Blonde Dynamite (1950) User Reviews

Blonde Dynamite (1950) ***

[JoeKarlosi · 7/10 · 15 August 2004]

BLONDE DYNAMITE (1950) ***/****

"I'll sue them for some salt and batteries".

The Bowery Boys' later films worked best when they were well written with something of a plot, and BLONDE DYNAMITE is one of these cases. It's quite good for one of their films from this period.

Slip Mahoney gets a brainstorm to send Louie Dumbrowski off on a vacation to Coney Island so he and the rest of the gang can transform Louie's sweet shop into an escort service. It isn't long before the boys get tangled up with unscrupulous crooks again in the bargain, but the laughs are pretty steady and the story stays tight.

"A brilliant seduction".

Gabriel Dell Makes Out

[wes-connors · 5/10 · 5 April 2009]

After wise-guy Leo Gorcey (as Terence Aloysius "Slip" Mahoney) and hair-brained Huntz Hall (as Horace De Bussy "Sach" Jones) spy a beautiful woman exiting an "escort service", they decide to answer the call for "Male Escorts Wanted - must be handsome, intelligent, cultured"; but, the business throws them out on the street. Undaunted, Mr. Gorcey decides "The Bowery Boys" should open their own male escort business. They turn to gainfully employed Gabriel Dell (as Gabe Moreno), for a helping hand-out. Alas, Mr. Dell, working at a bank two doors down from "Louie's Sweet Shop", can't provide the funding.

Back at the "Sweet Shop", Gorcey discovers real-life father Bernard Gorcey (as Louie Dumbrowski) is sick (he's dishing out free sundaes). So, Gorcey sends the proprietor off on a Coney Island vacation, and turns the "Sweet Shop" into an escort service - with "Bowery Boys" Hall, William "Billy" Benedict (as "Whitmore" Whitey), Buddy Gorman (as "Bartholomew" Butch), and David Gorcey (as "Sir Cedric" Chuck) providing male companionship.

Meanwhile, Dell has been taken for a ride, by girlfriend Adele Jergens (as Joan "Joanie" Marshall). Dell discovers the duplicitous "Blonde Dynamite" has stolen a $5,000 bankroll from him, and her gang plans to frame Dell for embezzlement if he doesn't obtain the combination to the "Bowery Trust" bank vault, for gang leader Harry Lewis (as Champ Fallon). Then, Mr. Lewis plans to dig an underground tunnel from the "Sweet Shop" (now escort service) to rob the bank...

"Blonde Dynamite" has its moments, and "The Bowery Boys as male escorts" is a funny situation. The characters are oddly scripted to refer to Gorcey and company as "juveniles" and "kids", a distinction most of these movies had (wisely) dropped, by now. Dell is given a welcome storyline; he was the original "Dead End Kid" who seemed to age most quickly; but, now he appears younger than Gorcey or Hall. And, don't miss the elder "Louie" in his swimsuit, singing what sounds like a medley of "Aloha Oe" and "Hello Goodbye"!

***** Blonde Dynamite (2/12/50) William Beaudine ~ Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell

Silly, almost surreal

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 2 April 2016]

You have to hand it to Leo Gorcey. When he dreams, he dreams big. Slip and Satch see an a male escort bureau and see no reason why he and the rest of the Bowery Boys couldn't do this job. With his savoir faire and command of the English language no telling how far they could rise.

When Gorcey and Huntz Hall are thrown out after they apply, are they discouraged? Not in the least, they persuade Bernard Gorcey he needs a vacation in Coney Island. Then they take over Louie's Sweet Shop and turn it into their own escort bureau.

But there's a gang headed by Harry Lewis with his moll Adele Jergens who have their own plans for the Sweet Shop. They've even got Slip and Satch's pal Gabriel Dell in a jackpot as part of said plans. Part of that plan consists of hiring the whole gang as escorts for her some of her pals. You have to see Jergens vamping Billy Benedict who when he was a Bowery Boy got in a bit of his own business involving his naiveté. Benedict played kids in other than the Bowery Boys well into his 30s. As for Jergens she had a specialty in trying to seduce man children types. See how she does in Abbott&Costello Meet The Invisible Man with Lou.

