Double Whoopee
Double Whoopee is a 1929 Hal Roach Studios silent short comedy starring Laurel and Hardy. It was shot during February 1929 and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on May 18. Laurel and Hardy play the roles of a doorman at an upper class hotel. Jean Harlow makes a brief appearance in this film, as a blonde bombshell who gets stripped by Laurel & Hardy. One of the funnier scenes is one with an automatic elevator. A haughty prince tries to get on the elevator from the first floor. Oliver summons the elevator. For some reason the outer doors don't close and when the prince tries to step in, he falls into the elevator well. Oliver disappears; the prince is pulled out of the well, all dirty. He tries it again; this time Stan summons the whole thing repeats. While this is a silent film, a version with post-synchronized dialogue tracks provided by voice actors was created in 1969. Laurel and Hardy imitator Chuck McCann plays both Ollie in the talking version. McCann had his own local TV show in New York in the 1960s where he used puppets of Stan and Ollie to entertain kids.
He was seen in the 1970s and 1980s television commercial for ANCO windshield wipers, playing Oliver Hardy opposite Jim McGeorge, who played Stan. Double Whoopee on IMDb Double Whoopee at the TCM Movie Database Double Whoopee at AllMovie Double Whoopee at Rotten Tomatoes
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin was an English comic actor and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, "The Tramp", is considered one of the most important figures in the history of the film industry, his career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's childhood in London was one of poverty and hardship, as his father was absent and his mother struggled financially, he was sent to a workhouse twice before the age of nine; when he was 14, his mother was committed to a mental asylum. Chaplin began performing at an early age, touring music halls and working as a stage actor and comedian. At 19, he was signed to the prestigious Fred Karno company, he began appearing in 1914 for Keystone Studios. He soon formed a large fan base, he directed his own films and continued to hone his craft as he moved to the Essanay and First National corporations.
By 1918, he was one of the best-known figures in the world. In 1919, Chaplin co-founded the distribution company United Artists which gave him complete control over his films, his first feature-length film was The Kid, followed by A Woman of Paris, The Gold Rush, The Circus. He refused to move to sound films in the 1930s, instead producing City Lights and Modern Times without dialogue, he became political, his next film The Great Dictator satirized Adolf Hitler. The 1940s were a decade marked with controversy for Chaplin, his popularity declined rapidly, he was accused of communist sympathies, while he created scandal through his involvement in a paternity suit and his marriages to much younger women. An FBI investigation was opened, Chaplin was forced to leave the United States and settle in Switzerland, he abandoned the Tramp in his films, which include Monsieur Verdoux, Limelight, A King in New York, A Countess from Hong Kong. Chaplin wrote, produced, starred in, composed the music for most of his films.
He was a perfectionist, his financial independence enabled him to spend years on the development and production of a picture. His films are characterized by slapstick combined with pathos, typified in the Tramp's struggles against adversity. Many contain political themes, as well as autobiographical elements, he received an Honorary Academy Award for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century" in 1972, as part of a renewed appreciation for his work. He continues to be held in high regard, with The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, The Great Dictator ranked on lists of the greatest films of all time. Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889 to Charles Chaplin Sr.. There is no official record of his birth, although Chaplin believed he was born at East Street, Walworth, in South London, his mother and father had married four years at which time Charles Sr. became the legal guardian of Hannah's illegitimate son, Sydney John Hill. At the time of his birth, Chaplin's parents were both music hall entertainers.
Hannah, the daughter of a shoemaker, had a brief and unsuccessful career under the stage name Lily Harley, while Charles Sr. a butcher's son, was a popular singer. Although they never divorced, Chaplin's parents were estranged by around 1891; the following year, Hannah gave birth to a third son – George Wheeler Dryden – fathered by the music hall entertainer Leo Dryden. The child was taken by Dryden at six months old, did not re-enter Chaplin's life for 30 years. Chaplin's childhood was fraught with poverty and hardship, making his eventual trajectory "the most dramatic of all the rags to riches stories told" according to his authorised biographer David Robinson. Chaplin's early years were spent with his mother and brother Sydney in the London district of Kennington; as the situation deteriorated, Chaplin was sent to Lambeth Workhouse. The council housed him at the Central London District School for paupers, which Chaplin remembered as "a forlorn existence", he was reunited with his mother 18 months before Hannah was forced to readmit her family to the workhouse in July 1898.
The boys were promptly sent to another institution for destitute children. In September 1898, Hannah was committed to Cane Hill mental asylum – she had developed a psychosis brought on by an infection of syphilis and malnutrition. For the two months she was there and his brother Sydney were sent to live with their father, whom the young boys scarcely knew. Charles Sr. was by a severe alcoholic, life there was bad enough to provoke a visit from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Chaplin's father died two years at 38 years old, from cirrhosis of the liver. Hannah entered a period of remission but, in May 1903, became ill again. Chaplin 14, had the task of taking his mother to the infirmary, from where she was sent back to Cane Hill, he lived alone for several days, searching for food and sleeping rough, until Sydney – who had enrolled in the Navy two years earlier – returned. Hannah was released from the asylum eight months but in March 1905, her illness returned, this time permanently.
