The Farmer's Wife (1928)

Run Time: 129 minutes. Studio: British International Pictures. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Writer: Eliot Stannard. Based on a play by Eden Phillpotts. Main Cast: Jameson Thomas, Lillian Hall-Davis, Gordon Harker. Cinematographer: Jack E. Cox.


Good Evening. I feel it is safe to assume that at least some of the people who read my blogs are fans of Turner Classic Movies. I certainty am. In fact TCM makes up a huge portion of my TV watching time, and why not, it is a channel that shows movies with the pure respect they deserve, it gives you insight into the history of the movie, and the whole channel feels very welcoming. One thing this channel is doing this month is something I am very excited for. Every Wednesday and Friday of July TCM will be showing many Alfred Hicthcock movies and there will even be an online class accompanying it.

Like many film buffs I am a huge fan of Hitch. He has directed many movies that are highly deserving of the classic status they have received. Movies like Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, The Birds and North By Northwest are certainty great examples of the cinematic art form and no one loves these movies more than I do. However I also have a huge fondness for Hitch's early British movies too. Despite these not receiving the same amount of attention many of these are fantastic movies in their own right and my silent film of the month is no exception.

The Farmer's Wife is a very different movie for Alfred Hicthcock. In fact if you were to miss the opening credits, it would be very hard to tell that Hitch had anything to do with it. This movie is a nice sweet little romantic film, and a fairly straightforward adaption of Eden Phillpotts' play. With Alfred Hitchcock directing there are some brilliant little cinematic touches but nothing specifically Hitchcockian. At this time Alfred Hicthcock was not yet known as a suspense director. Even though Hitch had already directed a fantastic suspense movie with The Lodger, he was at this time directing a huge variety of different styles of movies. However looking at many of these films, shows that Hitch was not only a brilliant suspense director, but a great director of any type of movie.

Farmer Sweetland's (played by Jameson Thomas) wife has past away leaving him very lonely. He is looking for a new wife, but his attempts don't go very well. Helping him find a new wife is his housekeeper Minta (played by Lillian Hall-Davis), who has strong feelings for Sweetland that she keeps secret

This is a delightful movie. The characters are very well defined, likeable and relatable. Before becoming much of the all out comedy this movie will become as it goes along, this film gives you time to know each of these characters. This makes the comedy all the more effective and the movie feel all the more real. Speaking of the comedy, it is really good. Many of Sweetland's failed attempts to find a wife are very funny. Also helping to make this movie delightful is the visual filmmaking. One image that continuously is shown is that of an empty chair. Sometimes when Farmer Sweetland gets lonely he looks at the chair his wife used to sit in and sees it completely empty. This image tells us more than any words ever could. It makes us fully understand what the farmer is going through and puts us in his shoes. When he is looking for a new wife he sometimes imagines one of the women he wants to marry in the chair. However that image quickly fades away and all we see is the chair. Again these simple images show us more than we could ever be told in words and truly show the power of film as an art form. In fact when interviewed by François Truffaut years later Hitch said that this movie inspired him to make what he called "purely cinematic pictures" that would mostly center around visual story telling. Though Hitch did feel this movie still had too many intertitles.

One may notice the name of  Louie Pounds in the credits. This is in fact the only film she appeared in, though she was a huge star on stage and was especially popular in Gilbert and Sullivan musicals. She plays a delightful performance here as Widow Windeatt.

This movie plays on TCM on July 5th at 8:15 pm western time and 11:15pm eastern time.

Resources Usedhttp://www.tcm.com/this-month/article.html?id=650695%7C651448
The Alfred Hitchcock Encyclopedia by Stephen Whitty.
Truffaut-Hitchcock by François Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock

-Michael J. Ruhland

Snow White (1916)

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Run Time: 63 minutes. Studio: Famous Players/Paramount. Director: J. Searle Dawley. Writer: Winthrop Ames. Based on a play by Winthrop Ames. and a book by The Brothers Grimm. Producer: H. Lyman Broening. Main Cast: Marguerite Clark, Dorothy G. Cumming, Creighton Hale, Lionel Braham, Alice Washburn. Cinematographer: H. Lyman Broening.

