Love Business (1931) User Reviews

Pretty cute...

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 2 December 2011]

It's funny, but in all the early talking Our Gang comedies there is a character I either love or hate. Wheezer was one of the youngest kids in the group and as a result, he couldn't read lines and had little real acting talent. Sometimes the directors were able to get adorable performances or completely wooden ones where he could barely say his lines (such as in their previous film "Helping Grandma"). Fortunately, "Love Business" is one of the boy's better films and as a result the entire picture came off very well.

In this short, Jackie, Mary Ann and Wheezer are siblings. In all the Our Gang comedies, the family compositions changed dramatically--with the kids having brothers and sisters in some and are only children in other shorts. Jackie is infatuated with his teacher, Miss Crabtree and Wheezer enjoys tormenting his older brother over this. But pesky Wheezer is even worse when he finds some old love letters and sells them to Chubby--who also is smitten with Miss Crabtree. Later, after practicing how to woo his teacher, Chubby comes over to see her and win her love--and Jackie is there to make sure he fails! When Jackie's mother overhears Chubby's ardent advances on his teacher, she recognizes his lines--as the letters were HERS from many years ago! In the end, however, Wheezer is so adorable that Mom just can't bring herself to punish the little skunk.

Aside from the creepy notion of boys in love with their teacher (it used to be cute in 1931 but with some of today's bizarre headlines about sexual abuse the plot idea doesn't age well), the film is fun. The children's performances are much better than usual and the story works well. The director deserves much credit for eliciting such nice acting from the kids--it probably wasn't easy.

By the way, the GOOFS section on IMDb says that Miss Crabtree's hand is drawn. This is not so. While the hand is obviously not correct (she's holding the candy with her fingers and then suddenly in the closeup it's in the palm of her hand), the hand appears to be an extra's hand--not a drawn one.

Funny, Charming Our Gang Entry

[Corr28 · 9/10 · 16 April 2009]

Yet another wonderful short in the Our Gang series with Miss Crabtree. Here, the lovely young teacher rents a room at Jack's house. This really makes our young hero happy until rival Chubby shows up attempting to court Miss Crabtree. Many funny scenes like the "moth ball soup" sequence and Jack's attempts at disrupting Chubby's romantic endeavor. The kids, as usual, are wonderful, funny and believable. Miss Crabtree is charming and Jack's younger brother Wheezer really plays it for laughs. This was the last of the three Our Gang shorts to use the spoken word opening credits sequence. It's really too bad as it added a very nice touch to the series and gave it a real distinctive feel.

Oh Miss Crabtree there's something heavy on my heart!

[thejcowboy22 · 8/10 · 29 September 2016]

Every boys dream; being smitten with your Schoolmarm. I remember the feelings I had with my Fourth Grade Teacher Mrs. Stearn. Jackie Cooper is infatuated with his schoolteacher June Crabtree (June Marlowe) and why not, blonde and attractive with a soft personality to match. Meanwhile the rotund "Chubby" Norman Chaney is practicing his kissing methods on a Greta Garbo cutout pretending it's the aforementioned Miss Crabtree. Between kisses Chubby recites some love prose as his precocious sister Dorothy "Echo" DeBorba repeats them in a distasteful way to annoy her love sick brother. Meanwhile Jackie's Brother Wheezer (Robert Hutchins) complains that Jack is talking in his sleep and keeping him awake at night saying things like, "I love my darling I love you moony moony and toopsy toopsy." Jack is ready to clock his brother but Mother Cooper (May Wallace) grabs Jack just in time. Meanwhile Miss Crabtree is looking to rent a room and by coincidence excepts the offer at Jackie's house. Next the memorable mothball dinner scene as Sister Mary says, "the soup tastes like Papa's coat smell." Next Chubby comes a calling as an anxious suitor with bag of candy and flowers in hand. Jackie is forced to leave the living room as Chubby takes his place on the couch to serenade an unsuspecting Miss Crabtree. Jackie tries to do his best to sabotage their romantic setting with distasteful props and noise makers. I love the way Hal Roach incorporates the scenes with his vast array of melodies played throughout his comedic shorts. What a weird love triangle but done in good taste as the writing is priceless in this Our Gang short. One of the funniest!

What can I say? other than that I absolutely adore this movie.

[Kieran_Kenney · 17 September 2003]

Yes. I have a deep love for Love Business. It is arguably the most

charming of all the Our Gang shorts. And I've seen so many...

This one hits upon the romantic fixations that kids develop for their

teachers. There's nothing bad about it here. In a film like this,

Miss Crabtree and Chubby Chainey can kiss without fear of a

lawsuit. June Marlow, a now mostly unremembered actress who

was both very beautiful and even more talented, brought to life the

character of the schoolteacher Miss Crabtree in many Our Gang

films (the very last was Readin' and Writin'), and her character was

loved by all who were taught by her. All her male students had

fairly innocent crushes on her. Sounds like a slice of real life, don't

it?