"There was nothing we could do but accept poor mother's fate", Chaplin wrote, a
Hercules
Hercules is a Roman hero and god. He was the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, the son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures; the Romans adapted the Greek hero's iconography and myths for their literature and art under the name Hercules. In Western art and literature and in popular culture, Hercules is more used than Heracles as the name of the hero. Hercules was a multifaceted figure with contradictory characteristics, which enabled artists and writers to pick and choose how to represent him; this article provides an introduction to representations of Hercules in the tradition. Hercules is known for his many adventures, which took him to the far reaches of the Greco-Roman world. One cycle of these adventures became canonical as the "Twelve Labours". One traditional order of the labours is found in the Bibliotheca. Slay the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra. Capture the Golden Hind of Artemis.
Capture the Erymanthian Boar. Clean the Augean stables in a single day. Slay the Stymphalian Birds. Capture the Cretan Bull. Steal the Mares of Diomedes. Obtain the girdle of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. Obtain the cattle of the monster Geryon. Steal the apples of the Hesperides. Capture and bring back Cerberus. Hercules had a greater number of "deeds on the side" that have been popular subjects for art, including: Side adventures The Latin name Hercules was borrowed through Etruscan, where it is represented variously as Heracle and other forms. Hercules was a favorite subject for Etruscan art, appears on bronze mirrors; the Etruscan form Herceler derives from the Greek Heracles via syncope. A mild oath invoking Hercules was a common interjection in Classical Latin. Hercules had a number of myths. One of these is Hercules' defeat of Cacus, terrorizing the countryside of Rome; the hero was associated with the Aventine Hill through his son Aventinus. Mark Antony considered him a personal patron god.
Hercules received various forms of religious veneration, including as a deity concerned with children and childbirth, in part because of myths about his precocious infancy, in part because he fathered countless children. Roman brides wore a special belt tied with the "knot of Hercules", supposed to be hard to untie; the comic playwright Plautus presents the myth of Hercules' conception as a sex comedy in his play Amphitryon. During the Roman Imperial era, Hercules was worshipped locally from Hispania through Gaul. Tacitus records a special affinity of the Germanic peoples for Hercules. In chapter 3 of his Germania, Tacitus states:... they say that Hercules, once visited them. They have those songs of theirs, by the recital of this barditus as they call it, they rouse their courage, while from the note they augur the result of the approaching conflict. For, as their line shouts, they feel alarm; some have taken this as Tacitus equating the Germanic Þunraz with Hercules by way of interpretatio romana.
In the Roman era Hercules' Club amulets appear from the 2nd to 3rd century, distributed over the empire made of gold, shaped like wooden clubs. A specimen found in Köln-Nippes bears the inscription "DEO HER", confirming the association with Hercules. In the 5th to 7th centuries, during the Migration Period, the amulet is theorized to have spread from the Elbe Germanic area across Europe; these Germanic "Donar's Clubs" were made from deer antler, bone or wood, more also from bronze or precious metals. They are found in female graves worn either as a belt pendant, or as an ear pendant; the amulet type is replaced by the Viking Age Thor's hammer pendants in the course of the Christianization of Scandinavia from the 8th to 9th century. After the Roman Empire became Christianized, mythological narratives were reinterpreted as allegory, influenced by the philosophy of late antiquity. In the 4th century, Servius had described Hercules' return from the underworld as representing his ability to overcome earthly desires and vices, or the earth itself as a consumer of bodies.
In medieval mythography, Hercules was one of the heroes seen as a strong role model who demonstrated both valor and wisdom, while the monsters he battles were regarded as moral obstacles. One glossator noted that when Hercules became a constellation, he showed that strength was necessary to gain entrance to Heaven. Medieval mythography was written entirely in Latin, original Greek texts were little used as sources for Hercules' myths. In 1600, the citizens of Avignon bestowed on Henry of Navarre the title of the Hercule Gaulois, justifying the extravagant flattery with a genealogy that traced the origin of the House of Navarre to a nephew of Hercules' son Hispalus; the Renaissance and the invention of the printing press brought a renewed interest in and publication of Greek literature. Renaissance mythography drew more extensively on the Greek tradition of Heracles under the Romanized name Hercules, or the alternate name Alcides. In a chapter of his book Mythologiae, the influential mythographer Natale Conti collected and summarized an extensive range of myths concerning the birth and death of the hero under his Roman name Hercules.
