Century Film Project

Celebrating the movies our ancestors loved

Tag: 1915

May 14, 2023

A Lover’s Lost Control (1915)

Syd Chaplin, in the year after his more famous brother’s departure from Keystone, attempted to build a slapstick career of his own at the studio with his character of “Gussle.” Running through similar situations to those faced by the Little Tramp, how does Syd fair as an early comedian? This short is one example.

Lovers Lost Control2

The movie begins by showing us Gussle and his wife, played by Phyllis Allen, arriving by auto in front of a department store. The exterior shot gives us a look at Los Angeles of the day, with Syd’s car looking a bit antiquated compared to the sedan across the street – which is parked behind a horse & buggy, reminding us of the transitional nature of technology in the teens. He and Phyllis indulge a few pratfalls before moving on to the main center of action. Gussle, like Charlie, wears ill-fitting clothes and carries a cane. His mustache is small, but it does have small handlebars that cover more of his lip. His wife approaches the counter in what seems to be the ladies’ underthings area of the store while he tries to hit on shopgirls and customers. In the process, he gets a rather suggestive item caught on his cane and tries to conceal the mannequin’s less-dressed state. Phyllis becomes annoyed with him and boxes his ear before dragging him back to the counter by it. Read the rest of this entry »

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September 5, 2022

Do-Re-Mi-Boom! (1915)

Chester Conklin plays a typical Keystone tramp in this Mack Sennett comedy from the year after Charlie Chaplin left the studio. He brings none of the sympathy Chaplin did (although Chaplin’s Keystone roles were his least sympathetic as well), and the movie hinges on increasingly madcap action for laughs.

Do Re Mi Boom

The movie begins with Conklin listening to the piano playing of Vivian Edwards, standing outside her window, dubiously trespassing on her property and peeping in at her. He is so moved by her playing that he starts to sing along, which causes her to come and speak with him, apparently unconcerned about his creepy behavior and odd appearance. Her music teacher (Charles Arling) now arrives and a rivalry is established. Arling quite reasonably takes offense at Conklin’s behavior, and drives him away with threats. He then remonstrates with Vivian not to encourage unhoused individuals to hang about her window making moony eyes at her, but soon engages in a bit of his own sexual harassment toward his pupil. Conklin wanders into the park, and sees an organ-grinder (Harry Booker) with his monkey attracting a crowd. This gives him the good idea to steal the organ and monkey for himself. The organ grinder is understandably upset by this, and being a swarthy foreigner in a Keystone film, naturally avails himself of an anarchist bomb. Conklin attempts to serenade his ostensible sweetie outside her window with the organ, which results in Arling coming out and giving him what for. Arling wins the fight and chucks Conklin into a trash can, where the foreigner tosses his bomb. Luckily, it has quite a long fuse and Conklin is able to put it out in time.

Do Re Mi Boom1

Now armed with the bomb himself, Conklin gets a new idea and follows the music teacher back to his hotel. Despite behaving an a very conspicuous manner and being asked to leave by the desk clerk, he is able to sneak up to Arling’s room and gain entry while he is out. He has the clever idea to hide the bomb inside his piano, rigged to ignite when certain notes are played. However, before he can effect an escape, Arling returns with Vivian and they sit down to another lesson. Conklin, trapped behind the piano, can do nothing but gesture in a panic. Now the monkey climbs up to the window, perhaps seeking Conklin who was his last owner. He jumps on the piano and it starts to smoke, now Conklin jumps out and tells them a bomb is inside. Together, they all push the piano out the window, but Conklin falls out with it and soon he and the monkey are barreling down the street on top of a runaway piano while the fuse grows shorter and shorter. The organ grinder sees them and gives chase, perhaps demanding the return of his monkey (or his bomb), while Arling and Vivian watch from the window. The bomb explodes, apparently resolving the issue and the survivors kiss.

Do Re Mi Boom2

Watching something like this today, I can sympathize with critics of the day who called the movies “vulgar.” That’s not the word I would choose, but this is certainly pretty low-brow and low in production value. There’s little effort at characterization or story, just escalating zaniness and social cliché. There’s really no one to identify with here, except maybe the monkey – the two rivals are equally violent and inappropriate, one just happens to be in poorer clothing than the other, the foreigner is the worst kind of stereotype, and the woman is completely objectified and apparently has no will of her own. Despite a lack of credits, I’ve gone ahead and named her as Vivian Edwards based on a picture from “The Silent Era,” which is usually more reliable than the imdb, which credits her as “Girl in Hotel Lobby.” She was a busy comedienne of the day, and had worked with Chaplin in his time at Keystone, including on “His Prehistoric Past” and “The Masquerader.”

