From 1942 to 1956, George O'Hanlon starred as Joe McDoakes in a series of 63 theatrical shorts for Warner Bros. Joe was the definitive hard-luck guy, appearing in the opening behind a giant 8-ball. Nothing ever seemed to go his way, from martial strife to problems with work, money, and leisure. Warner Archive has wowed me yet again with a 6-DVD set that collects every last one of these shorts, which haven't been available on video until now.
The first short, So You Want to Give Up Smoking (1942), was originally intended as a case study of the basics of moviemaking for a class that creator Richard Bare taught at USC. Warner Bros. picked up the short and it was going to become a series until World War II got in the way. Over the decade plus that followed the resumption of production, the shorts would ditch the dialogue-free, narrated format, and eventually be Oscar-nominated three times in the Best Short Subject One Reel category ('47: ...Want To Be in Pictures, '48: ...Want to Be on the Radio, '49: ...Think You're Not Guilty).
O'Hanlon is best known to modern audiences (myself included) as the unmistakable voice of George Jetson. The amount of exposure O'Hanlon got for these McDoakes shorts made him an unforgettable, immediately-recognizable voice for the rest of his life. In many ways, McDoakes is the part he could never really get away from, since in a lot of ways, his other cash cow part (George Jetson) is no more than a slightly-modified cartoon version of the part that made him famous. Classic TV fans will also recognize one of the assortment of women who played Joe's long-suffering, put-upon wife Alice over the years as Phyllis Coates, who played Lois Lane in the first season of The Adventures of Superman opposite and equally-billed with George Reeves. Cameos throughout the series include everyone from Iron Eyes Cody (So You Want to Keep Your Hair, 1946) to Doris Day & Gordon McRae (So You Want a Television Set, 1953),
"Ronnie" Reagan in So You Want To Be In Pictures
Highlights from the various installments I've watched thus far: repeated references to avoiding Communist/Socialist catchphrases in So You Want to Be a Politician, the non-speaking cameo appearance of future SAG President and POTUS "Ronnie" Reagan in So You Want to Be in Pictures (above), and the note-perfect satire of the Western genre in So You Want to Be a Cowboy. Latent racism and sexism are all over the place. The racism is much more mild than the sexism, but it's in there. From Joe's wife constantly being referred to as "Little Alice" to the encouragement of disliking and acting out against the institution of marriage while married, there's plenty of fodder for Gender Roles courses at universities across the country.
From So You Want to Keep Your Hair
Since there are ten hours of these shorts, I haven't had a chance to get through them all. I have, however, been playing one or two before each of the various discs I've been catching up on, and it's played like gangbusters to my audience of one (two if Ashley is around). The transfer is taken from the best available master and wasn't specially cleaned up or remastered, but all the shorts I've watched looked great. Warner Archive has all 648 minutes of 63 shorts for $39.95.