I won't get into what the gang wants the Sweet Shop for, but it's funny, in fact it gets downright silly and almost surreal. Suffice it to say the Sweet Shop becomes a Sweet Shop again for the next Bowery Boy film.

They can't do this to us! I'm gonna sue them for salt & batteries!

[sol1218 · 7/10 · 3 July 2010]

***SPOILERS*** With a burnt out Louie Dombrowski going together with his charming and two ton wife Sarah on a well earned, the first in six years, weeks vacation in far off Conley Island Slip Sash and the rest of the Bowery Boys Chuck Whitey & Butch are given the job to look after Louie's Sweet Shop while he's away.

Truning the Sweet Shop into a male escort service Slip thinks that he'll make big money in him and his boys getting women to pay big bucks to be able to spend the evening with them. What Slip doesn't know is that gangster Champ Fellon and his boys Samson & Bacchuss are planing to dig under the sweet shop in a plan to knock off the Bowery Trust Company Bank that's the building attached to it! Using his gun moll the sexy blond Joan Marshall to snatch $5,000.00 from an envelope given to bank delivery boy and former Bowery Boy Gabe Moreno Champ blackmails Gabe into getting the combination to the Bowery Trush Company Bank's vault! If in case he refuses he'll have Gabe arrested, by foolishly losing the $5,000.00, for embezzling the bank.

One of the better Bowery Boys films-non of them are bad-with us finally getting to see what Louie's battle ax wife Sarah whom he's always talking about but is, until this film, never seen looks like. There's also gorgeous blond, and Gabe's girlfriend, Adele Jergens as Joan Marshell who gets to belt out her signature song "So Your the One" later in the movie. The film leads up to Champ Fallon and his gang digging under Louie's Sweet Shop to get to the Bowery Trust Company's Bank vault while the bank is closed. In this Champ tricks Sach into thinking that he and his men are US Government Agents mining for precious uranium!

***SPOILERS*** Sach who's a bit slow in figuring out things in the end has this, digging for uranium, all figured out in that there in fact is a uranium deposit right under Louie's Sweet Shop! What Sach, as well as Champ Fllon, didn't quite figure out is that they were, in their digging, a bit off in where the bank was located! That landed Champ and his boys together with Slip & Sach & Co. as well as Louie who, in checking out his sweet shop, showed up at the scene right into the local police precinct's lock up!

**MAJOR SPOILER** You just knew it was too good to be true and in the end it was. Louie who thought that he struck gold, or uranium, on his property in the end found out that what's under his store didn't in fact belong to him! It belonged to some shyster lawyers clients, long dead, who had a deed drawn up for them back in 1881 giving them possession of everything underneath the sweet shop which at the time, 1881, was just a large garbage dump!

Bowery Boys #17

[Michael_Elliott · 3 July 2010]

Blonde Dynamite (1950)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

The boys are able to talk Louie (Bernard Gorcey) into taking a much needed vacation to Coney Island. Once gone Slip (Leo Gorcey) turns his ice cream parlor into an escort service and soon he gets himself mixed up with a couple gangsters wanting to use the place to tunnel underground to the bank next door. Number seventeen in the long-running series is another winner even though it doesn't contain nearly enough laughs to be called a good movie. The story is actually a pretty good one and the cast are certainly up for anything this time around. I thought the film benefited from once again giving Gabe (Gabriel Dell) a different role and him being mixed up with the icy blonde and the gangsters was a nice switch to get the story rolling instead of having the boys bringing the trouble on. I think the screenplay would have benefited had it spent some more time with Louis. The opening sequence with his breakdown was pretty funny as was the scene where he's leaving with his wife. This is the first time we've seen him wife and hopefully the last time. Bernard Gorcey is certainly very good in his few minutes on screen with son Leo and Huntz Hall delivering they usual fine performances. This entry seemed to be going for more Three Stooges-like humor as Slip is starting to enjoy slapping Sach around each time he can. Dell is in fine form as well as Adele Jergens as the backstabbing blonde and Harry Lewis gets a nice bit as a bad guy. The film doesn't have nearly enough laughs to make it a total success but fans of the series will find enough here to make it worth watching.

"What an array of masculinitude!"

