What Price Pants (1931) User Reviews

Smith and Dale are hilarious!

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 10 March 2002]

"What Price Pants?" is probably the funniest movie ever made. The vaudeville comedians Smith and Dale star in a clever satire on Prohibition and all the illegal shenanigans that went on in America during Prohibition just so a man could get a drink. This is an American film, so the "pants" in the title are trousers. (In Britain, "pants" are underpants.) Joe Smith is the greedy owner of a sweatshop pants factory, and Charlie Dale is his underpaid cutter. A letter arrives for Dale, informing him that he's about to receive an unexpected inheritance. Smith intercepts the letter, and offers Dale a partnership in the pants factory ... but the terms of the partnership require that, if Dale should "just happen" to come into some money, he must share it with Smith. There are some antics in the pants factory, as Smith teaches his sweatshop workers the "correct" way to hum and sew pants at the same time. So far, this movie is merely funny: now it shifts gears and becomes hilarious. Dale has a dream sequence, in which he imagines a new kind of Prohibition: instead of alcohol being illegal, now PANTS are illegal. We see a New York street full of businessmen, and it's a trouser-free zone. All the men are wearing jackets and ties and shoes but NO trousers: every man's undershorts are on display! This is one of the funniest sight gags in the entire history of screen comedy. Dale goes to a "pants-easy" where men can wear pants illegally behind closed doors, but the joint gets raided by policemen wearing uniforms with no pants. If you want to see a squad of uniformed policemen in their underpants, this film is for you. Eventually, Dale wakes up, and the earlier plot about the inheritance gets its payoff. Many sources claim incorrectly that Neil Simon's "The Sunshine Boys" was based on Smith and Dale. That's not true; both acts performed a doctor-patient routine, and both acts used Jewish humour, but the resemblance ends there. Smith and Dale (not their real names) met in boyhood and immediately became a vaudeville team. When they needed business cards printed up, the printer offered them a discount on some cards which another vaudeville act had ordered but never paid for: the other act was named "Smith and Dale", so they changed their names to fit the business cards. Unlike the Sunshine Boys, Smith and Dale remained friends right up until Charlie Dale's death. For most of their vaudeville career, Smith and Dale were actually half of an act called the Avon Comedy Four. The other two men in this quartet were a carpenter and an electrician: neither of them were funny, but they both had the show-biz bug and so Smith and Dale included them as onstage performers in exchange for their carpentry and electrical skills (which were needed for the sets used when the act went on tour). In vaudeville days, a "four-act" (with four performers) usually got more money from booking agents than a two-man "double" act. Eventually, a Broadway producer announced: "I don't want the Avon Comedy Four; I want Smith and Dale." The other two men were dropped from the act, and Smith & Dale went on to greater heights. This brilliant comedy team made only a few films, but "What Price Pants?" is definitely Smith & Dale.

Hold tight,...after about 10 minutes, it gets a lot better!!

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 16 July 2006]

I was half tempted to turn off the video during the Smith and Dale film, as I just didn't find them very funny. The section of the film up until Smith fires Dale (or is it vice-versa?) is pretty unfunny and made me long to see their famous "Dr. Cronkheit" skit instead. However, when the ex-boss gets a letter saying that someone is looking for this ex-employee to give him a $20,000 inheritance, it really picks up steam FAST! We find our fired employee taking a nap in the back room. He has the craziest and silliest dream. Instead of liquor (this is during Prohibition), the world is clamoring for pants! The mob apparently has stolen most of the pants and it's really funny to watch all the guys walking around in boxers! For example, cops and guys in tuxedos are wearing everything BUT pants! And, since pants are so rare, people sneak off to pants speakeasies to wear pants where the cops won't find out and arrest them! The pants speakeasy bit is great and so creative a way to make fun of Prohibition.

DON'T READ FURTHER, AS THIS WILL REVEAL THE PUNCHLINE: I WARNED YOU,...

When he awakens, the ex-boss is there to announce that the firing was all a gag--a big misunderstanding. He then pulls out a contract and insists on making the guy his equal partner,...and it will cost absolutely NOTHING,...except for any inheritance the other guy receives during the next year. You in the audience want to yell at him NOT TO SIGN, as the boss wants to cheat him, but he does. Then, the old boss (and new equal partner) announces what a smart thing he's done! But, the other guy responds "you don't need to show me the letter--I remember EXACTLY what I wrote myself"--the last laugh was indeed on the stingy boss!

Before you ask, the answer is no!

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 2 December 2016]

Smith and Dale are an ethnic stereotype of vaudeville acts that manages to be amusing in small doses but leaves much to being a dinosaur of comedy. It's about one request for a 2 dollar raise in a tailor's shop, and the arguments between employer and employee. Typical gags occur (the breaking of a glass office door window through a slight slamming) and the fires employee's attempt to make it on his own and the stubborn boss's attempt to make it without him. This goes smoothly into a spoof of racketeering where men all walk around without pants due to an illegal takeover of tailor shops by mobsters, and the speakeasy where pants are sold instead of cocktails. You have to give the team credit for a unique idea; it's just too bad that the humor is eye rolling.