Reviews

There are many talented actors and actresses here who make this film a delight. Unlike most films that depend on four or five stars, this film has ten stars each making solid contributions. Billie Burke (Academy Award nominated for the film) Constance Bennett, Brian Ahern, Bonita Granville, Alan Mowbray, Clarence Kolb (whom I remember as Banker George Honeywell from the great 1950's Charles Farrell-Gail Storm sitcom, "My Little Margie"), Tom Brown, Patsy Kelly, Ann Dvorak, and Willie Best all making nice contributions.

The movie has a great opening scene with the wealthy family discovering that a recently hired servant has stolen their silverware. Billie Burke seems to be the main screwball character here with the other characters being more or less normal. For a few minutes after this the film seems to drift, with all the characters saying strangely bizarre or absurd things, but slowly you realize that even the allegedly sane members of the household, including the servants, are equally wacky as Burke, but in their own different ways.

Brian Aherne's character remains a mystery throughout the piece, but his bizarre actions are nicely explained at the ending.

Laugh for laugh this matches any of Preston Sturges' or Frank Capra's movies.

Director Norman Z. McLeod also matches his own great comedies - "Monkey Business," "Horse Feathers," "It's a Gift," "Topper," and "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."

I was was surprised to see that this short was made in 1926. It seemed to be closer in spirit to the roughhouse slapstick of films made 8 or 9 years earlier. The plot is thin with Lupino Lane trying to get into a movie studio to meet an actress he loves. Katherine Grayson plays the actress. She is best remembered as Buster Keaton's love interest in "Sherlock Jr" and "The Navigator." Much of the movie is about Lupino being mistaken for a dummy or dummies. In fact, it is hard to tell sometimes when it is the dummy or Lupino onscreen. Hopefully it was the dummy undergoing the horrific abuse in most scenes. Still, Lupino's physical skills are terrific and his timing is excellent.

Well worth the time for those who love the superb physical slapstick that the great comedians developed so well in the silent era.

I remember watching every episode of this series in 1964/65 when I was 11 years old. I was extremely disappointed when the series went off the air after only one year.

I rewatched this episode 59 years later on Tubi and I was just as delighted by it as I was when I first saw it.

In this episode, regular zany character, Peter Robinson (Jack Mullaney) has gotten into debt ($500) with a pool shark and doesn't have the money to pay him back. He begs his friend Dr. Robert McDonald to help him out. McDonald teaches his robot, Rhoda (Julie Newmar) to play pool, and being a robot she quickly becomes the greatest pool player in the world. This leads to a bigger problem when she wins $50,000 from another pool shark gangster. McDonald has to create a flaw in her pool playing to keep the second pool shark from resorting to drastic measure Today we have real robots and we humans are facing real problems with them outmatching us humans in almost everything. Hopefully, these problems will be as comically simple to solve as this one.

The show works as both science fiction and comedy.

An ill man (Mack Sennett) is advised by his doctor to get some mountain air. He and his friend visit the mountain. The man experiences some dangerous adventures on the mountain and decides he wants to go back to the orange groves of Hollywood.

Shortly after this, Sennett was in charge of Keystone films and known for going to interesting locations and improvising a story with wild slapstick gags. This film is unlike those in that Dell Henderson (actor, soon to be a director) wrote the script and it seems to be a tight script with each scene follows logically.

What I found most interesting is the missed opportunity for "point of view" shots. For example, a man looks though a telescope at a distant scene, but instead of seeing what the man sees from his point of view, the camera cuts to a medium shot obviously not from his far away point of view.

D. W. Griffith apparently used POV in "Birth of a Nation" 1913 and "Intolerance" 1915, Eisenstein used it in "Potemkin" (1921). Harold Lloyd used it in "Safety Last" in 1923, and Buster Keaton used it in "Sherlock Junior" in 1924. Abel Gance used it in his film "Napoleon" in 1927.

Still it is surprising that it was not used more often in silent films.

Possibly it is because we naturally accept everything we see through our own eyes as objective, while we consider something we see through other's eye impossible or a dream.

Mary Pickford didn't do much slapstick as far as I can tell in her early Biographs with D. W. Griffith. Here she is terrific having car accidents, wheel-barrow accidents and boat accidents as she tries to elope with boyfriend Billy Quirk.

Notice the distinction between the outdoor and indoor scenes. The indoor scenes put you in a front row seat watching a stage play. The viewer is always conscience of watching a play. The outdoor scenes jerks the viewer into a real rural landscape with the cars, wheelbarrows and boat as wonderful props. These outdoor scenes feel more like a dream. These two quite different realities add depth to the action and story.

It is wonderful to see Max Sennett playing his yokel character that he played in so many of his own Keystone comedies starting in around 1912.

This is a must-see for fans of silent film comedy.