Director: Walter Wright

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Chester Conklin, Vivian Edwards, Charles Arling, Harry Booker, Fred Fishback, Charles Lakin, William Sheer

Run Time: 11 Min, 40 secs

You can watch it for free: here.

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February 19, 2022

Gussle’s Day of Rest (1915)

This Mack Sennett “park comedy” stars Charlie Chaplin’s brother Sydney in a role about as close to the “Little Tramp” as possible. Although by 1915, Charlie had begun making more sympathetic movies about his character, Syd is still definitely in the earlier mode of funny-because-he’s-so-bad.

Gussles Day of Rest

The movie begins with Gussle (Syd) and his wife (Phyllis Allen) at the boardwalk, looking out into the ocean. A boy approaches Gussle and offers to sell him a newspaper. Gussle agrees, but has no money on him, so he cadges some from his wife. He sees that she keeps her change in a stocking, and sticks the end of it (the part with the coins) into his pocket, then uses a pair of scissors to snip off the part that is in her hand. When Nancy sees this, he tries to accuse the salesboy, but she is onto him. They then pass by a bar, and Gussle tries to go in, but wifey stops him. The go into a park, standing on the road, and squabble for a while until Gussle is suddenly hit from behind by a car and knocked over. The driver of that car (Slim Summerville) was distracted by his passenger (Cecile Arnold), and soon Gussle is, too. Now, Gussle and his wife squabble with Slim and Gussle pushes the car back with his foot a couple of times, causing it to careen wildly in reverse, but Slim drives back to the scene each time. Phyliis faints from all the exertion, but somehow manages to wake up to hit Gussle each time he shows too much interest in Cecile or takes a swig of the whiskey offered to help wake her up.

Gussles Day of Rest1

Gussle and Phyllis continue their day in the park, eventually snoozing under a tree together. Gussle wakes up first and blows cigar smoke into her open mouth, then puts a balloon in it. He distracts her when she awakes, annoyed, by calling her attention to the birds singing, then takes out a slingshot and starts trying to shoot them down. His aim is apparently poor, however; both he and his wife wind up getting a round in the eye when they return to earth. Slim and Cecile, meanwhile, have set up a picnic, which Gussle crashes, evidently with Cecile’s approval. Gussle somehow gets a fork stuck in his behind, which takes a good deal of effort on the part of Slim and Cecile to withdraw.

Gussles Day of Rest2

Annoyed by Gussle’s interloping, Slim tries to enlist the aid of Gussle’s wife, but she thinks he’s a masher when he wakes her up, and she knocks him down. Soon, Gussle and Slim are fighting, and Cecile takes a powder. Then Phyllis joins in and soon is fighting Cecile as well. Phyllis chases Gussle, who knocks a zookeeper into the pen with a leopard. This gives Gussle the good idea of doing the same thing with his wife, then going back to collect Cecile. A cop (Edward F. Cline) takes an interest, and Gussle sends Cecile away, then distracts him by sashaying around the well until he can hit him with his own billy club. With Phyllis and Slim in pursuit, Gussle puts Cecile in the car, but he can’t get it to start. Finally, it starts just in time to run over the cop, who hits Slim when he gets up again. The end is a high-speed chase with Gussle and Cecile in the car and the others on foot. Cecile’s gestures show us the car is out of control and Gussle swerves all over the road. They crash into a construction site where dynamite is being used, and an explosion dumps dirt all over the car. Gussle pokes his head out of the dirt, but there’s no sign of Cecile. He digs down until he finds her hair, then tugs at it and it comes off – revealing itself as a wig and the top of her head as bald. Gussle puts the wig back and pushes the dirt over it. The end.