Anyone who reads my blogs knows that I am a huge Disney fan. Because of this often times when a classic fairy tale is brought up it is the Disney version that first comes to my mind. However these stories existed long before Walt touched them and they even had film adaptions before then. Some of these film adaptions even were huge influences on the Disney movies. One of the most clear example of this is the 1916 silent version of Snow White. Now some of my fellow Disney buffs may have heard of this movie. Walt Disney had in fact seen it as a teenager and legend goes that it inspired him to make his own film version of the classic fairy tale. Still this movie has more than that great story behind it. It is also a delightful film in its own right.

Though this film was obviously inspired by the Brothers Grimm's classic story, it had an even more direct and recent piece of source material. This was a 1912 play based off of the story. That play was written by Winthrop Ames, and starred Marguerite Clark, who also were the writer and star of this film adaption. So in many ways the point of this movie was simply to bring that stage play to the screen. Considering the differences between the stage and the silent cinema there naturally needed to be some changes made. The most obvious of these was to eliminate song numbers and very dialogue heavy scenes. However interestingly more scenes were added starring the Huntsman. These scenes revolved around him being locked in the tower as a prisoner. Also in adapting it for film, director J. Searle Dawley employed some more cinematic techniques. For instance in this version of the story the Witch (a separate character from the Queen) wants Snow White's heart to help with a potion to get herself her. When she is given a pig's heart instead her head grows pig's tails instead of hair. On stage the actress simply ducked off stage real quick and put on a head cap. Here the pig's tails appear to slowly fade in on her head, accomplished by a dissolve shot (Searle Dawley later remembered doing this on a set with crowded extras in 1916 made this a very difficult technical challenge).

The film interestingly begins with a brief prologue involving Santa Claus leaving a bunch of dolls at a little girl's house. This dolls become real people and then our story really begins. A Queen wants a beautiful child and gets one in Snow White (played by Marguerite Clark). However when this Queen passes away, the king remarries. The new Queen (played by Dorothy Cummings) is an evil and jealous woman who hates Snow White. When the King dies there is no one to protect Snow White from this evil woman. Snow White now has to work in rags as a maid, but this isn't all that is planned for her. The jealous Queen conspires with a witch (played by Alice Washburn) to get rid of Snow White. In return for helping the Queen, the Witch wants Snow White's heart. The Queen hires the huntsman (played by Lionel Braham) to take care of Snow White. However the huntsman can't do it, and gives the queen the heart of a pig instead. Snow White hides out at a house of dwarfs, who promise to help her, however they can. The Queen learning that the huntsman has failed her, decides to kill Snow White herself.

What really makes this film work is Marguerite Clark's performance as Snow White. In this era of such stars as Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, it was common for grown women to play the part of little girls. Though Clark turned 33, the year this film was released, she plays the part so well you completely believe she is about 10 or 12. There is just a great sense of innocence to this performance. This is best shown in the scene with the huntsman. She clings to the huntsman and is simply so excited to be with him. She acts like the two are going to play games with each other. When the huntsman says what they are really out there for she easily assumes that he is joking. In a lesser actress' hands this could have felt very forced but here it comes out naturally. Later when she goes into the dwarfs cottage she not wanting to impose knows that if she only takes small bites from each plate, they can't possibly be mad at her. Clark does that so delicately that it gives that small moment extra charm to it.

However if there is something this film is lacking in, it is a real sense of danger. While the Disney film wasn't intended for kids (in fact in Britain, it got an adults only rating because of how scary the witch is), the play this movie was based on and even to a certain extant this movie itself was aimed primarily at children. Because of this the villains don't feel as threating as the Queen in the Disney version (being aimed mostly at adults) could. While this silent film is quite good, this does result in the Disney movie being even better.      

While Walt Disney's film is easily the superior version, this little movie has such a sweet and simple charm to it will still delight today's modern audiences.

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used
http://www.jbkaufman.com/movie-of-the-month/snow-white-1916
The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney by Michael Barrier

Moran of the Lady Letty (1922)

Run Time: 71 minutes. Studio: Famous Players-Laskey Corporation. Director: George Melford. Writer: Monte M. Katterjohn. Based on a book by Frank Norris Producer: George Melford. Main Cast: Rudolph Valentino, Dorothy Dalton, Charles Brinley, Walter Long. Cinematographer: William Marshall.

