Over the Counter

On one of the movies I DVRed recently, TCM had a fair amount of time left in the time slot, so they ran the two-reeler Over the Counter. As far as I can tell, it's available as one of the shorts on the first volume of Classic Shorts from the Dream Factory.

This one has a silly premise that's just an excues for a bunch of musical numbers. Mr. Drake (Sidney Toler) is a department store owner who is told by his assistant (Franklin Pangborn) that Drake's son (Emerson Treacy) has come up with an idea to boost business. He's going to replace the regular shop assistants with chorus girls in skimpy outfits, the idea being that wives can drop off their husbands at the "check your husband" station the way people would check their hats or coats at a nightclub. This will allow the wives to spend more, while the husbands are thrilled by those pretty ladies! Apparently wives overspending has been a thing for going on 90 years now.

Another idea has the store setting up "sporting" events of women trying to buy sale items, which I suppose is a precursor of the current free-for-all on Black Friday and even Thanksgiving night now that stores are getting a head start on the Christmas season. Cue some more musical numbers. Eventually Dad, perving on all those lovely ladies, decides that his son's idea has quite some merit, surprise surprise.

The songs are forgettable, but there are some interesting things about Over the Counter. One is the presence of Toler and Pangborn. The other one is that the short was done in two-strip Technicolor. I suppose it was cheaper to experiment with color on the shorts rather than the features, and since the idea o department store chorus girls is so unreal, having colors that aren't quite real isn't nearly as distracting. Besides, the pinks work well for the neon sign of the "Check Your Husband" counter.

Even if it's nothing particularly great, I'm glad I saw this one, just for how wacky and pre-Code it is.