Gussles Day of Rest3

It’s typical enough of the genre, but without whatever the magic was that made Charlie transcend it. Certain scenes, such as the cigar-smoke sequence and the fork in the behind, have the feeling of being ad-libbed comedy of the sort Charlie excelled at, but which just falls flat in Syd’s hands. There are more close-ups than you might expect for a 1915 movie, but the quality of the existing prints makes it hard to appreciate. Syd seems to play “innocent” a lot, fluttering his eyelashes and tilting his head to the side, but his cuteness doesn’t make up for the unlikability of his character. It was funny to spot Buster Keaton‘s future co-director, Edward Cline, in the role of the cop. Here, he’s a typical hot-headed Keystone Kop, which is kind of needed to distract us from Syd’s performance. Like a lot of two-reelers, the movie is divided into a “part one” and “part two,” but without any clear division between them. On the whole, it seems to me that cutting it down to a single reel would have been the best way to make it funnier.

Director: F. Richard Jones

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Sydney Chaplin, Phyllis Allen, Slim Summerville, Cecile Arnold, Edward F. Cline

Run Time: 20 Min, 30 secs

You can watch it for free: here (complete, with a terrible soundtrack), or here (incomplete, worse quality print, but better music).

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November 27, 2021

A Bird’s a Bird (1915)

Just in time for the holidays comes this Keystone comedy about two husbands trying to provide a turkey for their wives’ tables. Lacking in big names, this one gives a good example of the more “pedestrian” comic output of the studio.

Chester Conklin plays Mr. Walrus, who we meet at a raffle, where he is buying up tickets in hopes of winning the grand prize – a turkey to take home for dinner. Despite his multiple tickets, when the wheel is spun he is not the winner. Now Mr. Spegle (Harry D. Ward dressed to look sort of like Ford Sterling) comes along and buys one ticket, then tricks the “foreigner” (William Hauber) who legitimately won into giving him his ticket and he takes home the bird. Walrus goes home to wife Minta Durfee and explains that he wasn’t able to get a turkey, and she expresses anxiety as her parents are coming for dinner and expect meat. A close up on a parrot in a cage gives Walrus an idea and he makes an incompetent effort to catch it, but is caught in the act by Minta. He then wonders how cat meat would taste as he sits by the family pet. This time Minta takes his knife away. Luckily, however, the Spegles are just next door and Mr. Spegle puts the turkey in the window to cool, having just finished roasting it. Now the foreigner walks up and plants a bomb in the turkey. Walrus takes the rather more American-materialist form of revenge by taking the turkey. He presents it to Minta just as she is despairing of having a decent dinner for her parents. She is suspicious at first and checks to make sure the parrot is still alive, but overjoyed once she is convinced it’s a real turkey. She instructs him to set the table, and he does a quick pratfall where he tries to lean on one of the extended “arms” after opening it out and knocks all of their good china on the floor. He also “presses” his suit by laying it out on a window seat and sitting on it. Minta meets her parents at the door and invites the neighbors, Mr. & Mrs. Spegle over to meet them. Of course, they are asked to stay for dinner, and Mr. Spegle recognizes the bird. Just as he is announcing Walrus’s crime, the foreigner comes up to watch the results of his handywork, but a fight breaks out among the family and the bird gets tossed out the window, the explosion throws the foreigner far into the air and he lands on Minta’s dad, crashing through the ceiling. The final minutes of the film are just the foreigner, Walrus , and Spegle locked in silly combat and comeuppance.

I think this movie would have benefitted from the presence of a Fatty Arbuckle, Mable Normand, or even a (real) Ford Sterling. None of the players seems to be able to carry it as is. We don’t expect any kind of subtlety in a Keystone plot, but this one is very weak sauce indeed. As grim as the section is in which Conklin seems to be contemplating serving a household pet to his in-laws, this is the part with the greatest comedic potential, but it is left to sit – possibly because this isn’t a cartoon and chasing live animals around wasn’t going to be feasible in single takes (though Normand had handled the concept admirably in “A Little Hero”). The other piece of this movie is the various dinner-table arguments that take place while the bomb ticks away, reminding me of Hitchcock’s famous “bomb theory” of suspense, which should also translate to comedy: things are funnier if you know that all the tomfoolery is just a distraction from a ticking bomb, or so you might think. Here, it doesn’t seem to work, maybe because the audience doesn’t really trust the narrative to stick to any logical rhythm – the bomb’s going to go off when it feels like it, not when it is supposed to, so we lose that sense of urgency. At any rate, this movie isn’t a complete washout, but it’s not among the best works in Keystone’s canon.

