The Yellow Cab Man

Inventor Red Skelton, prone to accidents, creates a riot in this 1950 film. Gloria DeHaven, as his girl, is along for the ride. Walter Slezak, Jay C. Flippen and Edward Arnold are at their evil best. The last scene is similar to a Marks Brothers or 3 Stooges like films. I loved the part with the ambulance chasers and the attorneys. Was this ever so true to life! The film has familiar themes of slapstick comedy, accidents beyond belief, and a little brat of a child who causes mayhem with the police and traffic departments. The zany Red Skelton was wonderful at this type of film. The only thing is that you're familiar with these things and can easily predict what's coming next.

Funny man supreme Red Skelton plays 'Red' Pirdy, a cab driver that also invents safety devices. When he invents elastic glass for unbreakable safety glasses criminals big and small come after him to force or trick him out of the formula. 'Red' is very gullible and easily influenced. Some of his inventions are pretty wacky.The cab driver's relationship with the attractive Ellen(Gloria DeHaven)is odd at best. A rip roaring climax involves a chase through a futuristic revolving home show exposition. Skelton, one of the funniest ever on TV, seems to always be better than his movies. Silly movie with a strong cast featuring: Walter Slezak, Edward Arnold and James Gleason.

The movies from my youth. This movie which I wish was on DVD! is a great ole movie for a rainy day. Red'd never been better getting away from the bad guys. And of course winning the girl and keeping Unbreakable Soft Glass he invented for his Cab!

I had discovered this obscure Red Skelton movie on YouTube recently and just decided to watch it now because of many glowing reviews on this site. In a nutshell, Red is an accident-prone fella who eventually becomes a cab driver after initially being hit by one! He's also an inventor with some crazy contraptions in his apartment. I'll stop there and just say this was very funny from beginning to end. There's an unusual distorted sequence that must have turned some minds on at the time and a hilarious end chase sequence taking place in a demonstration home. So on that note, I highly recommend The Yellow Cab Man. P.S. Since I always like to cite when someone that was in my favorite movie-It's a Wonderful Life-is in something else, here it's Charles Lane-the one who told Mr. Potter he'd one day work for George Bailey-who plays an insurance man who rejects an offer to insure Mr. Skelton!

Skelton was never as popular as the other leading comics of his day including Hope, Crooner/Comic Crosby, Danny Kaye, Abbott and Costello for a while and many others but his movies made money as this one did too. The concept of this movie is not original but congenial and in an era of remakes would a nice, tidy vehicle for a Ben Stiller type. Watching Skelton convincingly bungle and bumble his way through scene after scene is a complete hoot. The jokes come naturally and to me, he is better at delivering these jokes than Bob Hope ever was. The mad cap finale is generally fun in this warm two hander with Gloria de haven. And direction is generally snappy and on point as our cab driver causes obvious hijinks in this on the nose but funny tale.

I think that so many people only think of Red Skelton from TV and I think they forget that he did movies and in fact very funny movies. I scrounged around until I could find most of them on VHS but now I long for a good DVD set. The Yellow Cab Man has got to be my favorite, I laugh so hard at parts of it that I have to actually pause the film so that I can catch my breath. I usually don't care that much for physical comedy but he and Danny Kaye seem to be the masters of the art and their movies have me rolling on the floor every time. The plot in here is really not that great but it is just what is done with a simple idea -A nice guy that is totally accident prone trying to be a cab driver and show his new invention. Just wind Red up and let him loose.

This film is better than some of Red's other movie efforts in that he has some better supporting actors in it. Wish Red had a chance to make more movies than he did in his career but shortly after this started his record run on television. That took away a lot of his time for making movies. This film is quite short at less than 90 minutes but most of the best comedy films are short. They don't get stuck in long & possibly boring sequences & they don't do the same joke over & over again. This film fits that model quite well. Red was a classic clown who is sorely missed in todays "over the top & down & dirty comedy era". He had a class that shows in films like this one & his old television programs. This film is still a very watchable example of that.