This is a funny tale, about a suitor (Edward Dillon) and his sweetheart (Mary Pickford). Mary's father (Dell Henderson) comes home after a bad day at fishing and throws out the suitor. The rest of the 9 minutes is about how Mary and Edward find a way to get revenge on Dell and get him to approve their marriage.

Director Mack Sennett does a good job of keeping the action moving. Mary, as always, gives a good performance as does Dell Henderson as the father.

It thought the use of a box camera to take photos of a fish with both Dell and Edward was a clever part of the story. Edward and Mary trick Dell into thinking that he caught a giant fish that they bought at a fishing shop. After bragging to all his friends how he caught the giant fish, Dell, to maintain his reputation as a great fisherman, must allow the marriage he had denied previously. But for the fish, and their photography trick, Edward and Mary would not have married. Thus the title "Won by a Fish" I'm sure at least the fishermen in the audience enjoyed the movie, as well as young men and women looking for tips to trick their parents into giving permission for marriage.

This movie seems like a tragedy where a family breaks up when the father can't find work. He leaves the family in despair because they are starving.

In the middle of the movie the tragedy suddenly ends and it turns more or less into a comedy. The effect of this shift in tone is just jarring and odd for a modern viewer.

The movie was released at Christmas 1909. It was probably shot within a few weeks of that time. Griffith has nearly every shot the same with the feet of the characters cut off, and too much room above the heads. It appears much more primitive than 1903's "Great Train Robbery." It was apparently sometime in 1910 when Griffith learned to make his movies more interesting by varying the distance of the camera from the actors and allowing more depth for the actors to move from the background to the foreground, instead of just left to right.

It is worth seeing mainly for people interested in the development of cinema.

I've been watching a lot of early Mary Pickford, Biograph movies from 1908-1910. They feature some great naturalistic acting.

There's a definite advance in camera work and editing in this 1912 film. There's much more depth of field also. It is breathtaking to see a racing car and a racing train in the same shot hundreds of feet apart.

The version I watched was an Official Mary Pickford release on YouTube with music by Dan Light. The music was excellent and really added to the excitement of the movie.

This seems to be a 13 minute, 11 second version, but it is identical to a 17 minute, 53 second completely silent version running on the Daily Motion Site. I thought that the 13 minute version might have cut something, but everything is the same and the 13 minute version just seems to run the frames at a faster rate.

Nice surprises in this one where a rich father hires Josh to find his long lost son. The catch here is that the father is blind and doesn't have a picture of the son. He only knows that he carries a locket his mother gave him.

Guess star John Anderson was on numerous Westerns of the period, including the Rifleman 11 times and Gunsmoke 12 times. This was his only appearance on "Wanted." He's used to good effect, playing an unusual and surprising role.

I really liked that the episode shows that Josh isn't as money-hungry as he sometimes appears. He is willing to give all his money back $2,000 when he realizes that he has not done his job properly.

The minimal gun-play and reliance on clever and surprising twists makes this an excellent episode.

This film shows the rigidity of upper-class society back in 1910. When a rich daughter (Mary Pickford) takes over the roll of the housemaid (Blanche Sweet) who is sick, confusion and a break-down of class roles ensues. When rich son (Arthur Johnson) takes on the role of a day laborer, it increases the chaos and makes for a likeable social comedy.

There's a whirlwind courtship between Johnson and Pickford that takes place over a few hours in a day as they meet thinking that she is the maid and he is a visiting workingman.

There's a noteworthy appearance by Mack Sennett playing his typical yokel character to add to the comedy.

The beginning feels a bit repetitious as Johnson goes four times to ask Pickford for Milk, but Pickford grows more affectionate each time, until it is clear that she is head over heals in love with him. The speed of the romance makes it unrealistic, but is an interesting plot device.

Anita Loos ("Gentlemen Prefer Blondes") got into movies by writing screenplays for D. W. Griffith in his Biograph period. This is a wonderful one which deals with misunderstandings between a father and daughter. It is both sweet and funny and tells us a lot about the age it was made (circa 1912).

Mary Pickford seems to betray her father by getting married after promising to stick with her father, but Loos is being realistic and a beautiful young woman like Pickford could hardly be expected to keep her promise and remain an unmarried virgin for long.

The father, betrayed, banishes her from his house. A few years later, when he finds she had a baby he is curious to see if she resembles his dead wife. He is mistaken for a thief by Mary's new family when he visits the home to see the baby.

All of this is still funny today and must have been even more hilarious during the time period. I was surprised to see how hysterical Mary and her new family got at the idea of a harmless old man sneaking into a house, but one can still see the situation causing panic today (2023).

Enjoy this wonderfully humanistic comedy from a time when movies were new and the great cinema pioneers were leaving their legacy for the human race.