Director: Unknown (possibly Walter Wright)

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Chester Conklin, Minta Durfee, Harry Ward, Willaim Hauber, Alice Davenport, Fred Hibbard

Run Time: 13 Min

You can watch it for free: here (no music).

 

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September 18, 2021

The Delicatessen Shop (1915)

As with last week’s post, “The Conquest of Canaan,” this is a movie I watched during the Cinecon online film festival this year, and like many movies you can see there, it’s hard to find otherwise. Hence, I’ve only had the chance to see it once to prepare this review.

Delicatessen Shop

Joe Weber and Lew Fields were “Dutch” comedians from Vaudeville, who did an immigrant act based on malapropisms and misunderstandings, Lew as the smart, skinny one, and Joe as the fat, dumb one. Relatively little of this movie takes place in the delicatessen in which they apparently work together, Almost immediately after the credits, they break out into a huge fight, breaking up and throwing everything in the store at each other. This is interrupted when one of their wives shows up and says “the kids have eloped” – apparently referring to one another’s daughter and son. They go into a lengthy Keystone-style chase with cars and horse wagons, but only get there after the minister pronounces the kids man and wife. They make common cause, but somehow wind up in jail. They then go through an elaborate escape and are chased by cops until the climactic crash-up.

Joe-Weber-1901

Joe Weber in 1901

This movie follows a pretty standard formula for slapstick, and is essentially built around two comedy chases. The action was so fast most of the time, I had a hard time getting an un-blurry screenshot. It was funny at times, if childishly so, but I would guess that Weber & Fields were better when they could use their voices. According to online sources, they had broken up in 1904, and Fields went on to become a successful theater owner and producer. There were various reunions, most famously their first one in 1912 in which they performed as a duo at one of Weber’s theaters, and presumably in 1915 they were still friendly enough to work together on this and a few other movies (I believe the intro at Cinecon said three, but I could be misremembering as I didn’t make a note). The synopsis published in “Moving Picture World” focuses on the background to the plot seen here, explaining that the two friends have run their shop for years; their friendship deteriorating into suspicion and jealousy as it became more successful: “at night each slept on one side of the cash register.” Thus, two Jewish actors used Jewish stereotypes to create comedy for a mixed audience of Jews and non-Jews.

Lew_Fields_(SAYRE_895)

Lew Fields in 1912.

The film making for this movie is pretty lackluster for 1915. Produced in Fort Lee at the World Film Company, it was presumably a second-string production for that short-lived but dynamic studio. Editing is minimal, and the use of the chase format allows them to re-use shots for both the pursued and pursuer, economizing on camera set ups. The sets are simplistic, reminiscent of an earlier era in cinema, and the acting is predictably too broad, as is often the case when stage actors first go on the big screen. Worth it mostly because it’s a rare chance to see old vaudevillians in action, otherwise Weber & Fields would just be fragments of old reviews and promotional posters to us now.

Director: Unknown

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Joe Weber, Lew Fields

Run Time: 8 Min

Not currently available for free online. If you find it, please comment and provide a link.

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August 4, 2019

Mabel, Fatty and the Law (1915)

Alternate Titles: “Fatty’s Spooning Days,” “Fatty, Mable and the Law.”

This short from Keystone stars two of its biggest stars after (as well as before) the departure of Charlie Chaplin: Mabel Normand and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. Both are at the top of their game, but the movie suffers from Keystone’s slap-dash approach to plot.

Fatty and Mabel are married at the beginning of the film, but Fatty is flirting with the maid, triggering a bout of violence from Mabel. Another couple is established in essentially the same situation: here the husband is played by Harry Gribbon and the wife by Minta Durfee (Arbuckle’s real-life spouse). Both couples decide to patch things up by a trip to the park. They each sit on benches beneath signs that say “No Spooning Allowed.” Minta goes for an ice cream, leaving Harry alone, and Fatty spots her and soon ditches Mabel. Mabel and Harry strike up a flirtation as do Minta and Fatty. Now, a Keystone Cop in a tree spots the couples through a telescope and summons cops to arrest them (one is Arbuckle’s cousin Al St. John). Mabel and Harry manage to evade them, but Minta and Fatty are nicked. After some shenanigans with the cops in a crowded holding cell, each calls their respective maids and leaves a message from jail. The spouses rush to spring them, also taking the opportunity to shame them for their bad behavior, but when they see one another, they behave so awkwardly as to give away their own indiscretions. The entire group squabbles until the cop from the tree comes out and glowers at them, causing them to run for cover, one at a time.

