A rich but hypochondriac heiress inherits a sanitarium. What she doesn't know is that it is a front for bootleggers, and a hideout for criminals on the run from the law.A rich but hypochondriac heiress inherits a sanitarium. What she doesn't know is that it is a front for bootleggers, and a hideout for criminals on the run from the law.A rich but hypochondriac heiress inherits a sanitarium. What she doesn't know is that it is a front for bootleggers, and a hideout for criminals on the run from the law.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaDespite being critically panned and a box-office disappointment, this film has enjoyed the appreciation of contemporary critics. It is one of few of Bebe Daniels' starring vehicles to survive.
- Quotes
Barbara Manning: Doctor, where are the nurses?
Her Nemesis: I discharged them. They kept waking up the patients to give them their sleeping powders.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Commune (2005)
Featured review
Visual and Written Slapstick
"Feel My Pulse" is an amusing, if short and insubstantial, late-silent-era slapstick comedy starring Bebe Daniels. Daniels started out in slapstick as leading lady to Harold Lloyd in the Lonesome Luke shorts before moving to Paramount and appearing in a couple of Cecil B. DeMille's early sex comedies. Here, she has a vehicle of her own, with an impressive cast of supporting players and good talent behind the camera. Richard Arlen (who also had an important supporting role in "Wings" (1927)) plays Bebe's beau, William Powell plays the baddie, and comedian Heinie Conklin plays a drunkard. Director Gregory La Cava would later team up most famously with Powell as the lead in "My Man Godfrey" (1936). And, its plentiful title cards were written by Academy-Award nominee (for the one and only time title writing was an Oscar category) George Marion Jr.
Discovering Daniels's considerable gifts as a silent comedienne and seeing all-time great actor Powell in one of his early supporting parts in a silent film (see him also in "The Last Command" (1928)), including a bit of fourth wall breaking, are just bonuses. "Feel My Pulse" is wacky fun, with Daniels as a hypochondriac-in a role that seems to have been taken from her former partner Lloyd's early comedy "Why Worry?" (1923), as well as being reminiscent of a comedy such as Douglas Fairbanks's "Down to Earth" (1917). Despite running barely longer than an hour, however, it seems to lack much of a narrative, and that's where the numerous intertitles come in to pick up the slack. Daniels travels to a sanitarium, which she kind of owns (although she doesn't control her finances, because, I guess, this is 1928 and she's a woman), so that she may rest from her imagined ailments. Problem is that the sanitarium is being run as a base of operations by rum smugglers (this is during Prohibition, remember). Powell is the knife-and-gun-wielding head smuggler turned rapacious phony doctor and adversary for Daniels, and Arlen is one of his henchmen who, through some very convenient plot contrivances, develops into Daniels's romantic prize. The ending is uproarious fun.
As for the title cards, they contain some good jokes, including on the vocabulary of Daniels's character. Not only her use of medical language (I had to look up "angina pectoris"), but her use of ten-dollar words such as "remuneration" and "immaculate" also confuse the smugglers. The contemporary slang (e.g. Calling Daniels a "young rib") and cultural references are also of interest. This movie taught me that, apparently, Gene Tunney was well-known for his intelligence. Who knew that anyone's go-to comparison for complex lexicography would involve a heavyweight boxing champion. Numerous, if funny, intertitles are a double-edged sword in silent cinema, though. I think they tend to fill the gap where more visual means should be used. Take Daniels and Conklin's drunken encounter, for instance-it could've benefited from less repetitive drunk talk and singing in the title cards and, perhaps, more physical slapstick.
Discovering Daniels's considerable gifts as a silent comedienne and seeing all-time great actor Powell in one of his early supporting parts in a silent film (see him also in "The Last Command" (1928)), including a bit of fourth wall breaking, are just bonuses. "Feel My Pulse" is wacky fun, with Daniels as a hypochondriac-in a role that seems to have been taken from her former partner Lloyd's early comedy "Why Worry?" (1923), as well as being reminiscent of a comedy such as Douglas Fairbanks's "Down to Earth" (1917). Despite running barely longer than an hour, however, it seems to lack much of a narrative, and that's where the numerous intertitles come in to pick up the slack. Daniels travels to a sanitarium, which she kind of owns (although she doesn't control her finances, because, I guess, this is 1928 and she's a woman), so that she may rest from her imagined ailments. Problem is that the sanitarium is being run as a base of operations by rum smugglers (this is during Prohibition, remember). Powell is the knife-and-gun-wielding head smuggler turned rapacious phony doctor and adversary for Daniels, and Arlen is one of his henchmen who, through some very convenient plot contrivances, develops into Daniels's romantic prize. The ending is uproarious fun.
As for the title cards, they contain some good jokes, including on the vocabulary of Daniels's character. Not only her use of medical language (I had to look up "angina pectoris"), but her use of ten-dollar words such as "remuneration" and "immaculate" also confuse the smugglers. The contemporary slang (e.g. Calling Daniels a "young rib") and cultural references are also of interest. This movie taught me that, apparently, Gene Tunney was well-known for his intelligence. Who knew that anyone's go-to comparison for complex lexicography would involve a heavyweight boxing champion. Numerous, if funny, intertitles are a double-edged sword in silent cinema, though. I think they tend to fill the gap where more visual means should be used. Take Daniels and Conklin's drunken encounter, for instance-it could've benefited from less repetitive drunk talk and singing in the title cards and, perhaps, more physical slapstick.
helpful•20
- Cineanalyst
- Apr 6, 2021
Details
- Runtime1 hour 3 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content