Wash Your Step

This basically is a short showcase for Hal Le Roy and sisters Cherry and June Preisser. There's a fairly basic plot about Hal working for Complex Washing Machine Company. Their sales are slumping - the sales manager believes that knowing good jokes are the key to making sales. Complex has joke writers - all who happen to think the same joke is hilarious, including an uncredited Ed Wynn who has his secretary write down a joke he heard on the radio - told by Ed Wynn.

Hal Rogers (Le Roy - they don't want to make things too confusing by giving the characters a different first name from the actors) is the one salesman who is making record sales. His gimmick? Singing a song about washing machines (not a common theme for the Billboard Top 100) and tap dancing.

The sales manager sends Hal to 80th & Park Avenue, the home of the owner of Complex Washing Machines. Before the lady of the house shows up in the foyer, there's a variety show going on. There's also this weird bit where portraits start singing. Hal also falls in love with one of the daughters of his former boss. This manages to get Hal fired, but has a great job offer waiting for him, training the sales staff for a competing washing machine manufacturer - the Come Kleen Company.

This is without a doubt, the greatest movie ever made about singing tap dancing door-to- door washing machine sales people.

Hal Rogers (Hal Le Roy) became the best washing machine salesman in his small town by doing his song and dance. His new boss in NYC isn't sure that it would wash in the big city. A scheming manager sends him to the bosses' family and gets him fired. He ends up with a rival and his former bosses' daughter takes a liking to him.

Hal Le Roy is a bit of a forgotten performer. He has a Charlie McCarthy face. More than that, it's his tall lanky frame that is so striking when he starts tap dancing. I don't see this as anything more than a silly non-sense short. There's nothing bad here except maybe the silly premise of a dancing washing machine salesman. Still, the non-sense does have its charms.

Hal Leroy is a washing machine salesman, which means he needs a good supply of jokes to tell customers. But Leroy isn't a joke-teller, he's a dancer, so he woos the boss's daughter and goes to a different washing machine company where his talents fit in better.

Leroy spent most of his career on the stage aside from these Vitaphone shorts and the lead in HAROLD TEEM. Therefore it's no surprise that this is a very stage-y musical short, although the editing is handsomely brisk, and the scenes with the Preisser sisters, June in particular, are charming. This was her stage debut, and over the next dozen years she played juveniles and second leads in mostly undistinguished movies. She died in 1984, age 64.

Hal Le Roy stars as a door to door washing machine salesman. Of all the folks working at the company, he's the only one with positive results and the boss is impressed. But after Hal is set up by his supervisor, the boss' stuck-up wife is angry at him (though it's sure not clear why) and has her husband fire him. Soon, Hal lands on his feet and is teaching a rival washing machine company's staff his sales techniques...which involve singing and dancing!

This is a weird short...there's just no other way to describe it! But it's also cute and likable...and I really enjoyed the strangeness and nice ending.