GASOLINE ALLEY

Scotty Becket and Susan Morrow

GASOLINE ALLEY (1951). Written and directed by Edward Bernds. 

Corky Wallet (Scotty Becket) is out of college and newly married to Hope (Susan Morrow). Corky's father, Walt (Don Beddoe), hopes that Corky will join his father's firm, but Corky wants to make his own mark in the world. A stint as a dishwasher leads to him buying his own diner with financial help from his brother, Skeezix (Jimmy Lydon), and waitress assistance from Hope. When a businessman makes the landlord an offer he can't refuse, Corky has to come up with a plan to save the diner after all of his hard work. 

Don Beddoe and Jimmy Lydon

"Gasoline Alley" was a very long-running newspaper comic strip by Frank O. King in which the characters aged normally as they would in the real world. The strip began with bachelor Walt Wallet discovering an infant boy, Skeezix, on his doorstep. Walter eventually got married and had two more natural children, including Corky, who also married. Skeezix  married and had children as well, including Skipper the sailor. Reading the strip as a child I remember it as being a pleasant comedy-drama but nothing out of the ordinary. I'm afraid the same is true for this low-budget theatrical version of the comic strip.

Director Edward Bernds keeps the pic moving but he should have allowed someone else to do the script, which is mediocre and full of old gags. Scotty Becket, the very talented child actor of My Son, My Son and others, is fine and sympathetic but kind of wasted, as his was a very strong talent. Jimmy Lydon [Strange Illusion], famous for the Henry Aldrich films, is also good but isn't given much to do. The other assorted players are all okay -- especially Byron Foulger as a customer -- but the material is pretty much beneath everyone. There was one sequel, Corky of Gasoline Alley. These were Beckett's last starring roles although he did a few pictures afterward until tragically succumbing to a drug overdose at age 38.

Verdict: Probably not as good as the comic strip. **.