Dad Always Pays (1949) User Reviews

Whether He Can Afford It Or Not

[boblipton · 6/10 · 16 October 2019]

Leon Errol gets the bright idea that he can save money by marrying his daughter, Suzi Crandal -- later star of HOW I BECAME A NUDIST -- to a client's son. He rents them an apartment, but his wife, played by Dorothy Granger, thinks he's renting a love nest.

It's a fairly standard entry in Errol's long-running series of comedy shorts for RKO, filled with the usual misunderstandings, sputterings, and come-uppances for Leon. It's not a deal-changer for fans of old comedy, being more akin to the situation comedies of TV than the slapstick comedies that Columbia's shorts department specialized in. However, for those who enjoy well-timed misadventures, it will please.

From pop in 1940 to dad in 1949. My how the decade has changed.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 12 May 2021]

Suzi Crandall is the wallet picking daughter of Leon Errol and Dorothy Granger whom he decide to find a wealthy husband for, which makes dad determined to find her a rich husband, especially after Granger tells Crandall's boyfriend that they don't want him seeing their daughter any more. Errol decides to set Suzi up with the boss's son, but he already has a girlfriend (a sorority friend of hers), so they decide to play a prank on dad by pretending to have eloped. Of course, this get Errol into trouble because the younger folk set it up to make it appear that there's something going on between Errol and the younger man's girlfriend. A wild twist of situations makes it unclear whether or not the fake boyfriend is actually married or just engaged, making this rather messed up in several ways.

Of course, there's the declaration that one of the women is going home to mother (a necessity in a Leon Errol comedy short), an abundance of too many characters, and one of them (well known character actor Dick Elliot) doesn't even get any billing here. This seems to be a much cut down variation of Errol's 1940 B RKO comedy "Pop Always Pays", which of course at the time seemed like a compilation of Errol shorts rushed out into feature form.