The plot centers around an understanding of the concept of “spooning,” which has I believe fallen out of fashion. Most people today think of it either as a sexual position, or as its equivalent in cuddling – most spooning is done naked, and wouldn’t have been appropriate in a commercially released film in 1915. However, what we see the couples arrested for here is just sitting side by side, snuggling a bit, or in the case of Harry and Mabel, walking alongside holding hands. I think there is a deliberate implication of “soliciting” here that adult audiences would recognize, but which is suppressed by the use of the more innocent-sounding word. That’s also part of the humor, if I’m following it right. At any rate, this is a fairly typical Keystone domestic/situational comedy, in which the spouses are equally guilty of philandering, and get caught and shamed for their actions. It never really descends into the kind of chaos we would expect in a full-on slapstick movie, but the cast, especially the cops, get bits of physical comedy. Mabel is especially funny when she beats up on Fatty in the beginning of the film.

Director: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Mabel Normand, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Harry Gribbon, Minta Durfee, Al St. John, Joe Bordeaux, Glen Cavendar, Josef Swickard, Alice Davenport, Frank Hayes

Run Time: 12 Min

You can watch it for free: here.

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April 28, 2019

Cartoons on Tour (1915)

This short from Edison is another very basic animated cartoon – with a live action wrap-around story – from the silent era. Most of the animated sequences are devoted to low humor and slapstick, although the final animated sequence is meant to be uplifting, or at least charming, by comparison.

The movie begins by establishing a young country girl (Maxine Brown) who is waiting on her porch with a comic book for her lover to take her and elope. Her father (William Chalfin) comes out to say good day on his way about some errand and she hides the letter and the marriage license in the comic book. Then, she begins to read, which takes us into the world of the “Animated Grouch Chasers” comic and “The Tales of Silas Bunkum.” Here, a group of rural rubes is sitting around telling tall tales, establishing a second wrap-around story. One tells of a time when he was stranded on a desert island with nothing but a snuff box. We see him take a pinch and sneeze, then he comes upon an elephant who is crying for some reason. The farmer offers the elephant some snuff and it sneezes so hard that it blows him onto the deck of a passing ship. We come out of the story-within-a-story to see the farmer’s companions knock him off his perch for lying. “Folks don’t beleive [sic] nuthin’ no more,” he complains. We now come back to the live-action world to find the girl laughing hysterically at the cartoon.

Now the beau (Johnnie Walker) arrives in his car, but he’s having mechanical problems. The girl manages to locate the problem by putting her hand on the motor at random, and the two are off. The soon overtake her father, and they offer him a ride, without saying where they are going. They give him the comic book to distract him. He reads about “The Kelly Kids’ Kite.” This is another animated sequence in which a small child is given a kite string to hold, only to be pulled high into the air and suffer an encounter with an aggressive bird. There’s an unfortunate caricature of an African American child in this one, which I won’t go into, but the end result is the child losing his grip, but his petticoats open up like a parachute and allow him to land safely in a bale of hay before being chased off by the farmer whose sleep he disturbed. Once they arrive at the pastor’s the father continues to read “Mr. Hicks in Nightmareland.” This story involves a misbehaving child-sized husband with a much larger, domineering wife. As the story opens, he’s using a telescope to ogle a bathing woman, but his wife puts a stop to that and holds him in her lap. Mr.s Hicks now dozes off and we see his dreams. He finds the fountain of youth and takes a swim, apparently becoming a baby about the age of the child in the previous film (though with a mustache). He runs away from a frog and steals a bottle from another child before finding a pretty woman and climbing into her lap. Of course, as he goes to give her a kiss he wakes up and finds himself kissing his own wife. The father finds this the funniest comic he’s read so far.

However, now he finds the letter and realizes why the car has been parked in front of a minister’s house so long, and he runs in to remonstrate with the now-wedded couple. They put him at ease by showing him a final comic, “The Pleasure of Being a Grandpa,” which depicts an old man dozing and dreaming of bouncing a little one on his knee. This brings the family together, reconciled.

