Classic Film Guide

Southern Yankee, A (1948)

Directed by Edward Sedgwick, this Melvin Frank & Norman Panama (Road to Utopia (1946)) story, with screenplay by Harry Tugend and stunts written by Buster Keaton, features the comedic talents of Red Skelton.

Aubrey Filmore (Skelton) is a goofy, bumbling hotel bellboy in St. Louis, 1865, who desperately wants to join the Union Army. He continuously pesters the head of the Union secret service, Colonel Baker (Art Baker), to no avail. However, when Aubrey accidentally captures the "grey spider", the South's notorious spy Major Drumman (George Coulouris), and meets his contact Sallyann Weatherby (Arlene Dahl), the Colonel figures he hasn't anything to lose, except Aubrey's life, and decides to give the young man a chance.

Aubrey is given two packages of information, one is a phony map of the Union's military plans and the other is instructions for the Colonel's spies who have already infiltrated the South. He is then told not to confuse the two with a ditty not unlike the one Danny Kaye made famous in The Court Jester (1956). Of course, you know where this is going to go even before you see it play out. Aubrey's mission as "the grey spider", to deliver the phony map to Colonel Weatherby (Charles Dingle) etc., is complicated when he injured on the battlefield once he successfully gets through to the Confederate side of the line.

In an Army hospital, Brian Donlevy (Beau Geste (1940)), playing the straight man Kurt Devlynn, finds that his fiancée Sallyann is attracted to the recovering boob that is somehow the great Southern spy. To discredit him, he enlists Capt. Jed Calbern (John Ireland - All the King's Men (1949)) to help relieve Aubrey of his papers before he gets to Col. Weatherby, but they fail. Naturally, Aubrey gives the wrong papers to the Colonel anyway, which the undercover Union spy, Capt. Lorford (Lloyd Gough), discovers when he gets the map instead. Joyce Compton appears briefly as a Southern belle who dances with Aubrey and unawares introduces the two Union men.

Meanwhile, the real "grey spider" escapes and heads South. So, now it's a race against time as Devlynn & Calbern plot to steal the papers before General Watkins (Minor Watson) arrives, while Aubrey & Lorford try to exchange them. Though a few of the gags are repeated once too often, and you may tire of Skelton's constant cross-eyed mugging and pratfalls, this comedy entertains all the way to its conveniently timed ending.

Several familiar character actors appear uncredited in this film including: Louise Beavers, Cliff Clark, Jeff Corey, Henry Hall, Paul Harvey, and Glenn Strange.