BOOTLEG FILES 940: “Pardon My Terror” (1946 short comedy starring Gus Schilling and Richard Lane).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It fell through the cracks.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Maybe if someone does a DVD anthology of Schilling and Lane comedies.
Unless you are a truly dedicated scholar of the comedy films of the Golden Age of Hollywood, there is an excellent chance that you never heard of the team of Gus Schilling and Richard Lane. From 1945 to 1950, this pair of character actors were teamed for 11 short comedies produced at Columbia Pictures.
Neither actor achieved A-list stardom prior to their teaming, but that’s not to say they weren’t familiar to audiences. Schilling was a rubbery faced burlesque comic who was befriended by Orson Welles and turned up in his Hollywood-based features, most notably as the slimy headwaiter in “Citizen Kane” and the malcontent porter in “Macbeth.” He was mostly seen in small parts where he could steal a scene with his nervous behavior, particularly as the harried conductor in “Hellzapoppin’.”
Lane specialized in tough guy roles, and audiences knew him best as Inspector Faraday in the “Boston Blackie” series of B-movies. In his Columbia comedy shorts, Lane played a Bud Abbott-style partner to Schilling’s Lou Costello-type bumbler. However, perhaps the most famous of the Schilling and Lane comedies had them as last-minute replacements for another comedy team that was headlining in Columbia shorts.
The film “Pardon My Terror” was planned as a Three Stooges short, with production scheduled to begin after the slapstick trio completed work on “Half-Wits Holiday.” As every Stooges fan knows, Curly Howard suffered a debilitating stroke during the production of “Half-Wits Holiday” that ended his career. Rather than scrap “Pardon My Terror,” writer/director Edward Bernds quickly rewrote the script, giving Lane the Moe character while combining the Larry and Curly characters for Schilling. This set-up deviated from the formula that existed for Schilling and Lane, but no one complained and the film was rushed through production.
“Pardon My Terror” feels like a Stooges film, with a cast consisting of Stooges regulars – Christine McIntyre, Vernon Dent, Emil Sitka, Kenneth McDonald, Dick Wessel, and Dudley Dickerson turn up. There are also some gags that were used in previous Stooges films, such as the funnymen having eyeballs painted on their eyelids that give the impression of being awake while they sleep. However, the concept of the film can be traced back to the 1940 Columbia short “You’re Next!” with the none-too-successful teaming of Walter Catlett and Monty Collins.
The plot is pure two-reeler nonsense. Schilling and Lane are incompetent private detectives hired to investigate the disappearance of a wealthy man from his mansion. There is a gang of crooks – two thugs and a lethal femme fatale – who are eager to rub out the detectives, and the creepy estate enables the funnymen to run around being scared over every sound they hear.
Film scholars who are acquainted with Schilling and Lane’s work are unanimous in declaring that “Pardon My Terror” was not a good fit for the duo. Lane was not able to channel Moe Howard’s feral comedy presence – his slapping Schilling over dimwitted remarks isn’t funny. And having Schilling doing extreme Larry Fine and Curly Howard antics didn’t fit his established on-screen persona.
Still, there are some fun moments, particularly in the film’s opening when the duo fails to mollify an irate landlord demanding their rent. Emil Sitka is the landlord and he is hilarious when the is baffled by his tenants’ attempt to offer their revolvers as “collatrel.” Later, there is a laugh-out-loud moment when Schilling tries to follow a knocking sound he hears from a wall – he walks slowly down an eerie corridor, returning the knocking with his own knocks, unaware that Lane is the one responding to his knocks in an intersecting corridor.
Bernds would dust off and update this material once more in 1949 with a reconfigured Three Stooges starring in “Who Done It?” – Shemp Howard replaced his brother Curly in the team and the revised film was one of the trio’s best.
Columbia Pictures reissued “Pardon My Terror” theatrically in 1963, which must have confused audiences who probably did not recall Schilling (who passed away eight years earlier) and Lane. To date, none of the Schilling and Lane shorts have been presented in any commercial home entertainment anthology, although less-than-pristine bootleg copies have been uploaded online. If you’re curious, here is “Pardon My Terror”:
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
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