A year earlier in 1921 (also the year of his breakthrough appearance in Rex Ingram's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), Rudolph Valentino had one of the biggest success of his career with The Sheik. This movie proved very popular especially with women. This was hugely due to his Latin lover persona. However the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation (later Paramount Pictures) noticed this image did not have the same effect on most male movie goers. Instead men seemed to find this image a bit off putting. Because of this the studio decided to put him in a role that would appeal more to men in the audience. So Valentino was put into my silent film of the month, Moran of the Lady Letty, which was a much more adventure based film in order to get him a male audience as well. George Melford who had directed Valentino in The Sheik would also direct him here. George Melford might be a name that clasic horror movie buffs will recognize as he directed the famous Spanish language version of 1931's Dracula.

Melford had stated in interviews hinted that this movie would show Valentino in a very athletic and almost Douglas Fairbanksian light as he stated "find out what a husky, red-blooded chap he is." Melford also stated that "climbed to the very tip of the mast -- just for exercise. The hard-boiled crew of the ship gasped!" However it is impossible to say if that was actually true. One change was made however to make the role fit more into Valentino's Latin lover image. This was that writer Monte Katterjohn (who also worked on The Sheik) changed the main characters name from Russ Wilbur (the name in the book) to Ramon Laredo. An intertitle early in the film states "rich man's son spends the dash and fire inherited from his Spanish ancestors in leading cotillions."

As the story begins Moran (played by Dorothy Dalton) is happy living with her sea going father and she is love with the sea. Ramon (played by Rudolph Valentino) is however unhappy. He is rich, but his life is sheltered and he craves adventure. However all this changes when Ramon is shanghaied. The ship he is now aboard is ruled by a mean and hate filled captain (played by Walter Long (my fellow Laurel and Hardy fans will easily recognize him)). They run across a burning ship in trouble. The crew mostly just steals goods for them selves. However Ramon saves one of the sailors aboard that ship, more specifically Moran. Raman falls in love with Moran, but the lustful captain has his eyes on her, and Ramon must protect his new "mate".

This is an excellent film. The adventure filled climax is exciting to watch, and easily just as (and in many cases more) compelling than today's special effects filled action scenes. The chemistry between the two leads is fantastic and you really believe that these two grow to care for each other, even with their different backgrounds. The technical film making is also very well done. This film uses color tinting a lot, and extremely well. Color tinting is when the whole screen is tinted a certain color and it was used often in the silent era. While on the boat (except in the cabins) the screen is tinted blue, but the high society functions are tinted brown. This creates a great contrast and makes many of the more adventure filled scenes seem bigger and more exciting. Also the cutting between (slight spoilers ahead) Moran on the boat and Ramon at a fancy party towards the end is extremely effective as it lets us know that they are on each other's minds. The tinting also comes in handy here as it makes us see why the party is less appealing to Ramon. Also with dropping the Latin lover image I think this film is more accessible and enjoyable to many modern day audiences and all those who just don't like his Latin lover image, than most of Valentino's work is.

Despite his excellence in the lead role Valentino did not care for his role in this movie. He preferred playing more exotic types and felt a film like this hurt his Latin lover image. Because of this his later this same year he would play those type of characters again in Blood and Sand and The Young Rajah.

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/497111/Moran-of-the-Lady-Letty/articles.html

The Big Show (1923)

Run Time: 17 minutes. Studio: Hal Roach Studios Director: Robert McGowan. Writers: Hal Roach, H.M. Walker . Producer: Hal Roach. Main Cast: Mickey Daneils, Joe Cobb, Jackie Condon, Jack Davis, Allen "Farina" Haskins, Mary Koreman, Ernest Morrison, Richard Billings, Andy Samuel . Cinematographer: Len Powers.

Since I post a Silent Film of the Month article every 1st of the month, I feel it is only appropriate to post about a slapstick comedy short every April, in honor of April Fools Day. Last year I wrote about a classic Laurel and Hardy short, and this year I am writing about a classic Our Gang short. Who knows what I will post next year (Maybe Charlie Chaplin, maybe Harry Langdon, maybe Charley Chase, Maybe Buster Keaton, Maybe whoever else I feel like, I haven't decided about next year yet).

When one brings up Our Gang (or the Little Rascals), most people will think of Spanky, Alfalfa, and Buckwheat. However the team existed well before these characters. In fact the team was formed in 1922, back in the silent era. Since the series centered around kids actors and characters had to change (especially since the series ran until 1944). The group of kids from when The Big Show came out included Mickey Daniels, Joe Cobb, Jackie Cindon, Jack Davis, Allen "Farina" Haskins, Mary Koreman, Ernest "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison, Richard "Mugsy" Billings, and Andy Samuel. This is in fact the first Our Gang short for Andy Samuel. Andy had previously worked as an extra in Charlie Chaplin's classic 1921 feature film The Kid. While working on that film he learned how to imitate Charlie Chaplin. The basis for this short came as an excuse to let him show off his impression of Chaplin.