This movie closely resembles the work of Winsor McCay, and there are some indications that the creator, Raoul Barré, may have deliberately been cribbing from McCay. For one thing, there’s the proximity of the title “Mr. Hicks in Nightmareland” to McCay’s famous comic “Little Nemo in Slumberland.” For another, there’s the elephant, which dances in a manner very similar to “Gertie the Dinosaur,” released the previous year. At any rate, the similar style is partly due to the sparse backgrounds, a result of the labor-intensive methods of creating animation in those days before cels had been invented. The movie overall works well enough, but the live action is visually uninspired and wouldn’t be any big deal in terms of plot or acting in 1915. It’s mostly a showcase for the animation, which would have been impressive at the time, even though it looks primitive today.

Director: Raoul Barré

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Maxine Brown, Johnnie Walker, William Chalfin

Run Time: 11 Min, 25 secs

You can watch it for free: here.

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February 9, 2019

The Ruse (1915)

This early short starring William S. Hart lacks the complexity of his later features, but still differs from the more generic Westerns of the era by presenting a decidedly unusual storyline for its star. Hart presents a moral tale in which the simple values of the frontier are contrasted with the corrupt climate of the urban Midwest.

The movie opens by introducing the villain (John Davidson), a crooked mine promoter and his innocent stenographer, May Dawson (Clara Williams), who Davidson seems unduly interested in. Then the scene shifts to the West, where Hart as “Bat” Peters rides into town and defends an old drunk against a bully at a bar, then goes to check his mail. He has a letter from the promoter, who is interested in buying his mine. He suggests bringing samples of the ore to Chicago with him. Bat does so, and he and May make eyes at one another when they meet, and she suggests he room at her mother’s boarding house. Meanwhile, the crook decides to swindle Bat out of his mine, and makes plans with a small gang of hoods to pull it off. However, May hears the details of their plan, so she is kidnapped and held in a small room while the plan is put into action. Bat signs over his mine in exchange for cash and a “bogus Westerner” is introduced to show him the town. He is coaxed into a crooked poker game, with the intention of cheating him out of the money he’s been paid for his property. However, Bat sees the others trading cards and holds them at gunpoint. In trying to get out, he stumbles into the room where May is held, and then a fight breaks out as he tries to rescue her. The police, summoned by gunshots and a fire Bat has started, arrive, and take the crooks into custody. Bat and May go back to her mother’s house and he invites her to join him in the clean air of “the only land I understand.” The end.

Pardon me ma’am, but is today the 23rd?

I was a bit surprised to see a story set in Chicago starring William S. Hart. He’s still an upright cowboy though, so I guess it’s OK. It’s sort of a reversal of movies like “Wild and Woolly” where Douglas Fairbanks plays an easterner who goes West to find himself. The director seems to have been concerned that we would lose track of what day it was, because there’s a large calendar on the wall at the office that shows the date clearly, and it changes as the story moves from one day to the next. This movie, like “The Arizona Wooing,” was produced by the New York Motion Picture Company’s “Broncho Films” but there’s no obvious attempt to play on Broncho Billy this time. Hart probably wouldn’t have stood for it, although it occurs to me that Billy’s Essanay Company was located in Chicago, the den of evil in this movie, so there may have been a sly comment at work there. There isn’t much going on with the filmmaking here, mostly pretty standard shots  and editing for the period, although there’s an insert shot during  the poker game of one player’s hand passing a card to another, followed  by a closeup of Hart glaring as this happens, so that at least there’s some use of technique. Bat seems to get off awful easy after shooting several men and starting a fire in the warehouse, but I suppose May’s testimony would have some influence on the police. Anyway, it’s not Hart’s best work, but it’s interesting to see where he came from.

Director: William H. Clifford , William S. Hart

Camera: Robert Doran

Starring: William S. Hart, Clara Williams, John Davidson, Gertrude Clair, Bob Kortman

Run Time: 21 Min

I have not found this movie available online for free. If you do, please comment.

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February 3, 2019

An Arizona Wooing (1915)

This lightweight Western short was evidently intended for children and unsophisticated audiences (the bad guy even wears  black hat!), but it works well enough for the time it was made. It was directed by and stars Tom Mix, one of the biggest Western stars of the silent era.