This sharply written episode is filled with twists and turns. It also features three guess stars. John Carradine "Grapes of Wrath" (1940) is always wonderful to watch and this is no exception. He plays a ruthless, but charming man, who seems to be willing to commit any crime for the right price. Gloria Talbot "I Married a Monster from Outer Space" (1958) plays her third and last guess starring role. As usual, she delivers an excellent sexy performance as a tough cowgal. She said in an interview that Steve McQueen was a good friend. I'm not sure if that meant that they dated or were lovers.

Wright King appears for the 4th time as a recurring character who acts as Josh Randall's sidekick. He did this in 9 straight episodes in the second season. There's not that much chemistry between them, but it is interesting to think about how the show might have developed if he had stayed around. This is perhaps King's best episode as he volunteers to replace a man to be hung if Randall doesn't bring back the man to be hung in ten days. This shows how much he admires Randall and trusts his ability to do what he says.

I saw this on the DVD "Hal Roach the Talkies Volume Four 1929. Although there are six talkies, only four have soundtracks with the other two lost.

I thought this was by far the best of the six with Charlie Chase coming to Thelma Todd's rescue when her alcoholic dance-partner tries to steal her money. Most of the film is Charlie becoming Thelma's dance partner and doing some very funny dances.

Its amazing how Thelma makes every comedian she worked with better, including Groucho Marx, Harry Langdon and Buster Keaton. Todd looks gorgeous in a short leopard skin outfit.

Chase is a sometimes good and sometimes so-so comedian, but with Thelma, he is at his best. This excellent short is a good reason for buying the whole video.

I saw this two or three times when it came out in 1986 and many times later at art movie revival houses that often played it. It would always surprise me with new material that I hadn't noticed or understood the first few times I saw it. I bought the DVD when it came out and watched it many more times with friends who had never see it.

I haven't thought about it in the last five or six years, but the actor Julian Sands, who plays the poet Percy Shelly, was found dead after a mountain climbing accident. Natasha Richardson who plays Mary Shelley died tragically young at age 46 in a hunting accident.

This is a masterclass in acting and both Sands and Richardson that wonderful in it.

I'm disappointed it has such a low rating from so many, but for romantics and lover of 19th century romantic poetry, it is entrancing.

I've just watched the 13 Arbuckle-Keaton shorts that were done just before this film. It is astonishing to watch how the films of Arbuckle grew during the Keaton period and astonishing to watch how Keaton's engineering of gags was developed so much further here in this film. This rivals Keaton's "Neighbors" and other early shorts for the elaborate development of the gags. It is also comparable to the Arbuckle-Keaton film "Oh Doctor" for the risque undertones.

Several people complained about the "Well" gags going on too long. On the contrary, I think they are are masterpiece of "topping," where each gag tops the previous one and increases in ridiculousness.

This film is evidence that Arbuckle belongs in stature with Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd in the evaluation of great artists of the medium. The false accusations and moral witchhunt that killed his career is equivalent to the false accusations and moral witchhunt that killed the career of Bill Cosby, the greatest television comedian of our times.

I just watched a 1951 movie with Tyrone Power and Ann Blyth called "I'll Never Forget You" It is about time travel and very Twilight Zone-ish. I checked out "Queen of the Nile" star Ann Blyth and found that she starred in this episode which I first saw in 1964, when I was 11.

I also found that Ann Blyth is still alive, now age 94. She was born in 1928. Even more weird, I was born on her birthday 25 years after her. I will be 70 on the day she turns 95. I feel I'm having a Twilight Zone moment.

If you enjoyed this Twilight Zone episode, I think you'll enjoy the movie "I'll Never Forget You." Ann Blyth is just a wonderful actress who is easy to fall in love with.

I've seen many films of D. H. Lawrence's works including "Sons and Lovers," "Women in Love," "The Virgin and the Gypsy," "The Rainbow" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and enjoyed all of them. I was surprised and disappointed by this one.

Christopher Miles did a wonderful adaptation of "The Virgin and the Gypsy" 10 years before he made this film. He certainly is a scholar of Lawrence and a talented filmmaker, so why was this film so charmless and seem so shallow.

I will give a couple of reasons: First, I saw the 99 minute recut of the film. I imagine/hope that the apparently lost original 125 minutes was less choppy and jumpy.

Second, Ian McKellan was a terrible choice for the lead. He simply was too much of a stage actor at this point of his career and he plays most scenes for the the benefit of the baloney.

Third, the beginning shows Lawrence having a nude swim with a homosexual lover. The rest of the movie is about his love affair with his German wife. It is just confusing and undercuts the rest of the movie as we expect him to run off and leave his wife for a man at some point.

Fourth, the movie portrays Lawrence as a one dimensional lone victim of censorship, surely there were other writers being censored at the time and many powerful people supporting his rights to freedom of speech. Making the censor a buffoon (played dully by John Gielgud) doesn't help, but seems to trivialize the issue.