The film begins with the gang wanting to look at the county fair for free. They are naturally chased out of the fair. Because of this the gang decides to put on their own carnival with rides, animals and movies.

For all my fellow movie buffs, the highlight of this film is their moving picture show. Joe has a nonworking moving picture camera and pretends to project the film, while other kids on stage do impressions of various movie stars. These impressions include Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart and Harold Lloyd. The most elaborate of these is the Harold Lloyd impression. This sequence is a very elaborate redoing of various scenes from the 1922 feature Grandma's Boy only with kids as the actors. One gag is decidedly different though. In Grandma's Boy Harold is annoyed by cats and uses a statue of a dog to scare them off. However in this film the character is being annoyed by pigs, and holds a card that says "butcher" to scare them off. That feature film was done at the same studio as this one was and that may more than explain this. The Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks sequences are also based on certain films those actors starred in but are much less elaborate. The Charlie Chaplin sequence recalls Chaplin's classic 1918 film Shoulder Arms, while the Douglas Fairbanks sequence recalls his performance as D'Artagnan in the 1921 film version of The Three Musketeers. As stated before the Chaplin imitation was done by Andy Samuel. The Douglas Fairbanks impression was provided by Mickey Daniels. While it is not certain who played the imitation of Harold Lloyd, Leonard Maltin and Richard W. Bann (according to their book Our Gang: The Life and Times of the Little Rascals) believe it was played by a child actor named Billy Lord. However this is still not certain.  

It has been stated that what makes Our Gang so great and beloved is that they have had the child hood we all wish we had. This is never more clear than it is in this film. After all who didn't as a kid want to create something like these kids created  here. What kid doesn't want to make their own movies, or work with wild animals, or simply have adventures like these kids do. Beyond all the great humor, this film is so charming because it is wish fulfillment for the child in all of us.

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used

Our Gang: The Life and Times of Our Gang by Leonard Maltin and Richard W. Bann

  

Captain Salvation (1927).

Runtime: 87 minutes. Studio: MGM. Director: John S. Robertson. Writer: Jack Cunningham. Intertitles: John Colton. Producer: John S. Robertson. Main Cast: Lars Hanson, Marceline Day, Pauline Starke, Ernest Torrance. Cinematographer: William Daniels.

In many ways I consider the silent era the golden age of Christian films. While there are many great films with Christian messages released over the years the best ones seem to be from the silent era. These include such amazing films as Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Sparrows (ok it may not be your typical Christian film but it definitely has a Christian Message), King of Kings, Noah's Ark, the original Ten Commandments and this little hidden gem. As a Christian, myself I have a special fondness for the Christian films of the silent era.

This film's director was John S. Robertson. Robertson had begun his career in 1916 as both an actor and director however by 1918, he was directing and no longer acting. His directing career began by directing various comedy short for the Vitagraph studio. In 1917 he directed his first feature film Baby Mine. As a feature length director he would direct such movies as Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde (1920) and The Enchanted Cottage. His career would last until 1935.

The star of this film was Lars Hanson, a name that is probably not as well remembered as it should be. Hanson began his film career in his home country of Sweden, with a lost 1916 film called Dolken. However he would not catch the attention of American movie makers until costarring (with Greta Garbo) in 1924's The Saga of Gösta Berling. This film was a huge international success and it wasn't long until MGM wanted to work with Lars Hanson. By the time he stared in Captain Salvation, he had already been in two gigantic box office successes for the MGM studio, The Scarlett Letter and The Flesh in the Devil (where he would once again costar with Great Garbo). Here his costars would be Marceline Day, Pauline Starke and Ernest Torrance. Torrance was one of the silent screen's greatest tough guys appearing in such films like Peter Pan (1924), Steamboat Bill Jr., The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), The King of Kings, Tol'able David, and The Ruggles of Red Gap. He most often played villains like he does here, and was an operatic baritone before his film career. Marceline Day had a great talent for comedy. She started at the Mack Sennett studio, where she even appeared in films that starred Harry Langdon. Though over the course of her career she would appear in more dramatic movies such as this one and London After Midnight (the infamous lost film with Lon Chaney and directed by Tod Browning), she would still do much comedy, including being the leading lady opposite Buster Keaton in The Cameraman. In the 1930's unfortunately her career would go downhill and she would appear mostly in B pictures including The Telegraph Trail (with John Wayne, who would obviously later graduate from B pictures). Pauline Starke began her career as an extra in 1916, even appearing in such big films as D.W. Griffith's Intolerance. However she would work her way up to being a leading lady. As a leading lady she would appear in such films as The Viking, Eyes of Youth, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1921) and Salvation Nell.  

