Clancy in Wall Street (1930) User Reviews

Creaky But Amusing

[boblipton · 6/10 · 22 February 2006]

Clancy (Charles Murray) and MacIntosh (Lucien Littletfield) are a pair of stock comedy Irish and Scottish plumbers who have been partners for twenty years; but when Clancy accidentally buys some shares on margin, MacIntosh's Scotch thrift rebels and their partnership breaks up. In the meantime, their children are in love....

Murray and Littlefield had been playing these characters for twenty years, and they are expert and amusing in doing so, particularly when high-hatting each other. The camera-work is also quite mobile for 1930, but the soundtrack is hissy and this sort of comedy characterization would vanish shortly. For the moment, though, it was still a popular comedy genre and it's a pleasure to watch these two old pros at work,

Lots of Clancy, not that much Wall Street

[AlsExGal · 5/10 · 2 March 2013]

I was expecting Wall Street to be much more the center of this film, made so soon after the Crash of 1929 that the Depression hadn't even really started yet.

This one is really heavy on the ethnic humor regarding a pair of Irish and Scottish plumbers and light on the Wall Street end. The Irish Michael Clancy buys stock on margin when on a plumbing job with his partner, Scotsman Andy MacIntosh. No problems until the stock starts to fall and the salesman who originally sold it to Clancy keeps coming around for checks to cover margin calls. When Clancy runs out of his own money he uses the firm's money to cover the final call. This infuriates the thrifty Andy, and the two bust up their partnership...and then Clancy gets the call that the stock has gone through the roof and he's rich.

In the background there's the budding romance between Clancy's daughter and MacIntosh's son. Even that is being messed up by the fighting between the parents and the jealousy of Mac's son over the sudden attention the Wall Street salesman is paying Clancy's daughter.

There's a final scene between Clancy and stock salesman, Freddie, that reminds you that some things never change. In the midst of the big crash, Clancy goes to Freddie as a patient would go to a doctor and finds out he's just another number to this guy as he's coldly dismissed as small potatoes.

It's largely humorous though dated stuff, but given what was just around the corner in 1930 I can see why this film fell into obscurity until just recently. I'm sure that in the Great Depression a comedy about playing the stock market on margin probably didn't get many laughs.

Old-fashioned entertainment - and loads of fun in an old-fashioned way

[mmipyle · 7/10 · 10 February 2012]

I watched a real rarity last night. One of the typical kinds of Vaudeville acts involved jokes about and between, and even among different ethnic and/or religious groups. One of the very popular Vaudeville acts for over twenty years was that of Charles Murray and Lucien Littlefield playing respectively Clancy the Irishman and MacIntosh the Scotsman. They made a film in 1930 called "Clancy in Wall Street" which showcased their Vaudeville characters. Filled with Depression humor about Wall Street - and funny lines about Wall Street in general! - this is a very appealing little comedy about types and a time that certainly are no more. When this film began appearing at movie festivals in the late 1990's there were comments about its sound track. Well, nothing's changed there. The sound track still has a hiss in it, and it's loud at a few other times. Never so distracting, however, to interrupt the enjoyment.

Grand old fashioned entertainment. Well worth a look see. Lucien Littlefield made over 250 movies in a career that lasted a lifetime. He only lived 65 years, but was a performer from childhood until the day he died. Many will remember him as Ira Lazar in "The Cat and the Canary" (1927) or a foil for Laurel and Hardy, but his career with Charles Murray in Vaudeville was memorable, too. Charles Murray made over 275 movies, many of them shorts, so his filmography today is nearly unknown. How unfortunate! Also in this film are Elliott Nugent, Miriam Seegar, Reed Howes, and Aggie Herring.

My print's from Grapevine, and the quality is what you get, but it's the only print, as far as anyone knows. You get what you get, skips and jumps and hisses, none of which, believe it or not, interferes with the watching much.