Shivering Shakespeare (1930) User Reviews

Would have been a 9

[librarymind · 8/10 · 11 November 2011]

This one had me laughing until the pie fight at the end. I was sorry to see it end that way. I thought the adult participation was very amusing and expressed the way the people would really feel about each other if this had been produced in real life. It was very natural and personal. You don't see natural man to man interactions any more. The scenes with the men dressed as animals were irresistible. The children acted like children would at that time, too - it was all very believable. And the lady in charge of this drama was the perfect spinster librarian type everyone liked to ridicule, only no more nor less than she, too, would have been in real life. The mothers were also very motherly and warm and attached to their children. I could relate to them - far more than I can relate to the mothers I meet today, most of whom seem to feel very little for their children. I feel a very warm affection for the time when family love was still so much a part of people's lives.

Shivering Shakespeare was a hilarious early entry in the talkie Our Gang series

[tavm · 8/10 · 12 October 2014]

This Hal Roach comedy short, Shivering Shakespeare, is the ninety-fifth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the seventh talkie. The gang seemed to be forced to be in a play by a Mrs. Kennedy-Edgar Kennedy the Cop's wife. They flub their lines-which are constantly prompted by the missus, misuse props, and get food thrown at the stage by unruly kids. The parents seem to enjoy the performance until it all gets ruined by a pie fight at the end! This was quite a hilarious short in the early talkie era of the series and anyone watching this should check out the book, "The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang" by Leonard Maltin and Richard W. Bann as they reveal many of the supporting cast like returning former member Mickey Daniels as the "lion", Jerry McGowan-daughter of regular director Robert F. McGowan-as the dancing girl, and Harry Keaton-brother of Buster-as one of the pie victims. This was the last in the series directed by Anthony Mack-nephew of the regular director. He would later be credited as a co-writer in the M-G-M only-produced series as "Robert McGowan", thereby causing some confusion as his uncle didn't use his middle initial when credited, either. Anyway, I highly recommend Shivering Shakespeare. P.S. The book's authors mention that the final scene is silent but various prints I've seen of this always had the appropriate sound effect so this puzzles me.

Obviously inspired several Three Stooges films

[xoxmagoosxox · 7/10 · 13 September 2005]

I first saw this as a kid (THE LITTLE RASCALS first went on TV the year I was born) and fairly recently bought this on DVD. In between, I watched it on the occasions it was on and took careful notes at 1) the pie fight itself and 2) how racist some of these parts were: Farina as a Nubian slave, doing voodoo, for example. I think Roach and McGowan would have been beaten to death if they'd tried to do that now.

Notice how the pie fights in The Three Stooges' HALFWITS' HOLIDAY and IN THE SWEET PIE AND PIE resemble this one...and this film came out a few years before their initial contract with Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures. There was obviously some inspiration from SS and Laurel & Hardy's THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY for these films...remember, at that time, they all stole from the best, each other!!!

One more note: Laurel & Hardy buffs, that bake sale lady was none other than Dorothy Coburn, who also appeared in TBOTC-the 'flapper' getting into her car and getting it in the rear end. It always escapes me why she was never credited?

Kids acting as kids

[Agnelin · 22 March 2008]

I'm an Our Gang/Little Rascals fan, and I enjoy this episode immensely, I never tire of it. "Shivering Shakespeare" is about the kids acting in an adaptation of "Quo Vadis" made by Mrs Kennedy, who is conveniently hiding behind the curtains to help out the kids with the classic and a bit too complicated dialogue. The best thing about this episode is watching the kids act as kids; they have a natural grace that is fortunately not ruined by the fact that they are kid actors; you would say that they are just being themselves and practically unaware of the cameras.

Some of the best gags have Chubby as a protagonist -not having learned his dialogue well, he has taken notes on his robe, only to find out he's put on the robe inside out. There's also the gang of the kids who aren't in a play and have decided to turn it into a pie-throwing fest. 'Farina' is also at his best, scolding the teacher for "talking too much" when she's helping the kids with the forgotten dialogue. Very enjoyable is also Mary Ann Jackson, the leading lady, cheeky and adorable!