The film's story centers on a young man named Anson Campbell (played by Lars Hansen), who is as a title tells us torn between two loves. These are his love of serving God and of the sea. One day he sees a woman (probably a prostitute, though never directly stated) named Bess Morgan (played by Pauline Starke) being treated very harshly in his town, because she is sinful. He helps her out and takes care of her, but this ends up ruining his life with the town folks, his girlfriend (played by Marceline Day) and seemingly his ministry. Distraught he joins up with a ship hoping to leave it all behind. However Bess is on the ship, and the captain (played by Ernest Torrance) is not exactly the nicest of fellows. However this leads him to learn all that god actually has in store for him.

This is a fantastic movie in many ways. The story is really engaging, the acting is great, the film looks great (hugely thanks to cinematographer William Daniels) and the whole movie is just charming. Also adding to the movies charm is John Coulton's extremely well written and intelligently thought out intertitles. As all silent film fans know, poorly written intertitles can take their toll on other wise great films, but well written ones can make a great movie even better. Don't think that because I'm Christian and am praising a Christian movie that it does not hold much for non-Christians, this film has more than enough to satisfy any fan of silent cinema.

Resources Used
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/2878/Captain-Salvation/articles.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017735/reviews?ref_=tt_urv

-Michael J. Ruhland         

Cinderella (1922)

Runtime: 7 minutes. Studio: Laugh O Gram Studios. Director: Walt Disney. Writer: Walt Pfeiffer. Animators: Rudolph Ising, Hugh Harmon, Carmen Maxwell, Ub Iwerks, Lorey Tauge, Otto Walliman.

It is February the month of romance, and what romance story is better known than that of Cinderella (ok Romeo and Juliet, but I digress). The magic of this story was never a secret to filmmakers. This was true since the silent era. The earliest film version I can think of is the 1899 film Cendrillon directed by George Melies. Many many more would follow. Easily the most famous movie version is the 1950 animated Disney film. However that was not the first time Walt Disney's name was attached to a film version of Cinderella. In 1922 Walt directed a short cartoon simply titled Cinderella.

Walt Disney began his film career in 1919. At this time he worked for the Kanas City Film Ad Company, making animated commercials that would play in Kanas City movie theaters. Here he met and worked with Ub Iwerks. Ub Iwerks would be one of Walt's main animators on many of his silent films and later on many early Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies cartoons. Ub would leave Walt to head his own cartoon studio. However when that didn't work out as planned Walt welcomed him back and Ub helped on the special effects for such films as Mary Poppins, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Lady and the Tramp and yes the 1950 Disney film version of Cinderella (on a departure from Disney he also did special effects for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds). After this Walt went to did more ads (as well as animated inserts) for Newman's Theater. His success here lead him to start his own series of theatrical shorts called Laugh O Grams, of which Cinderella (1922) was part of.

The Laugh O Grams cartoons were modern day (okay... 1920's) comedic variations on classic fairytales. Unlike later fairytale films Walt would work on there was very little sentiment in these films, instead they went for pure comedy and often times they succeeded quite well.

The film follows the Cinderella story much the way we know it, except for taking place in modern day. A ball is thrown. Cinderella is told she can't go. Her fairy godmother shows up, and dresses her like a flapper and gives her a nice car, out of thin air, which her cat drives (okay maybe that's a little different). She falls in love with the prince, but has to leave before her flapper clothes turn into rags. The prince finds the shoe she left behind, and finds her using it. And they live happily ever after.

Since this film is a comedy, while the later Disney version is not, I'm am not going to compare them much because that would be pointless (besides this film is 7 minutes while the later film is 74). This film is not a consistently laugh out loud comedy, but it is still a very charming one. There are however some quite funny jokes. One involving a duck is so strange it cracks me up every time I watch this. A scene with the prince hunting is also pretty darn funny. Most of all though this film just has a great sense of energy that just makes it a joy to watch.

