Silent movies - The Matrimaniac

Can you believe it has been more than half a year that I watched a Douglas Fairbanks movie? I know that I said Luke the dog has stolen my heart away from Doug, but that doesn't mean I'm forgetting him completely!
Doug had done a lot of other films before going into the swashbuckling business and today I've got one of those for you - The Matrimaniac from 1916!

Funny, the title is "The
Matrimoniac" here, but in
the film itself it clearly
says "Matrimaniac"!

First the plot (spoiler alert!).

Jimmie Conroy and Marna Lewis want to marry, but her father disapproves and wants her to marry Wally instead, so Jimmie and Marna decide to elope. Unfortunately, Wally witnesses their departure and tells Lewis who makes him go to the train to prevent the marriage until he can procure injunctions.
Wally makes it on the train and confronts the lovers.

As they intend to go through with the wedding, anyway, he wants to send a wire to Lewis, but Jimmie talks to the conductor and hatches a plan on his own. He gets out at the next station to look for a reverend to marry Marna and him. Unfortunately Reverend Tubbs is in the tub. Although he has only thrown on a dressing gown and slippers, Jimmie drags him along, but the train pulls out of the station when they arrive and Wally keeps them from boarding.

Running in a dressing gown and slippers is hard!

From here on, Jimmie does everything to help them follow the train and liberally distributes money and I.O.U.s for clothes for the Reverend, a hand car, and a mule, and finally they hitch a ride on the bumpers of another train.

Tubbs is one dedicated reverend although it's
possible the promise of a donation to 
the church helped a little ...

Meanwhile Wally and Marna have made it to the hotel where the lovers had planned to stay. Jimmie and Tubbs are arrested when they get off the train, but Jimmie escapes.
 

Just look at Wally, the smug little weasel.

He calls Marna, who is trapped in her room with Wally sitting in front of the door in the hallway, and tells her to come to the jail, so Tubbs can marry them.
So now Marna has to come up with a plan of her own. She changes clothes with the maid bringing her food and makes it to the jail where the Reverend tells her that Jimmie has been spotted and is chased.
Marna goes back to her hotel room - a wonderful scene in which she "discovers" Wally talking to the maid in the disguise and plays the betrayed woman - and Jimmie ends up on the telephone wires. He comes to a lineman who arranges a connection between Reverend Tubbs in the jail, Marna in her room, and Jimmie on the pole with him.

"Shut up, can't you see I'm getting married?"

Lewis, Wally, and the police are waiting below and start reading the injunction to Jimmie. Hearing about the marriage by phone sends Lewis running to the jail, but too late.
In the end we see Jimmie in his office paying out to the people he gave I.O.U.s. The last one is good old Tubbs who doesn't just get a bunch of money, but also a kiss from the grateful Jimmie!

With everyone gone, Jimmie opens a safe from which Marna emerges right into his arms.

I knew from a documentary that Douglas Fairbanks didn't start out as a swashbuckler but a stunt comedian in romantic comedies, and had also seen one or the other short scene there. So I didn't really know what to expect exactly, but knew it would be nothing like his big features.
This movie was a fun little introduction to those times. There wasn't much plot beside the chase, but Jimmie and the Reverend made a fine pair (I could have done without the mule scene, but that's mostly because people on smaller donkeys or mules always make me feel uncomfortable).
As Fritzi Kramer puts it, there weren't "any major showstopper stunts", but Doug got a bit of climbing and dangling and jumping in - on walls, over people, from wires and gutters.
I certainly enjoyed it.

Further reading:

Fritzi Kramer: The Matrimaniac (1916) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, April 12, 2026