Nice job, but who are the Chefs?

Mickey Rooney was TCM's Star of the Month for December 2024, and TCM ran a night of his juvenile roles from before the Andy Hardy movies. One where I didn't actually notice him in the cast was a movie called The Chief.

The chief is played by Ed Wynn, father of Keenan Wynn and at the time this movie was made much more successful for his radio show in which he played, among other things, the Texaco Fire Chief. That character was apparently popular enough to bring Ed Wynn to Hollywood and make a movie out of it. Indeed, the movie ends with the conceit that Wynn was actually doing his radio show and what you saw was a visualization of one of his radio stories or something like that; Ed doesn't quite put it that way.

Anyhow, the story begins back in the 1890s, with Wynn playing Henry Summers, who is the son of a beloved fire chief in the Bowery, now deceased and getting a statue of him dedicated. Henry is one of those incompetent types, so his presentation of the statue goes badly wrong and costing him his job but getting him a new one following in Dad's footsteps as a fire chief in the Bowery. Not that he knows anything about fighting fires, but somehow he bumbles his way into saving somebody the first time a fire breaks out.

For his "heroism", he gets offered his old job back. But it's really an excuse for his boss to get him to run for alderman, this being back in the day when there were ward-heelers would could deliver votes en bloc. It's corrupt, but it's not as if it's any more corrupt than the other side, and it's not as if Henry is going to be elected for his independence. Henry eventually decides to run, but the other side kidnaps his mother in an attempt to get Henry to drop out of the race.

As I said in the beginning, Ed Wynn was apparently quite popular on radio in the early 1930s, but I don't understand why. His character here is absolutely obnoxious, and the delivery only makes it more so. It's supposed to be funny. And maybe it was funny on the live vaudeville stage and on radio. But it's not funny here.

So I think The Chief is really only for the die-hard old-time radio buffs. But, as always, watch for yourself and make your own decision.