Well, in this one, Miss Crabtree takes a room at a boarding house

owned by the mother of one of her smitten students, the timelessly

wonderful Jackie Cooper. His little brother Wheezer knows all

about it, and how! Chubby is busy down at the local movie house,

demonstrating his courtly love-making technique to a cardboard

cut out of Greta Garbo, when he finds out where Miss Crabtree is

shacked up. A date is aranged between the two of them. That

scene is very memorable, as well as the scene before it where

Marianne (another adorable little actress) tells Miss Crabtree that

she is also in love with Chubby. Miss Crabtree says, "Oh, well

then, I'm your rival." to which Marianne replies "Well, I don't know

anything about rifles!"

The date is a sequence that is suprisingly charming. When I first

saw this movie, I was probably 6, I didn't think anything was wrong

with it. I still don't to tell you the truth. Some great lines come out

of that scene too. "Don't call me Norman. Call my Chubsy-Ubsy."

"Miss Crabtree, there's something lying heavily on my heart." "Oh,

Chubsy Ubsy, there's gonna be something heavy on your nose!"

"Miss Crabtree, I hate to see you living as a chamber maid. Marry

me, and live like a queen." He says it just like he means it, too.

There's integrity for ya.

Another scene worth mentioning is the dinner, where a soup is

serves with mothballs accidently mixed in. The faces Marianne

makes are unforgattable.

The magic and beauty of these films was that, even though these

kids fought bad guys, fires, built amazing contraptions out of

household appliances and outsmarted adults, the movies saw

them for what they were: normal little kids. Exceptionally talented

kids were the actors, but they seemed to play themselves. In the

scene where Chubby blushes in front of Miss Crabtree (who can

blame him?). They feel pain, jealousy, oppression, anger, love

and excitement, and it rings true when you see it in their eyes and

heare them speek it with such integrity as one rarely hears. The

kids are indeed nothing but real kids, and that's a beautiful thing.

You Gotta Love "Love Business"

[Scritzy · 10/10 · 29 July 2000]

One of my all-time favorite "Our Gang" shorts, starring the inimitable Jackie Cooper, the ever-engaging Mary Ann Jackson and the hysterical Norman "Chubby" Chaney. Jackie, in love with Miss Crabtree, is worried when she comes to board at his mother's house; how will it be to have the object of his affection under the same roof? Kid Brother Wheezer is delighted, however, telling Miss Crabtree, "Now Jackie can sleep with YOU and call YOU tootsie-tootsie and moonie-moonie." (Jackie's dreams of Miss Crabtree have been disturbing Wheezer's sleep.) Adding to Jackie's distress is Farina's contention that Jackie will have to "slick up" since the teacher is living with him. (Stymie demurs, proclaiming, "I wouldn't wash MY feet for NOBODY!")

Jackie's problems become worse when Chubby shows up to give Miss Crabtree flowers and candy and tells her, "Don't call me Norman, call me Chubsy-Ubsy!" When she kisses him, he bounces up and down, yelling "Whoopee!" But when he begins to court the fragile beauty, saying, "Oh, Miss Crabtree, there's something lying heavy on my heart," Jackie appears, threatening, "Oh, Chubsy-Ubsy, there's going to be something lying heavy on your nose!"

It is always poignant to watch a film like "Love Business," knowing what history had in store for those adorable kids: Chubby died at age 18, Wheezer at 20; Stymie became a druggie (but cleaned up his act in adulthood and was a well-loved character actor until his death); June Marlowe (Miss Crabtree) got Parkinson's disease; and even Pete the Pup got bum-rapped because he was a pit bull. But tragedy cannot dim the luster of the "Our Gang" films because, for the most part, they were so well-done.

Thank God for films like "Love Business," in which the teacher can kiss a kid and not get sued, where a woman can serve mothball soup and not even make anyone sick, and where a schoolboy rivalry over who loves the teacher doesn't result in a showdown with assault weapons. That kind of innocence doesn't exist anymore. But though it's so very innocent, "Love Business" is also so very, very funny.

Gettin' Mushy With The Little Rascals

[Ron Oliver · 10/10 · 11 June 2000]

An OUR GANG Comedy Short.

Jackie & Chubby have LOVE BUSINESS on their mind: they both are infatuated with their teacher, Miss Crabtree. When they each try to declare their passion on the same evening, things get a bit complicated...

A very funny little film. Highlights: Chubby & Dorothy's dialogue; eating the moth ball soup. The inimitable Stymie also has some choice moments. That's June Marlowe as pretty Miss Crabtree.

This is the film that provides the famous shot of Chubby kissing `Garbo'. Sharp-eyed movie mavens will recognize Charley Chase & Thelma Todd in the large movie poster behind Chubby.