A bit on the rough side

[huboon · 6/10 · 29 June 2003]

This installment was a disappointment. The dialogue suffers from very poor sound quality. Normally that wouldn't detract, but this episode is almost all talk. Some of the gags seem a bit corny even by 1930 standards. On the other hand, the performances are typically good. Chubby proves once again that he was one of the most wooden actors of his time-- which only adds to his appeal, of course. The pie fight sequence is the highlight of the film. I enjoyed the slow-motion shots, which must have been a bit experimental in their day. Definitely not the greatest "Our Gang" short.

In one of the gooiest debacles ever to come out of Canadia . . .

[tadpole-596-918256 · 6/10 · 1 December 2017]

. . . SHIVERING $HAKESPEARE still holds the dubious world record for pies-in-the-face per minute. Even for those not convinced previously that this series about juvenile delinquents originates from that failed nation-state (aka, America's Northern Threat) of Canadia, SHIVERING $HAKESPEARE all by itself will provide ample proof of this fact for even the stuffiest critic. In the first place, Face Pieing is the second most popular pastime in Canadia (sandwiched right between "curling" and moose-toppling). Secondly, only a dyed-in-the-wool Canadiayapper could believe that Repetition is the Mother of Invention. Finally, Rocky and Bullwinkle have nothing on Canadia when it comes to teaching "fractured history." In no other allegedly American-speaking country could a connection between QUO VADIS and Shakespeare pass unchallenged. Furthermore, "Chubby" portrays Nero as the central role in this bratty stage performance. But every USA child is well aware by the first day of kindergarten that Franco came along--"C'Est Moi" and all--centuries after the Bard of Avon kicked his bucket!

What ho! Bring out the laughs!

[jimtinder · 9/10 · 11 February 2001]

"Shivering Shakespeare" could be considered the first classic of the "Our Gang" talkie era. By now, Hal Roach Studios began to hit their stride in making talking pictures, and "Shakespeare" is the happy result.

The Gang is appearing in a version of Quo Vadis produced by Kennedy the Cop's wife. The kids don't find the play very fun to be in and are distracted by people in the theatre and cannot remember their lines. Among the funniest bits are Kennedy the Cop as the giant, who pulls off his makeup to fight an overzealous man in a bull costume; and the terrible dancing girl (played by director Bob McGowan's daughter.)

Several filmographies mention that "Shakespeare" has the first pie fight in a talkie. This may be true, seeing as they tried different speeds with the film during the fight. Buster Keaton's brother Harry is at the receiving end of one of the pies. Very funny and an early Gang talkie classic. 9 out of 10.

One of the best of Our Gang's first "sound" season

[nnwahler · 7/10 · 1 July 2023]

The early sound shorts in the Our Gang series were scattershot, quality-wise, depending on which director was handling the episode at hand. Full-time director Bob McGowan saw the new era through to its maturity. Other early sound-era episodes, like "When the Wind Blows" (L&H director James W. Hornes' one-shot Rascals short), and series co-director Anthony Mack's efforts (Mack was really Robert Anthony McGowan, nephew of Bob), were a few times good, but mostly misfires.

Mack was a semi-skilled director at best: the man just didn't latch onto how to pace and shape a film. But the present episode presents an ingenious compromise: being merely a semi-skilled director, Anthony Mack proves just about the ideal choice to direct an episode with this plot: the gradeschooler kids are supposed to be players in the cast of a small-town production of "Quo Vadis" which quickly becomes one big joke by means of forgotten lines, a harried and loud and pretentious schoolmarm, and an extended pie-throwing melee to cap things off. Norman "Chubby" Chaney shines in his attempt to be Nero, The result is an episode that cuts the mustard, at least in this reviewer's opinion. Some of the punchlines fail to come off, but a hearty good time generally.

A large, hilarious supporting cast help put this one over the edge.

Not quite the Bard, but when in Rome....

