Two Weeks to Live (1943)

Chester Lauck and Norris Goff made the characters of Lum&Abner household names, in their time they were as famous on radio as Amos&Andy. Both men were fortunate in that they looked like the characters they played on radio so making films was a smooth transition for them. During the height of their popularity in the Forties before television they made a few films and Two Weeks To Live is one of them.These two gentle rustics, proprietors of the local grocery store in Pine Ridge Arkansas find out that Abner has inherited a railroad and they start dreaming big. Turns out it's just a Hooterville Cannonball type line that carried ore from a gold mine that Abner's uncle owned back in the day that's long played out. In fact when probate and taxes are done they owe money. And they've sold right of ways to the various farmers back in Pine Ridge and they're in some deep debt now.To pay it off they engage in various schemes as the plot moves from one crazy situation to another. Abner even gets a diagnosis mixed up with a man with Two Weeks To Live hence the title. Lum starts using Abner the way Crosby used Hope in those various Road pictures. They also get involved with saboteurs, a crazy mad scientist who wants to send one of the boys to Mars in a rocket, and a window washer with an invisible dog.The production values aren't much, the film looks like it was shot with a brownie camera, still it's quite amusing. Lum&Abner were the predecessor for the Beverly Hillbillies, Andy Griffith and all sorts of television with a rural red state setting. Their naive and gentle humor is still amusing.

Production values on this bit of nostalgia aren't terribly high, and many of the supporting characters aren't very believable, but this little movie is a joy to listen to. Lum and Abner are just as funny as they are on the radio.It's very clear that later shows owed a debt to these two great comedians; where would the Beverly Hillbillies and Andy Griffith been without them? Lum and Abner did a lot to bring rural America into focus, and to pioneer the "country-bumpkin-does-well-despite-himself" genre.This is one of several movies starring the denizens of Pine Ridge, Ark. I haven't seen the others yet, but I'll be looking for them.

This is one of my new favorite movies, for many reasons. One is Abners mispronunciation of words and all around silliness. Another one is Lums some-what know-it-all attitude, and the window washer Mr. Pinkeys "inavisible" dog 'Rover'. It all starts when Abners uncle dies and leave him a railroad, then Lum and Abner, thinking they could build a line right there in Piney Woods, Arkansas, ask everyone to invest in there company. After a trip to Chicago to claim the railroad they discover that it is totally dilapidated. Along the way Abner is incorrectly diagnosed as having "Two weeks to live". The boys lose all there money paying Abners uncle's debt's and get themselves stuck in Chicago. They try lots of things to get enough money to get back home and pay every one back.

Cute film. I wasn't familiar with the characters of Lum & Abner from radio or film, and my grandmother didn't really remember them, but we had a good time watching this.Two elderly small-town men from Arkansas are playing checkers at a country store when they learn that one of them has inherited a railroad from his deceased uncle. Before they even go talk to the lawyer, they sell $10,000 dollars worth of shares in it to the people in town, in order to raise the money to purchase land for a right-of-way for a spur line into their town.When they go to the city, they find the railroad is not quite what they thought, and Abner slips down a flight of stairs in the lawyer's skyscraper. After a visit to a doctor, and a mix-up of records, they believe Abner has just two weeks to live, and they must also find a way to pay back the townspeople. A helpful rhyming window-washer with an invisible dog suggests various ways to get money for doing high-risk tasks. Most of the time, they don't complete the task, or decide against it. They also unwittingly miss a couple opportunities to get all the money they need for things they've already done.In one scene, the movie oddly echoes Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936). In that film, one infamous scene involves a boy who's unknowingly carrying a time bomb, and the boy is taking longer to get to his destination than he's supposed to take. There's a particularly tense scene on a bus. In this movie, a character unwittingly carries a time bomb, takes longer than he's supposed to to get where he's going, and along the way temporarily hands the disguised bomb to a young boy, and to a young girl on a bus. I wonder if this was coincidental or not.Anyway, my grandmother and I enjoyed watching this.