[classicsoncall · 6/10 · 3 July 2010]

Well I finally figured out that each weekly Saturday morning presentation of a Bowery Boys flick on Turner Classics is being presented in order of their original release date. Makes it convenient for planning purposes if you want to see a particular show as long as the trend continues. Me, I'll take them as they come, because by the end of the week I'm ready to let my mind ramble with the kind of non-sensical adventures these guys always found themselves in.

This time around, Slip (Leo Gorcey), Sach (Huntz Hall) and the rest of the gang form the Park Avenue Escort Bureau out of Louie Dumbrowski's (Bernard Gorcey) Sweet Shop. Louie's out of town on vacation with the Mrs. (Jody Gilbert), so part of the fun is the wait to see how Louie reacts to his made over store. But by then, a bunch of hoods led by Champ Fallon (Harry Lewis) take over Louie's to tunnel into the Bowery Trust Company a couple of doors down.

The Blonde Dynamite part of the story comes from Champ's moll Joanie (Adele Jurgens), putting the touch on Gabe Marino (Gabriel Dell) to the tune of five big ones. Working as a bank courier, Gabe gets enmeshed in the bad guy plot to rob the bank. Joanie heads up a bevy of beauties that require the services of Slip's escort bureau, and it's pretty evident the boys are in way over their heads. But only in the looks department. This time Whitey (Billy Benedict) saves the day with the old revolving table trick (gee, nobody else noticed!), as the girls are slipped the proverbial mickey.

I got a kick out of a line Joanie came up with while negotiating terms with Slip - "I wouldn't go Dutch treat with Jack Benny". There was also a Benny reference a couple pictures earlier in "Hold That Baby". Makes me curious what the connection was, if any, between the Bowery Boys and the famed comedian.

Hey, here's another observation. You know how people talk about banker's hours when it comes to working an easy schedule. You wouldn't give it much thought today because banks are open like most businesses from nine to five. But right here in glorious black and white and courtesy of the Bowery Trust Company, the hours of operation are posted right there on the front door - 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM! Gee, I wonder if they got any breaks!

Noir bad girl Adele Jergens as the title character

[mbhur · 7/10 · 16 September 2020]

By1950 the Bowery Boys were already among moviedom's oldest "teens," but incredibily the series lasted for another 6 years and more than 20 movies, with the scripts getting increasingly sillier and the plots more far fetched. This is a pretty good entry in the series, and at times feels like it could've been almost a conventional B crime picture, instead of a Bowery Boys vehicle. In part that may be due to the prescence of leggy Adele Jergens, one of the great B movie bad girls. She's actually playing the title character, the only time in the series I can remember that happening.

Adele seemed to be one of those actresses who just wanted to keep working. "Blonde Dynamite" is one of her 10 movie credits on IMDB for 1950, including another Bowery Boys feature and the classic film noir "Side Street." (In 1949 she was in another B noir classic, "Armored Car Robbery.") She was also a comic foil (and the requisite eye candy) for Abbot and Costello in two of their films. Later in her career she was in a couple of super low budget teen crime exploitation movies, but she was always a solid pro who gave it her all. She's probably the biggest "name" of the many alluring females who populated the Bowery Boys movies, vamping Slip and/or Satch for devious purposes.

The idea of the boys as high class "escorts" is a hoot and well played for laughs. Though of course their ability to turn Louie's Sweet Shop into their escort agency office and then back again overnight takes a huge suspension of belief, typical of these plots. It should be noted that the plot device of digging from a office or store into an adjacent bank vault has been used in several films with the first one I'm aware of being "A Slight Case of Larceny" with Edward G. Robinson.

The rating of 7 stars is in the context of the Bowery Boys series. Sometimes you just have to grade on a curve.

Deuce Bigelow has nothing on Sach and Slip in the escort trade.

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 1 July 2015]

Whenever blonde bombshell Adele Jergens shows up, you know there's a scam not far behind. In this case, she's the girlfriend of Gabriel Dell, pal of the Bowery Boys, but smart enough to get a job in a bank. Still, he's not smart enough to see through this opportunist who uses him as part of her real gangster boyfriend's efforts to break into a bank and extort the code from Gabe. It so happens that while picking up a cash deposit for a bank customer, he got pick-pocketed by the smooch crazy bimbo who then turned it over to gangster Murray Alper who threatened Gabriel with going to prison for embezzlement and promise of giving him back the money if he provided the information his gang needed.