[mark.waltz · 8/10 · 14 November 2019]

Kennedy the lovable cop returns for a second time as a crew member and various parts of the play within the play put on by the gang's school, and directed by the obviously nervous Gertrude Sutton who sweats a lot as she feeds lines to all the actors. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong in this hysterically overly ambitious attempt at children's theater. Kennedy's an elephant and a giant, and there's also a very clumsy bull, clunky lions and a bunch of kids tossing food at the actors which results in a pie fight. Lyle Tayo, as Chubby's mother, being uppity and pretentious, gets the worst of it in a perfect finale.

All the world's a stage in which the Little Rascals play their part

[robert-temple-1 · 6/10 · 3 October 2017]

This is the seventh Little Rascals sound film, 20 minutes long. Shakespeare does not actually feature in the film, which is entirely devoted to a school play of QUO VADIS staged at the school attended by the Little Rascals. (The fact that Wheezer is only four years old and could not yet be at school is conveniently set aside, and there he is declaiming the lines of an ancient Roman.) Pete the Dog is of course in attendance, and howls at an appropriate moment. The chief Rascals in the action of this film are Chubby, who plays the Emperor Nero, Farina who plays a sorcerer 'from darkest Africa', and Mary Ann, who plays a Christian girl who is going to be thrown to the lions. For those who do not know, QUO VADIS was at this time an extremely famous book. It is a novel written by the Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz (pronounced 'Syen-kyay-vitch'), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature for writing it. It is set in Rome at the time of Nero, and is a very powerful and dramatic work. Sienkiewicz was a brilliant author, and is still a literary hero to Poles today, who all have to read him in school (though not this novel, instead they read his many Polish historical novels). QUO VADIS was what we call 'a runaway international best-seller' which sold millions of copies. One reason for its success was its description of the early Christians, who were being persecuted by Nero, since until the 1970s, Christianity was still very important to everyone in the 'mass market'. If it were published today, few people would buy it, I expect, despite its being very good. No one cares about early Christians anymore, at least not in films. QUO VADIS was made into a famous Hollywood epic film in 1951 with Peter Ustinov playing Nero. I remember asking Peter, whom my wife and I knew very well, what it was like playing Nero. He said he had to remember to keep squinting up his eyes, because Nero was notoriously near-sighted. He felt ambivalent about giving the thumbs-down to the gladiators in the Colisseum, since although it made him feel powerful, it also made him feel guilty at the same time. The costumes worn by the kids in the school play are extremely lavish, well above the budget of any actual school play. Everything imaginable that could go wrong with the production does go wrong. Comic situations abound, and not only the Rascals but all the parents and adults attending the performance throw custard pieces in each other's face, so that a very congenial total chaos results.

Kind of limp...

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 21 November 2011]

The Gang is involved in a really, really lame play. None of the kids know their lines and one mistake after another occurs. In addition to the kids, Officer Kennedy (Edgar Kennedy) is on hand--and he's just as untalented as the rest. Later, some mean kids in the audience begin throwing food at the actors as they put on the lamest version of "Quo Vadis" in history.

Aside from not being all that funny, this short suffers from relatively poor sound--which is made worse because the short is MUCH more talky than usual and there are no closed captions on the DVD. At the end, they had a giant pie fight (some of it in slow motion) but WHY they did this was never at all apparent. A limp short with little to recommend it.

Poor Short

[Michael_Elliott · 14 November 2008]

Shivering Shakespeare (1930)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Kennedy the Cop's wife puts on a play of "Quo Vadis" and wouldn't you know that she casts the gang to major parts. The first night of the play kicks off and naturally the kids begin to forget their lines and more bad stuff happens, which all leads to a big pie fight. Once again it seems the screenwriter didn't even try to make this thing funny. I'm sitting and watching this short and kept asking myself where it was trying to gain comedy from. From the forgotten lines? This didn't work. From the curtains falling at the wrong time? Perhaps this was suppose to be funny but it's not. Is the pie fight suppose to be funny? Well, I guess it is but I've yet to watch one that has made me laugh. I'm only familiar with the later day shorts and some of the silents but I'm finding those so much better than these early sound ones. Hopefully I'll run into some better ones soon.