So this is not only a fascinating look into the early career of Walt Disney, but a very entertaining film in it's own right.

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used
Of Mice and Magic: A History of the American Animated Cartoon by Leonard Maltin
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013014/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_23
http://www.jbkaufman.com/cutting-room-floor/silent-cinderella

Three's A Crowd (1927)

Runtime: 60 minutes. Studio: Harry Langdon Corporation. Director: Harry Langdon. Writers: Arthur Ripley, Robert Eddy, Harry Langdon, James Langdon, Harry McCoy. Producer: Harry Langdon. Main Cast: Harry Langdon, Glays McConnell, Cornelius Reef, Arthur Thalasso. Cinematographers: Frank Evans, Elign Lessley.

Perhaps no other silent film comes with such a bad reputation as Harry Langdon's Three's a Crowd. So is it strange to say I not only like this movie, but in fact love it.


A rumor that haunted Harry Langdon for a long time that exists even today is that Frank Capra created Harry's character and that Harry didn't understand his own character. This piece of fiction came from Capra's autobiography, The Name Above the Title. Oh boy there is so little truth in that claim. By the short film All Night Long the character was completely formed, and there were more than a few moments showing who the character would be in earlier films. However this was before Frank Capra ever worked on a Harry Langdon film. However since this is believed it is also believed the films that Harry directed himself after firing Frank Capra are completely awful. Frank Capra was definitely a brilliant film maker (How could the director of It's A Wonderful Life be any less?) and I am by no means saying he did not help make the films he directed and wrote for that stared Harry Langdon great, but he definitely gave himself too much credit when it comes to those movies. These films were not only unavailable for viewing, but what could be found were awful reviews, and the fact that they didn't do well at the box office. It should be remembered though that Buster Keaton's The General also did poorly both with critics and at the box office. Since the films were near impossible to find this understandably made them be written down as awful movies. Though now they are much easier to find, people still do not want to try them out because it has been believed for so long that these films are as bad as they are made out to be. Three's A Crowd marked Harry's debut as a director. He had fired Frank Capra, just before making this movie.

The story begins as Harry (played Harry Langdon) is dreaming of having a child of his very own. His boss (played by Arthur Thalasso) tries to get Harry to work, but Harry is letting his daydreams interfere with his work. When the boss's wife gets a love letter the boss assumes Harry wrote it. This leads Harry to escape. After escaping Harry meets a pregnant woman named Gladys (played by Gladys McConnell), freezing to death. Harry takes her in and decides to take care of the poor woman and her coming child. However the woman has a husband (played by Cornelius Keefe) who may return one day.

Much more footage was shot for Three's A Crowd than ended up in the film. The film was edited during a series of premieres, with the movie coming out shorter each time. These included scenes about Gladys before she meet Harry. There were also scenes added to the film. One of these scenes was a gag for the movie to end on. The ending was originally more serious and audiences didn't like this much, so a joke for an ending was made as a bit of a compromise.

The film received very poor reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Many critics were not fans of the dramatic moments especially. It has been said that Harry Langdon was not one to take negative criticism well. This might be why his next film The Chaser was much more pure comedy. However that film would be attacked for having too dark a sense of humor, and also perform poorly at the box office. After Three's a Crowd, Harry was no longer considered an equal to Chaplin as he had been before. His previous film Long Pants was also a flop and after just two critical and box office failures, he was now considered just another second rate, movie comedian.

However despite all this the film is downright fantastic and actually ranks as one of Harry's best films. There is more drama here than usual for Harry, but it all is very well done. However this does not get in the way of the film's comedy. The movie is very funny and scenes like Harry getting a face full of soot, hanging down from a rug and the great joke ending are pure tradition slapstick at it's best.
Additional the comedy and the drama never get in the way of each other. This is because since both the drama and the comedy are so closely tied into the story and characters, they both feel natural and welcome here. While this film is often criticized for being too slow (though Harry was the slowest paced of the silent film comics), I don't quite understand where this comes from. Very little is much slower than scenes that appeared in Harry's more popular films. The only scene I kind of understand is the start, but there is almost something captivatingly lovely about this slow beginning. This whole film as I stated earlier just fits together perfectly and that is why it is such a delight to watch.

To echo what luckily a few other film historians have said, I hope one day this movie gets completely revaluated, and is viewed as the great film it is.

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used
The Silent Films of Harry Langdon (1923-1928) by James L. Neibaur
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018484/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt