Silent movies - The Rat's Knuckles

After last week I really needed something short and of course it made sense to choose a film with Martha Sleeper in it after my post about her.
It's "The Rat's Knuckles" from 1925 with Charley Chase.

The plot (spoiler alert).

Jimmy Jump has invented the perfect humane mouse trap.
When he visits his girlfriend "Flirty" McFickle - who doesn't have that nickname for nothing -

"Do you mean to say I flirt with customers?"

at the soda fountain to paint a picture of the millions they'll have and how famous they'll be thanks to his invention, a mouse runs across the floor. Jimmy fetches his trap, but by the time he's back, the mouse is already gone.

Professor James Jump of "Ratus Trapus" fame.

Gotta show whom they owe all that new money to!

"There's the Prince -"
"-- Morning, Ed -- "
To Flirty "-- He's a great man, too."

So he visits an invention financier instead who's so annoyed that he almost shoots at Jimmy, but then chooses to leave him sitting there while he goes off to lunch. When Jimmy picks Flirty up from work and has to tell her he hasn't sold his invention, she goes off with a customer she has flirted with before.
Jimmy goes to the docks to put an end to it all, but gets held back by a big financier who happens to come by and asks him to tell him about his trap.

It turns out that the trap is a jack-in-the-box jumping up when the mouse touches the cheese which "doesn't kill the little mouse, but it makes him so ashamed he never comes back".

Ingenious! 🤪

Too bad. The financier lifts his cane and off into the water Jimmy goes!

"The Rat's Knuckles" is one of eight shorts from the Jimmy Jump series.
Jimmy Jump is the little man who can't get a break.
I watched the film here on YouTube. The channel owner calls himself a "completist freak" meaning he put this together from three different sources! The scenes he added again are how Jimmy "helps" two workmen unloading a piano - right into a open chute - and the car scene when they greet the Prince of Wales.

My favorite scene was of course the fantasy of a grand life revolving completely around the rat, with big sculptures, a rat as a pommel for Jimmy's cane, and of course Flirty's beauty spot.
I also liked the trap, though. Shame on you, mouse or rat, shame! Does that work on humans, too? Asking for a friend.

Not earth-shattering, but a funny little short and the perfect palate cleanser after last week 😉
Also, Martha Sleeper is just so cute!