While mama Claire McDowall is off giving birth, the nurse takes Edna Foster to the zoo, where she tells the child that the stork brings new babies. When the proud parents pay no attention to Edna, only the baby, he -- for Miss Foster invariably played a boy -- takes the infant to the stork to get rid of it. Meanwhile, excited by a news story about the Black Hand -- which is what they used to call the Mafia -- kidnapping infants, coal delivery man Edward Dillon is arrested while carrying his own baby.
The cop of this Griffith short in THE CINEMA'S FIRST NASTY WOMEN collection talks about racist stereotyping, but there's little or none of that here; Dillon is a perfectly nice man; the story and its comedy (for this is a comedy) hinges upon the characters' hysterical assumptions about foreigners.
Nonetheless, this is not one of Griffith's best shorts. While he produced a goodly number of comedies among his more than 800 movies, his strength lay in drama and his editing. There's little of note to those effects here.
The cop of this Griffith short in THE CINEMA'S FIRST NASTY WOMEN collection talks about racist stereotyping, but there's little or none of that here; Dillon is a perfectly nice man; the story and its comedy (for this is a comedy) hinges upon the characters' hysterical assumptions about foreigners.
Nonetheless, this is not one of Griffith's best shorts. While he produced a goodly number of comedies among his more than 800 movies, his strength lay in drama and his editing. There's little of note to those effects here.