Love Business is another great Our Gang short

[tavm · 10/10 · 22 October 2014]

This Hal Roach comedy short, Love Business, is the one hundred fourth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the sixteenth talkie. Jackie is so in love with Miss Crabtree, he always looks at her picture and says, "I love you" constantly to the consternation of Wheezer who's always hugged and kissed by him when they're sleeping together! Now she's a border at his house. Chubby is also crushing on her heavily and when he finds out, comes to the house later that day in order to court her! I'll stop there and just say this was the funniest of the Jackie/Miss Crabtree trilogy in the series with great punchlines provided by Wheezer, Stymie, Mary Ann, and Dorothy. And June Marlowe is, as always, utterly charming as the pretty teacher. So on that note, Love Business is highly recommended.

Probably the most adult of the early talkies, and the most intelligent!

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

There are plenty of malapropisms in the best of the Miss Crabtree episodes where Jackie and Chubby both admit crushes on her, creating a very funny situation when she moves in with Jackie's family. Chubby, kissing a movie theater standee of Greta Garbo (pretending that she's June Marlowe's Miss Crabtree), reciting love sonnets while the hidden Dorothy DeBorba (as Echo!) repeats an alternate version. They continuously get funnier, and so does this entry. "I'm a dunkin' fool!" Stymie says adorably (referring to dunking bread at dinner), then misinterprets "eticate" for "eat a cat", followed by Mary Ann's hysterically twisted grimaces upon eating tainted soup. Chubby's visit with Miss Crabtree is hysterically interrupted by jealous Jackie and almost gets Wheezer in trouble. Everything in this episode is picture perfect.

Little Jackie in Love

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 24 August 2015]

"Love Business" is a 1931 short film starring Hal Roach's Rascals. Roach worked with some of the greatest silent film stars and here he moved on successfully into the sound era. Same can be said about writer H.M. Walker. This Rascals short has Jackie in the center of it. As the title already suggests, he has a crush on his teacher and as if it isn't already bad enough that the other kids are mocking him, the teacher moves in a room in his mother's apartment, so he is constantly reminded of his eternal love. And then he even gets a competitor for Miss Crabtree's affections, an older boy. Life's tough for little Jackie. This one is 20 minutes long, has sound and is black-and-white, which all applies to most other Rascals films. Still, this is certainly one of the more known movies. Jackie Cooper is pretty much the only Rascal, who not only didn't die very early, but even had a successful career in film for many decades to come. This one here was made in 1931 when he scored his Oscar nomination for "Skippy" and became one of the biggest Hollywood stars at the age of not even 10. He carries this short film nicely and it's a decent watch all in all. Recommended.

About 6:25 into this live-action short . . .

[tadpole-596-918256 · 7/10 · 12 January 2018]

. . . a young chick says to her male companion, "My heart is filled with joy; I want to wet my pants." LOVE BUSINESS is the third in a series of brief documentaries about Primary School Sex Education in the so-called nation of Canadia (aka, America's Northern Threat). Some may call this trio of Sex Shorts "frank and prescient," but most folks I know think they're simply crude and counter-productive. Nasty Girl's quote (see above) is not the only stomach-turning Non Sequitar broached to her "Little Rascal" juvenile delinquent cohorts by Sex Ed temptress "Miss Crabtree." Oblivious to the needs of the LGBT-Q Community, Ms. C. singles out the White Boys alone for distribution of her signed photos (which include hand-written "mash notes" on the back). It's apparent that these poor young lads' homework assignment is to formulate precocious marriage proposals. (Like most residents of Canadia, Ms. C. is as Racist as they come, and because that failed nation festered under "Jim Crow" laws then--and now--Farina and Stymie are excluded from her orgy proposal.) If YOU haven't viewed LOVE BUSINESS yet, just try to imagine your local Pre-School running a HARRAD EXPERIMENT of its own.

Did You Know??

[deeshawn4 · 16 June 2005]

This wonderful Hal Roach short was originally (and timely) released to theaters by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on Valentine's Day in 1931.

Was the last of three Our Gang comedies made using the 'Talking Title' girls announcing the opening credits.

'Love Business' was released the same day that 'Dracula' with Bela Lugosi was released to theaters by Universal Pictures in 1931.

May Wallace, who played Jackie, Mary and Wheezer's mom in this film was well into her fifties at the time it was made.

Jackie Cooper did only two more Our Gang films after this one before he went into features.

Farina was now ten years old, had been with the gang for nine of those ten years, and was to date the longest running player in the series. His place would soon be taken by the youngster who steals most of the scenes from him in 'Love Business'--little Stymie Beard.

Fun Short

[Michael_Elliott · 23 December 2008]

Love Business (1931)

*** (out of 4)

Our Gang short has Jackie's crush on Miss Crabtree (June Marlowe) growing and growing but things take a turn for the good when she rents a room in his parent's house. The good vibes quickly go away when he learns that Chubby plans on asking her to marry him. This is another winner in the early part of the series and once again a lot of its charm comes from Marlowe. While I wouldn't say she gives a good performance I do this she's awfully cute in her role and manages to be quite charming as the teacher all the kids have a crush on. There are many funny moments in the film including one around the dunner table where moth balls have fallen into the soup. Another funny scene, and the highlight, happens when Chubby comes calling with flowers and candy. Matthew 'Stymie' Beard steals the film in his few scenes.