While all this is happening, Louis decides to take a long-needed vacation with his portly wife Jody Gilbert (some 20+ years younger than Bernard Gorcey) all the way to the country of Coney Island. Who does he entrust to take over the ice cream shop while he's gone? Slip, Sach and their gang, no less, something you know he's sure to regret. And what do the boys do to thank him? After being tossed out of every escort service in New York, they set up the soda shop as their own "Park Avenue Escort Service" even though Park Avenue actually ends at 14th Street on the north side and the Bowery starts south of 14th Street a few blocks east! This is the only opportunity to see Mrs. Dumbrowski, and Jody Gilbert is very funny in her role.

I've only begun to notice Jody Gilbert recently in a ton of movies, many of which I had seen before. She has a very modern character actress look to her so she is instantly interesting. She's very funny in the Coney Island beach scenes when Louis glances longingly at all the bathing beauties walking by, not realizing that wifey dear is opening just one eye to spot his lustful lechery. Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall share more material than normal with their usually mostly behind the shadows sidekicks, with sandy blonde Billy Benedict proving in a scene with Hall that he knows how to play the baseball bat fist game with a little trick of his own. This comes about when Jergens and her gang of girlfriends pretend to be escort service customers in an effort to distract the gang from being in Louis's shop when the gangsters make an attempt to break into the soda shop.

While it's made clear that these "legal" escort services are mainly for women requiring a male companion at the theater or some other social event, the word gigolo is used. The film has two very funny moments when two of the boys escort two extremely old and overweight women to the opera and two others are sent to a woman's meeting to show older members how to deal with mashers. Of course, if you've heard one Leo Gorcey malapropism, you've heard them all, but some of them are very funny. The scene where the gangster utilize the boys to help them dig underground has a very funny twist and will most likely keep the viewer smirking if not laughing out loud. These films truly are irresistible if you can get past the "aging little boys" (as Jergens snidely refers to them as) and enjoy it for their stupid innocence even though by the time the series ended, the remaining members were close to 40 and really could be almost referred to as Bowery Grandpa's.

THE BOYS AND DA BLONDE EQUALS MONEY!

[tcchelsey · 10/10 · 29 October 2022]

Adele Jergens, who appeared in two other Bowery Boys films, was a natural fit for these guys as she had the looks and the attitude. Jergens was a very good actress and does her thing here as one of the "blondes" in cahoots with some baddies who want to rob a bank. Writer Charles Marion, one of the primary writers of Bowery Boys scripts, next to actor Tim Ryan, may have "borrowed" the storyline from the Edward G. Robinson flick LARCENY, INC (1942) as the gang's Park Avenue Escort Bureau! Is next door to a nice little bank that should be robbed! The robbers, lead by smooth Harry Lewis (as Champ), trick Sach (while Slip is away with the gals) into doing some underground uranium digging --right into the bank!

This one is hilarious and Leo Gorcey is fun to watch getting p.o'ed by Sach's wild antics. Best of all is Louie (Bernard Gorcey) who goes nuts when he discovers what the boys did to his sweet shop while he was away at Coney island with the Mrs! Top Bowery Boys, real goofy stuff, and look at the Bowery Boys' elite line of escort clothes! To note, Lewis later gave up acting to concentrate full time on his Hamburger Hamlet restaurant chain in Los Angeles, which he opened about the time this film was made. Years later he sold out for nearly 30 million bucks!

According to production notes this film took the longest to produce, nearly two weeks time to film, perhaps due to the insanity! Campy all the way. Warner Brothers dvd box set. Get this one for your collection.

Not too many surprises here.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 17 November 2019]

Slip (Leo Gorcey) has a scheme. He wants to start his own escort service. However, no one will loan him the money and an opportunity arises when Louie goes on vacation....as he'll use the malt shop for his business. At the same time, a gang of thugs with their blonde bombshell (Adele Jergens) are going to rob a bank...and plan on tunneling in from the malt shop...much like the plot of "Larceny, Inc.". Will these knuckieheads figure out what is going on or will the robbery come off without a hitch?

This film is pretty much what you'd expect from a Bowery Boys movie...broad acting and not a lot of sophistication. This isn't so much a complaint....more like what you should expect. A few scenes are WAY overdone--such as the painful balcony scene. And yet, despite all its shortcomings, the film is reasonably entertaining because it never takes itself seriously. Overall, not one of the group's best--more just a very typical entry--with Sach being stupid and Slip being a mouthy know-it-all...as usual.

By the way, it's rather funny when throughout the film you hear people refer to the gang as 'kids'...considering they're mostly in their 30s!

this chapter sillier than usual

[ksf-2 · 5/10 · 20 December 2022]

Those crazy bowery boys have done it again. Leo gorcey (along with his real brother and father, of course) get into the usual mess that has to be straightened out later. When louie goes on a badly needed vacation, slip turns the shop into an escort service to raise money. Meanwhile.... adele jergens is joan, gabe's no good girlfriend. She robs him of the money he has "borrowed" from the bank where he works. So now, gabe has to help her rob the bank, or he won't get "his" money back. To tunnel into the bank, the crooks send girls in pretending to need the escort service to distract slip and sach. That has to be the most convoluted plot ever ! The silly opera scene just goes on waaaaay too long. Not one of their better chapters. The story is just so wacky. And slip spends most of the film smacking sach and whitey. One fun connection: louie's wife sarah....played by jody gilbert. She is hilarious as the waitress in "never give a sucker an even break" with w.c. Fields; if you haven't seen it, it's so funny. Blonde dynamite directed by bill beaudine, who directed thirty of these films with the guys. Most of them are better than this one. Although there is a fun ending! Leo gorcey died young at 51 from liver issues. He had left the business when his dad died.

Has A Lot Packed Into Its Short Running Time

[redryan64 · 8/10 · 2 April 2016]

WITH SO MANY convoluted elements and twisting turning plot being included, it would seem that this BOWEERY BOYS deserved to be an "A" Picture film. At least Slip, Sach, Gabe, Louie, Chuck, Whitey and Butch should have been allotted the increased running time of an "A".

WHILE REVOLVING YET anther "bright" idea to render the gang in the moolah, there is so much more. being set mainly at Louie's Sweet Shop, the script calls for the boys to use the subterfuge of sending their kindly, elderly father figure on a vacation; which would allow them to use the sweet shop as a newly opened Escort Service run by themselves.

BUT YOU AIN'T heard nothing yet, Schultz! We gotta factor in Gabe's getting a job with the local bank while getting himself involved with a femme fa tale (Adele Jergens). She in turn is in with a bunch of crooks who plan to tunnel into said bank thr0ugh the sweetshop basement.

AS DOYLE LONNEGAN,from THE STING, would say. "Do ya follow?"*

ADDED TO ALL of this compendium BOWERY BOYS episode, we have the pleasure of having a romantic song sung on the screen by Miss Jergens to a most cooperative Leo Gorcey; displaying yet another facet of his considerably under-appreciated acting abilities. This was (we believe) the only time that a BOWEERY BOYS outing had such a production number.

ALTHOUGH SO MUCH of it is predictable, nevertheless, it belongs right up near the top of the heap.

NOTE: * Our mention of the "mark" in THE STING, Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) was quite unintentionally poignant as it was done strictly in jest. But we then realized that the two pictures had one actor in both casts. William 'Billy' Benedict (Whitey) appeared in THE STING as the Roulette Wheel Dealer at the beginning of the 1973 Oscar Winning "Best Picture."

fun Bowery Boys

[SnoopyStyle · 8/10 · 29 October 2022]

Male Escorts Wanted. That's the sign outside D'Amour Escort Bureau. Slip and Sach walk in and get promptly thrown out. Slip decides to start his own escort service with all the guys. No bank is willing to finance them. Meanwhile, respectable bank delivery boy Gabe Moreno gets enticed by blonde bombshell Joan Marshall. He loses $5k of the bank's money to Joan and her gangster friends. They blackmail him into a scheme to steal from the bank by digging through the Sweet Shop.

This is a fun Bowery Boys film. The story makes sense. There actually is a story. The characters are who they are. Sach is hilariously dumb. It's a fun duo with Slip. It all works. It's good whether you're a fan or not.