Fifth, Miles may have been to close to the material. He wants to give us a lot of factual information about Lawrence, but the history lesson feels like a history lesson, and there is little dramatic tension. Janet Suzman as Frieda Lawrence seems to carry the weight of whatever dramatic tension there is.

The movie does have nice cinematography. However all the movies adapted from Lawrence's work also have great cinematography and much better characters and stories.

I had just watched John Ford's first Talking film, "The Black Watch" (1929) with Victor McLaglen and Myrna Loy, and I was amazed at how well it worked. It was an odd, but interesting mixture of a James Bond type movie with a "Gunga Din" British- in-India flavor. I was amazed that Ford made such a great talkie his first time out.

I was expecting good things here, as the movie starts out with seemingly as a drama with a brother joining the Navy to rival his older brother who has a successful career in the Army. It quickly goes from drama to light comedy, much of it very light.

The Naval Academy atmosphere is quite nice and realistic looking, but it clashes with the small scope of the comedy. The best gag in the film is a rather homely guy trying to fill up a dance card for his sister. The Academy men expect that his sister will look like him and make up excuses for not offering to dance. When she turns out to be very cute, they all change their minds and try to get a chance to dance with her.

Its predictable, but mildly amusing.

Without a developed central conflict, one is left to appreciate some of the films occasional nice touches. This is an early talking appearance by Stepin Fetchit. He's quite funny here. There's a funny brief guest appearance by future star Lee Tracy as a Football announcer. Also John Wayne and Ward Bond deliver a few laughs. It is amusing watching Wayne throw a pie at one of the Navy recruits.

It is the major central romantic characters in the film, William Janney and Helen Chandler, who are dull and have little chemistry together. Chandler did go on to star in "Dracula" (1931), so it is interesting watching her doing comedy here.

George O'brien get star billing, but he is really a minor supporting character. He was apparently given star billing because he was far more famous than Janney. He had starred in two hit films with Janet Gaynor, "Blue Eagle" (1926) and. F. W. Munau's masterpiece, "Sunrise," (1927). This was Janney's first starring role.

Again, if you want to see Ford directing a great action-adventure early talkie, watch "The Black Watch," if you want to see Ford sputtering at directing a quirky, predictable and dull light comedy, watch this one.

If you want to learn the facts about Marion Davies, you don't watch "Citizen Kane." If you want to learn the facts of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, you don't watch "Some Like it Hot." Similarly, don't watch "the Buster Keaton Story," if you want to learn the facts of Keaton's amazing life. This is what Keaton and some other people thought would be entertaining for a 1957 audience to know about Buster Keaton. It emphasizes three points 1. Keaton was a vaudeville child performer and became a big star in Hollywood Silent films in the 20s, 2. When sound came in some mean people in Hollywood forced him to talk in ways he didn't like and this caused his films to bomb and he became an alcoholic, and 3. Later Keaton with the help of a good woman who loved him, found appreciation again when he returned to live audiences.

The bad part is that there are no other real historical characters besides Keaton and his parents (for four minutes) in the film. Not only names but also characters have been changed and generalized into types , probably to avoid lawsuits. Even the clothes are not of the historical period.

The good part is that it is still an interesting story with very good acting, especially by. Donald O'Connor, Ann Blyth, Rhonda Fleming, Peter Lorre and Larry Keating.

The best part is that we know that Buster Keaton as the technical advisor on the film recreated about 15 of his great bits and gags from his early films. One of the funniest was a brief recreation of a great scene with Thelma Todd from the movie "Speak Easily," where he tries to put a drunk woman on a bed.

Take the movie for what it is: a fictional biography by and about Buster Keaton, and you will enjoy it. Take it for what it is not: a true biography of Keaton, and you will be disappointed.

This is an okay movie with an interest conflict and a lot of moral questions. It is pretty believable.

Two wives seem to be unfaithful to their husbands because of their desire for the finer things in life. One of them actually does love her husband. At a running time of just over an hour, the film is quite watchable, especially because of June Collyer's charming performance. Dorothy Christy is also good as the not so loving wife.

The ending is very preachy and moralistic, but somehow pretty satisfying.

Marriages were one of the main topics in movies of this time period. Good marriages versus bad marriages were a common motif and this one provides a different slant on it.

There is a marvelous scene where Collyer and her husband sit down to eat breakfast and because of hurt feelings between them have nothing to say to each other. The husband turns on the radio. We hear a very well done spoof of a radio commercial. This is certainly one of the first movies to portray the medium of radio. For that alone it has historical value.

Also, I really liked Collyer's reaction to being slandered as a gold-digger. She does not take it well at all. Like most pre-codes, this shows that women were feisty and had their own minds and opinions at this point in history.