The movie begins by establishing that Tom Warner (Mix) is rivals with “Mexican Joe” (Pat Chrisman) for the affections of Jean Dixon (Louella Maxam). Jean and Tom are on a date out on the range, and Warner goes to a creek to get Jean some water when Joe rides up. He’s kitted out in Mexican finery, and wears a gun (Tom does not). He immediately starts harassing Jean, insisting that she come with him and Tom runs back over and punches him, sending him packing. Next, it is established that Tom is a sheep farmer in cattle country by showing scenes of Tom nursing a baby sheep with a bottle. Jean’s father, Thomas Dixon (William Brunton), gets together with a bunch of other cattle ranchers to write Tom a note saying he needs to stop raising sheep, or else. He responds by asking Jean to meet him at the corral, which angers Mr. Dixon still more. He meets up with Jean, they exchange pleasantries and kiss, and as soon as she’s gone a group of about seven ranchers set upon Tom and tie him up. They ride out to a bluff and tie Tom to the ground, warning him that he’ll stay that way until he agrees to give up sheep farming. The next morning Mexican Joe rides up and slaps Tom in the face now that he’s helpless. Jean comes along and remonstrates with Joe, which results in him kidnapping her. Mr. Dixon now rides out to the bluff to give Tom some food (he’s not heartless) and Tom tells him what’s happened. Mr. Dixon frees Tom and rides off to round up a posse. Tom is able to get to his horse and gallops out to the parson’s, where the Mexican was just minutes away from marrying Jean. He runs as soon as he sees Tom, but Tom lassos him and drags him back to the posse, who take him away. Jean and Tom embrace while Mr. Dixon looks approvingly on, apparently now reconciled to having some sheep on the range.

Just looking at the names in the title credits, I knew who was going to win, even before I noticed that Warner was played by Mix. The movie has no surprises in terms of race, although for half a second I thought Mexican Joe might be decent and free Tom when he found him tied up. I should have known better. The sheep/cattle issue is simplified to a point of being ridiculous, although it seems to have been an excuse to include some cute images of baby sheep, maybe for the littler kids. This is the first Tom Mix movie I’ve reviewed on this blog, I believe, and he lives up to his reputation for providing very simple, super-clean Westerns with action and moral plots. I actually hadn’t known his career started this early, since one usually hears him mentioned in connection with the 1920s, but evidently he worked at Selig from at least 1910 to 1917.

Director: Tom Mix

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Tom Mix, Louella Maxam, Pat Chrisman, William Brunton, Sid Jordan

Run Time: 15 Min

I have not found this movie available for free on the Internet. If you have, please comment.

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April 15, 2018

Toil and Tyranny (1915)

This short movie was released by Pathé as episode twelve of their series “Who Pays?” but I saw it alone and am reviewing it as a single film. The series was not linked by characters or situation, but thematically by examining problems of the time, and this one takes on the highly topical subject of labor disputes in the timber industry.

The movie begins by introducing its actors through “living credits” – each actor is depicted on a stage in costume, standing beneath a big question mark. I suspect that the question mark was a part of the “Who Pays?” branding, but unlike other credits of this nature, the actors just look out at the audience and bow, rather than depicting their characters in any way. The action begins by showing us David Powers, the “Lumber King” (Daniel Gilfether) at work in his office. He calls in his foreman, Jake Snyder, who is described as a “petty tyrant” and tells him that the unpredictable price of lumber requires that he get his shipment off as quickly as possible. “Don’t spare your men,” he advises. One of those men is Karl Hurd (Henry King), who “has known nothing but toil his whole life.” He makes the mistake of sitting down to rest soon after the conference between his bosses, and Jake decides to make an example of him. Karl fights back, however, and the fight escalates until Jake hits him on the head with a 2-by-4. The fight is observed by Powers, and by Perry Travis (Edward J. Brady), his “ruthless legal adviser,” who comments that violence is the only language the workers understand. Karl’s fellow workers carry him home, where a sickly-looking wife does piecework to help make ends meet, and a little girl plays with a single doll. A doctor makes a house call to inform Karl and his wife that he will need “several weeks” of bedrest before he can work again. The doctor refuses to accept payment from the poor family.

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