Silent Movies - Mighty Like a Moose

Last week I talked about an affair that had a tragic ending for some, today's affair is very different.
If I tell you that Charley Chase is part of this one, you may remember that he was known for comedy. I think we deserve one after last week's drama.
I give you "Mighty Like a Moose" from 1926 (seems I'm stuck in this year at the moment, but that's mere coincidence!).

Let's start with the plot (spoiler alert!).

Mr. Moose has buck teeth and Mrs. Moose has a big nose.

The neighbor kids - no respect. I had to add this picture because it reminds me of the scene in "A Christmas Story" when the kids pranked their teacher by wearing fake buck teeth (from wax as you can read in the book that inspired the movie ... I'm digressing, sorry).

Both Mr. and Mrs. Moose have saved for months to surprise their spouse with a face lift - et voilà.

Mr. Moose's dentist has a before and after picture taken and also presents his patient with a set of false teeth so his family will still be able to recognize him. He also invites him to a party this evening, but Mr. Moose declines saying he's married.
Then he meets Mrs. Moose in the hallway, but they don't recognize each other and start flirting, so he invites her to the party. They both don't feel very good about betraying their spouse, but on the other hand they can't resist after seeing the effect of their respective surgeries.

They arrive at home separately and don't notice each other at first doing kind of a "dance" around each other - one comes into a room when the other one is just leaving it.
Once at the party, Mr. Moose tries to get a dance with his date, but instead she gets whisked away while he is asked to dance with a lady who only knows the polka (unfortunately I didn't manage to get a screenshot that really conveys how hilarious that dance is).
What no one knows is that the police is already waiting to raid the party as they suspect the doctor of alcohol possession (prohibition time!) and "arrest everybody for practice".
Mr. Moose has spotted the policemen and warns Mrs. Moose. They both turn around only to have their picture taken by the police. Remember, they don't know they're a married couple.

At home, Mr. Moose is surprised to find his date entering his house shortly after him. He overhears her telling the maid about the surgery and is shocked that his wife betrayed him. So he tells Mrs. Moose as her date that he can't live without her, then comes back with his false teeth, and finally stages a fight between "the date" and "the husband" (with the help of a swinging boot).

Unfortunately for him, Mrs. Moose has found the newspaper which also shows the before and after picture of her husband. When she slaps him for trying to trick her with the fake fight, he loses the false teeth.
Where are they? Oh, found them!

Mistaken identities have been the base for comedies for a long time. So when one reviewer writes that he doesn't understand how they didn't recognize each other, it made me laugh.
My favorite example - Clark Kent/Superman. For some weird reason, people still know who I am even without my glasses.
At least, we learn that Mrs. Moose has also bought new clothes her husband doesn't know yet.

I was also delighted at the immediate success of the surgeries. No bandages, no traces, no pain, the patient hops out of the chair and everyone is happy.
Don't we wish it really were that easy?
If you wonder, by the way, nose jobs have been around for quite some time - first in India around 600 B.C. In the West, they really caught on in the late 19th century and were not just used for mere aesthetics later, but also to help men wounded in the war. 

The fight Mr. Moose had with himself obviously wasn't realistic, either, especially at the end when he changed identities in seconds and always came from the same side.
All of that was cleverly edited, only Superman could have been this fast.

Does all of that matter, though? Of course it doesn't!
The whole movie used the wonderful choreography to make the audience laugh, and it sure worked for me.
I also enjoyed the funny title cards. My favorite was the one when Mr. Moose enters the house and gets attacked by his dog who doesn't recognize him with the new teeth so he has to put the fake set in.

This is of course a hint at RCA's Nipper listening to "His Master's Voice" (check out my post about Nipper if you don't know what I'm talking about).

Conclusion - is the movie realistic? No. Is it funny? Heck, yeah!
Even "laughing out loud" funny to me.
So far I enjoyed every Charley Chase film I have watched and I'm looking forward to exploring more of them.


Further reading:

Fritzi Kramer: Mighty Like a Moose (1926) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, April 27, 2014

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! 

Silent movies - Mum's the Word

After last week's post took me some time for research, I decided to take it easy today and bring you a another comedy short. It's "Mum's the Word" from 1926.

The plot explains the title (spoilers ahead).
According to Wikipedia, "mum" is a Middle English word meaning "silent". In this case, it's about a widowed mum having kept silent to her new husband about her son.

Unfortunately, he's on the way for a surprise visit.
On the sleeper train, a thief tries to steal a young lady's purse while she's sleeping. She chases him off, pulls out a small gun, shoots, and hits the son, who's in the bunk across the aisle, in the butt. When he sees her, he's smitten by her beauty.

On arriving at his mother's house, she tells her jealous husband that he's his new valet. He meets the maid in the kitchen and surprise, she's the girl from the train.
Of course he's trying to meet with his mother in her room, but the husband is suspicious. But wait, why is the maid trying to sneak into the husband's room? (That's what you get for having separate bedrooms.) Not hard to guess, I know. He too has a secret, the "maid" is his daughter.


I liked the story, for example how the husband tells "his new valet" to shine his shoes and then shave him.
The shoes go from one person to the other, even through the shave.

No wonder that the shave goes wrong if someone keeps tugging on your foot to pull a shoe off and put another on, and the husband ends up with half a mustache which doesn't really make him like his "valet" more.

"Nightfall - - Everybody has a growing suspicion that everybody else suspects something suspicious -"

There's a lot going out of and going back into rooms when the children try to get to their parents (the mother's flowing negligée is gorgeous and the daughter's outfit very interesting, by the way) and everyone is trying to look inconspicuous which is kind of difficult when finally all of them meet in the hallway, but of course everything gets cleared up in the end.

24 minutes can't give you much plot, but I really had fun and thought especially the son and daughter had really good comedic timing in their scenes together.

I hadn't heard of Charley Chase before who made very many shorts and was well respected in the silent film industry, but never managed to climb the top like Keaton, Chaplin, and Lloyd.
After seeing this short, however, which isn't said to even be one of his best by some, I think I'll have to check out more of his work.


Source:

Fritzi Kramer: Mum's the Word (1926) - A silent film review. On: Movies Silently, April 29, 2018