who's to read the will, office on time and stymieing Hope & Faith's plan to get their hands on their brother's millions before the calvary, Laura & Jonathan III, arrives.

One of the better Bowery Boys movies with Sach Jones not only, together with Slip & the Bowery Boys, saving the day for Laura and her infant son Jonathan III but narrowly escaping getting lobotomized for it. That's when the two top brain surgeons at the sanitarium, where Laura was locked up in, Doctors Heinrich & Schiller tried to experiment on Sach's skull and see if there was anything indeed, like brain matter, in it!

I always get a kick out of Leo Gorcey's malapropisms, but relative to my summary line above, maybe he really meant it that way. The Bowery Boys always seemed to be running around in circles.

In a rare extended period covering the past few weeks, I find my schedule uniquely positioned to catch these later Bowery Boys flicks as they're offered Saturday mornings on Turner Classics. I found this one to be more entertaining than the last couple I've seen, probably because of some of the nuances offered. Like Slip Mahoney's remark that his laundry washes shirts better than Jack Benny. That had to be a reference to one of Benny's money schemes corresponding to his persona as a tightwad. There's also the early scene when the washing machine goes haywire and starts gushing water all over the place. If you watch Sach (Huntz Hall), he's beside himself just cracking up at how goofy the whole thing is.

I also got a kick out of a Frankie Darro line. As hood Bananas Stewart, he comments on the Boys playing mama to the abandoned baby at the laundromat - "Just a bunch o' little mothers, huh?" For 1949, that might have been pushing the envelope.

At the center of the story is a rather gruesome plot to have Laura Andrews (Anabel Shaw) committed to a sanitarium by her deceased husband's aunts, inappropriately named Faith and Hope (Ida Moore and Florence Auer). A large inheritance will go to the baby Andrews, but only if he's there to collect at the reading of the will. With the little tyke's life in danger, the widow Andrews finds it OK and convenient to drop him off for an adventure with the Bowery Boys.

Slip and Sach get some mileage out of a baby carriage switcheroo with the mother of a black baby, but then resort to black-face to extend the gimmick one more time when it wasn't needed. The rest of the story is played out with the Boys outwitting Cherry Nose Mason (John Kellogg) and his goons, along with a goofy scene at the Midvale Sanitarium where it looks like Slip might have Sach committed. The more I think about it, maybe those two card hustlers were patients too.

With this film I think I finally figured something out. In the early Dead End/East Side/Bowery Boys flicks, Gabriel Dell would often appear as one of the gang. In these later stories, he wound up playing a character who knew the boys but had a respectable position in the neighborhood. Unlike Gorcey and Hall, he obviously outgrew the young street tough persona.

One final thought as it relates to this picture. Don't you find it odd that the conniving duo, Faith and Hope, if referred to by their last names, would have been the Andrews Sisters!

Hold That Baby! (1949)

** (out of 4)

After getting fired from his third job in seven days, Slip (Leo Gorcey) decides to open up a laundry service in the back of Louie's shop. Everything is going just find under a young mother (Anabel Shaw) leaves her baby there because her two evil aunts are trying to have her locked up so that they can steal the babies inheritance. It's up to Slip and the boys to keep the baby away from some gangsters and make sure the mother is at the will reading. This fourteenth entry in the long-running series isn't one of the better ones so it's certainly for die-hard fans only. The biggest problem is that we get some rather dark drama that really doesn't work and many of the jokes either aren't funny or are just off-putting. One of these jokes happens early on when idiot Sach puts the baby in a washing machine. Not too funny. Another scene happens towards the end of the movie when the boys are throwing the baby around a room. Again, not funny. The darker moments in the film are almost too dark for the type of humor that we're going for here. The scene where the aunts try to convince the police that the mother is crazy is pretty dark as Shaw really goes all out, delivering a strong performance. Most people will remember her from the Vincent Price film SHOCK and she's certainly very memorable here. Gorcy and Huntz Hall are their typical selves, although Hall really does get some good moments here including one scene where he's going around in drag and gets the baby mixed up with another. Frankie Darro and Gabriel Dell are here as well but both are in pretty thankless roles. While there are a few decent moments scattered throughout, in the end there's just not enough energy or originality in the screenplay to make this worth sitting through. Even the 64-minute running time seems a bit too long and that's never a good thing.