Evelyn Venable 5/5

Note: After a promising start in Death Takes a Holiday, Double Door, and two Will Rogers movies, philistine producers decided modest, unassuming Evelyn Venable was not star material and assigned her to low-quality B-movies. While many B-movies (like the one below) are fun watching, nothing could induce me to watch a 1935 biopic of Stephen Foster, produced by Mascot Pictures, with cheap production values, cheap directing and cheap writing.  “I never regretted leaving films,” Venable later said. “If I have any regrets at all it is in leaving the stage. I might have been a really good actress. There simply was no chance in most of my pictures nor was I getting the proper training.”

He Hired the Boss
1943 / 1:12
Tagline: “IT'S AN OUT-AND-OUT RIOT! He's all-out for National Defense....and she's all-out for him!”
[internet archive]

Set in a sleepy California town during WWII, this quirky comedy kicks off with a blackout drill led by a hyper-dedicated air raid warden. While he’s laser-focused on keeping the lights out, a gang of silk thieves is busy looting supplies meant for the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Classic case of missing the forest for the trees.

That warden is Hubert (played by Stu Ervin), a man so punctual people set their watches by his walk to work. He’s a meticulous bookkeeper, a compulsive saver, and a volunteer who collects tinfoil for the war effort (a nod to the real-life use of aluminum “chaff” to jam German radar). But all this civic virtue masks a deeper flaw: Hubert is a world-class procrastinator.

He’s been stuck in the same dead-end job for 15 years, too timid to ask for a raise. He’s in love with his coworker Emily (Evelyn Venable), but insists he can’t afford marriage. Emily, who’s had enough of his dithering, calls him out: life isn’t for the timid, and happiness doesn’t require a zero balance. She’s especially fed up that Hubert keeps loaning money to a guy who never pays him back. Her advice? Be brave, be broke, but be happy.

Hubert finally gets drafted - only to be rejected for a dust allergy. His boss takes him back, but slashes his pay and demotes him. Then, in a rare moment of rebellion (and a bit of liquid courage from partying with sailors), Hubert calls his boss an “old cabbage puss” and gets fired. Emily gets canned too, for failing to stop her sister from eloping with the boss’s son. Cue generational tension (a common theme in the Twenties and Thirties): the young folks are fighting a war and want to live life on their own terms, not under the thumb of the old guard.

This double firing sets off the film’s climax. Hubert stumbles into success in the extraction business and helps bust the silk-stealing traitors. But the ending? Total letdown. Hubert goes back to work for the same boss who treated him and Emily like garbage. It’s a baffling move that ignores both professional logic and basic human dignity. Why reward a toxic employer who ran the company into the ground?

Still, Stu Ervin delivers genuine laughs. One standout scene has him waking up hungover after partying with sailors, muttering, “I’m afraid to look in the mirror because I might not see anybody.” Ervin specialized in playing small-town guys who finally grow a spine. He was a B-movie regular and starred in one of TV’s earliest sitcoms, Trouble with Father, which still holds up (and features a young Sheila Kuehl - yes, that Sheila Kuehl).

Evelyn Venable, tall and graceful with a voice like velvet, shines as Emily. This was her final film, made after a three-year break to raise her daughters. Hollywood never quite knew what to do with her delicate charm. After a tiny role in a forgettable western and an uncredited voice gig as the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio, she walked away from the industry in 1943.

But Venable didn’t fade away - she pivoted. In the early Fifties, she enrolled at UCLA with her daughters, earned a degree in Latin, and later a master’s in classics. She became a professor, teaching Latin prose and directing Greek plays. Her academic career was a quiet triumph, admirable and inspiring for those of us in education. She came from a long line of teachers and found her true calling in the classroom.

So while the movie may fumble its ending, it’s worth watching for Ervin’s comic timing and Venable’s understated brilliance. And if you’re ever feeling stuck like Hubert, remember Emily’s advice: debt’s not the end of the world - but fear might be.