Lum and Abner Abroad

The film consists of three two-reel episodes. In each, Lum and Abner visit a different city in Europe.[1]

• In Zagreb, Yugoslavia, the two involve themselves in the disappearance of an American reporter, who is engaged to a local ballerina.
• In Paris, France, a thief and his femme fatale co-conspirator plot to use Lum and Abner as pawns to smuggle a valuable figurine out of the country.
• In Monte Carlo, Monaco, Lum and Abner are mistaken for two much wealthier Americans; a deadbeat duchess sees them as an easy mark and hopes to get a cut of the duo's losses at the local casino. To her dismay, the two hit a lucky streak and end up making 100 times their wager.

• Chester Lauck as Lum Edwards
• Norris Goff as Abner Peabody
• Jill Alis as Marianne Passavetz
• Lila Audres as Collette Bleu
• Gene Gary as Nikolai Brasnovich
• Chris Peters as Croupier
• Nada Nuchich as Lisa Dubroc
• Branko Spoljar as Papa Passavetz
• Jim Kiley as Tommy Ellis
• Steven Voyt as Frankenshpinin
• Vera Misita as Duchess Dubroc
• Vlado Stefancic as Mischa Dramascu
• Josip Batistic as Dignitary

Lum and Abner Abroad was originally conceived as a television series and a comeback vehicle for the Lum and Abner characters. The duo had appeared in six feature films and a long-running radio series between 1935 and 1950, but other than a short-lived radio revival in 1953, had not appeared in media since then. Lum and Abner had made at least one previous effort to transition to television under the more familiar format of the radio show; like Lum and Abner Abroad, that effort was also unsuccessful, although the pilot episode of the other series also survives.[4]

The film was produced on location in Europe, with a Yugoslavian crew and a native supporting cast. The Yugoslavian government wanted to enter the field of film and television production, but hadn't produced anything on a large scale since the silent-film era, so Lum and Abner Abroad became a training project. The equipment was so primitive and the crew so inexperienced that no one knew how to record sound. Director James V. Kern improvised a boom microphone by hanging the mike on a wooden pole. Only a few members of the company spoke English, making the chaotic production similar to Laurel and Hardy's comeback film Atoll K, which had parallel problems.

Had Lum and Abner Abroad been picked up as a TV series, the three shorts would have constituted three individual episodes of the series. As the series was not picked up, the three half-hours were instead hastily strung together and prepared as a feature film.[2] No major American distributor went near it, and it was released in the United States by Joy Houck of Howco Productions, who serviced theaters in rural areas of the nation. Houck correctly reasoned that his target audience would remember the Lum and Abner team.

Lum and Abner Abroad served as James V. Kern's last theatrical directorial effort, as he had shifted almost exclusively to television by this point in his life.

A retrospective review at TV Guide praised Lum and Abner's performances but criticized the poor editing (fade-outs and fade-ins for commercial breaks were left in the theatrical prints) and simplistic script, giving the film one out of five stars.[2]

• Lum and Abner Abroad at IMDb