Patience survives 'Hellzapoppin'

How do you know when your wife of 46 years still loves you?

One answer: When she’s willing to watch “Hellzapoppin.”

There are other answers, of course, hundreds of them.

My wife’s patience over the years may become the stuff of legends.

Oh sure, you say, any couple married that long has to put up with one another.

But in our case, I’d say she’s been the one more willing to put up with idiosyncrasies,  bad habits and occasional bouts of outright stubbornness.

So what the heck is “Hellzapoppin”?

It’s a movie, but not just any movie.

I first encountered the thing on Saturday mornings in the early days of black and white TV. A station out of Dayton broadcast something called “Early Risers Theatre.”

It was, in short, filler around a bunch of low-rent commercials.

“Early Risers Theatre” had a limited repertoire, to say the least.

There was a cowboy movie, of course. There was a very claustrophobic murder mystery that seemed to have been put together by the junior class of a second rate high school. There was a movie called “Bill of Divorcement,” which I could never figure out.

And — every once in awhile in the rotation — there was “Hellzapoppin.”

Made in 1941, it may have been the ultimate screwball comedy. It was based upon a hit Broadway show that was filled with sight gags, vaudeville silliness and improvisation. Apparently, few Broadway performances were ever the same.

That made it tough to transfer to Hollywood.

Its stars were a couple of baggy pants comics whose names only surface these days in trivia contests: Ole Olson and Chic Johnson.

Never heard of them? Join the club.

But in the late 1930s, Olson and Johnson were big, big names. It’s safe to say they were in the same league as the Marx Brothers in their hey-day.

So they hit the big time and went to Hollywood and made a movie based upon their stage play.

Trouble is, the year was 1941.

The world had been in turmoil since at least 1939, and Pearl Harbor marked its Day of Infamy in December that year.

Screwball comedy wasn’t something anyone was buying. Laughs, goofiness, sight gags, slapstick, none of those seemed appropriate as the year wound to a close.

And with the war, the screen careers of Olson and Johnson seemed to disappear or be limited to second-bills on double feature nights.

Fast forward to about 1956, however, and you might find an enthusiastic audience for laughs, goofiness and all the rest in an 8-year-old in a little town reached by the broadcast signal of “Early Risers Theatre.”

As that young audience, I had a few problems.

First off, Olson and Johnson’s humor involved lots of topical references that might have made sense to adults in 1941 but were hieroglyphics to a kid in 1956.

Second, some of that humor was borderline surreal, especially the sight gags. In one repeated gag, Shemp Howard (one of the Three Stooges) was simultaneously the projectionist and the cameraman for the movie. That’s a little hard to get your head around when you are 8.

Third, the folks at the Dayton station were lazy. Rather than stop the movie for commercials, they kept it running. A viewer had every right to be confused after a two-minute gap in the action.

And fourth, it started so early I never saw the whole thing. Apparently I was not enough of an early riser.

So when I stumbled across word that a DVD of “Hellzapoppin” was now available at an affordable — i.e. cheap — price, I jumped at it.

And my ever-patient wife, to her ever-lasting credit agreed to watch it with me.

Was it as funny as I remembered? Some of the time.

Was it wacky and screwball? You bet.

But mostly it reminded me how much I value my wife, my very patient wife.