Conti begins his lengthy chapter on Hercules with an overview description that continues the moralizing i
Puttin' On the Ritz (film)
Puttin' On the Ritz is a 1930 musical film directed by Edward Sloman and starring Harry Richman, Joan Bennett, James Gleason. The screenplay was written by Gleason and William K. Wells based on a story by Jr.. It was the first of many films to feature the popular song "Puttin' On the Ritz", written and published by Irving Berlin in 1929. Harry Richman as Harry Raymond Joan Bennett as Dolores Fenton James Gleason as James'Jimmy' Tierney Aileen Pringle as Mrs. Teddy Von Rennsler Lilyan Tashman as Goldie Devere Purnell Pratt as George Barnes Richard Tucker as Fenway Brooks Eddie Kane as Bob Wagner George Irving as Dr. Blair Sidney Franklin as Schmidt All current prints derive from a 1940s re-release print, censored for pre-Code content and cut down by about twenty minutes; the title cards at the start and end of the film have been edited and altered. Puttin' On the Ritz was shot with two-color Technicolor sequences, but today those sequences survive only in black and white. List of early color feature films Puttin' On the Ritz on IMDb Puttin' On the Ritz at AllMovie
The Floorwalker
The Floorwalker is a 1916 American silent comedy film, Charlie Chaplin's first Mutual Film Corporation film. The film stars Chaplin, in his traditional Tramp persona, as a customer who creates chaos in a department store and becomes inadvertently entangled in the nefarious scheme of the store manager, played by Eric Campbell, the store's floorwalker, played by Lloyd Bacon, to embezzle money from the establishment; the film is noted for the first "running staircase" used in films, used for a series of slapstick that climaxes with a frantic chase down an upward escalator and finding they are remaining in the same position on the steps no matter how fast they move. Edna Purviance plays a minor role as a secretary to store manager. Charlie annoys the staff with his antics. Meanwhile, the store's manager and the floorwalker are conspiring to rob the store's safe; when they finish putting the safe's contents into a bag, the floorwalker knocks out the manager and flees with the money. Just as the floorwalker is about to exit, he encounters Charlie who looks much like him.
He persuades Charlie to act as his substitute. The floorwalker is arrested, but Charlie ends up holding the bag; the manager begins to chase him around the store. At one point the two men are running down an upward escalator without getting anywhere. Police become involved in the chase and the manager ends up with his head stuck in an elevator—while Charlie helps to keep it there; the Floorwalker was the first film Chaplin made for the Mutual Company. It marked the first Chaplin comedy in which Eric Campbell played the huge, menacing villain; this film marked Henry Bergman's first of numerous appearances in Chaplin films. Bergman would play an authority figure or an upper-crust society gentleman--the perfect comic foil for Charlie's Tramp character. Bergman would work with Chaplin until his death from a heart attack in 1946. Seven minutes from the start of the film and the store's floorwalker, Lloyd Bacon, stumble into opposite doors of an office and are intrigued by their likeness to each other.
They mirror each other's movements to deft comic effect in a way, believed to have inspired the "mirror scene" in Max Linder's Seven Years Bad Luck. In that comedy film, Max's servants accidentally break a mirror and try to hide their mistake by having one of them dress just like their employer; when Max looks into the non-existent glass, the disguised servant mimics his every action. Max Linder's movie in turn inspired many similar scenes, most famously in the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup. Renditions can be found in the Bugs Bunny cartoon Hare Tonic, the Mickey Mouse cartoon Lonesome Ghosts, the Tom and Jerry cartoon Cat and Dupli-cat and in the TV series Family Guy and The X-Files. A scene in The Pink Panther, with David Niven and Robert Wagner wearing identical gorilla costumes, mimics the mirror scene. Harpo Marx did a reprise of this scene, dressed in his usual costume, with Lucille Ball donning the fright wig and trench coat, in an episode of I Love Lucy. Additionally, an early episode of The Patty Duke Show contains a mirror scene in which the characters Patty and Cathy Lane act out a version similar to the one found in the film Duck Soup.
Maxson F. Judell glowingly wrote of The Floorwalker in the Madison State Journal, "Performing in inimitable style on an escalator, or in common parlance, a moving stairway, injecting new'business' such as he has not given the public in previous comedies, producing the film with adequate settings and excellent photography, supported by a well-chosen cast, Charles Chaplin proves conclusively that he is without question of doubt the world's greatest comedian. Chaplin possesses that indefinable something which makes you laugh heartily and without restraint at what in others would be called commonplace actions." In 1932, Amedee Van Beuren of Van Beuren Studios, purchased Chaplin's Mutual comedies for $10,000 each, added music by Gene Rodemich and Winston Sharples and sound effects, re-released them through RKO Radio Pictures. Charles Chaplin as Tramp Eric Campbell as Store manager Edna Purviance as Manager's secretary Lloyd Bacon as Assistant manager Albert Austin as Shop assistant Charlotte Mineau as Beautiful store detective Leo White as A Customer Henry Bergman as Old Man Frank J. Coleman as Janitor Bud Jamison James T. Kelley as Lift Boy Tom Nelson as Detective John Rand as Policeman Wesley Ruggles as Policeman Tiny Sandford The short film The Floorwalker is available for free download at the Internet Archive The Floorwalker on IMDb
Love My Dog
Love My Dog is a 1927 American short silent comedy film directed by Robert F. McGowan, it was the 59th Our Gang short subject released. It was remade in 1932 as The Pooch. After Farina and Joe's dog Oleander is taken to the pound, the kids have to raise enough money to rescue him. Joe Cobb - Joe Jackie Condon - Jackie Allen Hoskins - Farina Scooter Lowry - Skooter Jay R. Smith - Jay Bobby Young - Bonedust Mildred Kornman - Baby on the ledge Bobby Mallon - Kid warning the gang Andy Shuford as Kid at dog show Dick Gilbert - Attendant at gas station Charles McMurphy - Dog catcher Tiny Sandford - P. Fulton, attorney at law Charley Young - Office worker Our Gang filmography Love My Dog on IMDb
After His Own Heart
After His Own Heart is a 1919 American silent comedy-drama film based on a 1919 short story of the same name by Ben Ames Williams. It was directed by Harry L. Franklin; the film stars Hale Hamilton and Naomi Childers and was distributed by Metro Pictures Corp. a forerunner of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. A copy of the film is archived at the Cinémathèque Française under the title Une Cure Merveilleuse. Thomas Wentworth Duncan, a millionaire, faces the prospect of being broke after a fraudulent trustee absconds with his money. Duncan is now faced with getting a job to support himself, but he has never been accustomed to doing anything more strenuous than polo. Duncan has fallen in love with Sally Reeves, an old flame, but he realizes he no longer has the fortune and lifestyle to which she is accustomed and cannot ask her to marry him. After returning from a gala that he expects to be his last one with his elite friends, he finds a mysterious letter on his table inscribed "personal and important"; the letter informs him that his financial woes are well known to the letter-writer and if he will give one month to an unexplained project, the sender will pay him $250,000.
Duncan decides to reject the offer in the letter, but the thought of being with Sally makes him change his mind. The next day, a limousine arrives with it a huge man whom he names Goliath. Duncan is taken to the hospital of Dr. Spleen, a fanatic who wants to transplant Duncan's good heart into the body of Judah P. Corpus, Sally’s rich uncle, who wants to remain young; when Duncan learns that Spleen's previous heart transplant patients, which were two dogs, that both died, he becomes nervous and wants out of the deal, but he is prevented from leaving by Goliath. As Spleen is about to perform the operation, the excitement proves to be too much for him and he drops dead. Sally's uncle doesn't know that the Dr. has died, thinks the operation has been performed. After leaving the hospital, Duncan receives news from the authorities that the trustee has been found and that his fortune is saved, so he and Sally can now get married. Hale Hamilton - Thomas Wentworth Duncan Naomi Childers - Sally Reeves Mrs. Louis - Mrs. Martin Frank Hayes - Vincent Harry Carter - Dr. Spleen William V. Mong - Judah P.
Corpus Herbert Pryor - Adrian Keep Stanley Sanford - Goliath The film is based on the short story After His Own Heart by Ben Ames Williams, published in All-Story Weekly, January 1919. Metro Pictures obtained the story for Hamilton, a popular stage comedian at the time; the studio thought. The publicity department at Metro suggested to exhibitors showing the film that they use tag lines to promote the film, such as: "Thomas wanted to give his heart away and these people wanted to buy it! - and - What kind of heart is worth a quarter of a million dollars?" The studio was concerned with the horror aspect of the plot, assured exhibitors: “Don’t by any chance infer from the story that the picture has a gruesome touch. The theme is treated from the farce angle and unfolds many laughs without giving any ugly thrills.” Peter Milne wrote in his review for Motion Picture News, that the "various scenes between the hero and his captors have a high comedy value", but thought the early scenes were "held too long and the detail introduced is tiring".
Overall, he said the film "brings a goodly number of laughs". In Hanford C. Judson's review for The Moving Picture World, he stated that the film has "touches of fresh humor" and noted that the character "most strikingly acted" was Dr. Spleen, played by Harry Carter. Judson opined that the part "fits him to perfection and he makes the situation quite convincing." A review in the Exhibitors Herald was critical of the film, saying that "there are no incidents or story angles that bring forth more than mildly amused smiles from a chance audience". The Herald said that a "drop-in gathering" at a Chicago theater "seemed to find little in the play to amuse them". After His Own Heart on IMDb
