Tramp, Tramp, Tramp.

Review #1784: Tramp, Tramp, Tramp.

Cast: 

Harry Langdon (Harry), Joan Crawford (Betty Burton), Edwards Davis (John Burton), Tom Murray (Nick Kargas), Alec B. Francis (Amos Logan), Brooks Benedict (Taxi Driver), and Carlton Griffin (Roger Caldwell) Directed by Harry Edwards.

Review: 

You may be wondering just what is so important about a movie like this, considering its inauspicious title. Well, it really is more about the star more so than the director, although the star and director generally should each have their own share of credit for when a comedy does as well as it should. So here we are with Harry Langdon, a presence in vaudeville and film for nearly four decades. Sure, folks will probably remember Chaplin, Keaton & Lloyd first as the silent comedy icons, but Langdon had his own measure of importance as a silent icon, albeit with less feature films to consider. The Iowa native started work in shows and stock companies as a teenager in the turn of the 20th century. A run in vaudeville was later followed his most famous association: Mack Sennett and his studio, where his pantomime act being quite popular in various short films. It was his work with Harry Edwards and writers Frank Capra and Arthur Ripley that is best known today. He also did a series of features in the latter part of the 1920s, for which three are generally known: this one, The Strong Man (1926), and Long Pants (1927) - the middle film incidentally was the debut of Capra as director. Langdon soon decided after two films with Capra to direct his own films; his three silent efforts (one short) did not fare well (although none are available to see for oneself), and the impending transition to sound in Hollywood likely did not help either; Capra once stated Langdon did not know why his persona was funny, while a producer once described him as "not so funny articulate". While he never became a major star after the end of the silent era, he did keep busy with roles (supporting ones in features and shorts) alongside writing until his death in 1944 at the age of 60. As for Edwards, this was one of only two feature films that he directed, since he was more of a shorts director (doing 150 of them in a three-decade career), although his reputation was not the highest, as his work with the Three Stooges would suggest - they made two shorts together before the group requested that he never work with them again.

Langdon has a persona was certainly interesting for folks to try and pin down about his appeal, one that certainly had a clownish and unique sensibility (one whose attempts at drawing amusement from his little gestures certainly seems different from Keaton). In a sense, it was a persona that was a bit child-like and perhaps just offbeat enough to generate laughs for the time. Of course, one may be wondering just what this film is about. Well, it is about a guy trying to help his dad save his shoe store and woo a woman by winning a cross country foot race across the country with a $25,000 cash prize. Yep, that's about it. The movie, running at an hour in length, is basically composed of a bunch of vignettes involving a child-like pantomime in Langdon going around getting into weird situations, whether involving sheep, prison work, or a cyclone. While one can see pretty easily why his persona may not have been long for the cinema world past the silent era (in terms of the time and as star), one can still find a good deal to appreciate about the efforts of Langdon and Edwards in crafting an energetic and quirky feature with plenty of interesting amusing sequences that he does well with, moving around with confidence and a face ripe for gesture to make useful gags. Strangely enough, it also features Joan Crawford in an early role, one in the midst of her attempts to promote herself as a film star that would merit success soon enough; she doesn't have much to really do, but she at least matches fine with Langdon in those attempts at warm chemistry. The segment with the prison (where he switches tools a few times) is quite amusing, although the cyclone sequence at the end does seem to be the most effective chuckler among the group of vignettes designed to show our quirky hero. The film ends with him playing a baby (because the two leads fell in love, as was pretty much every silent comedy of that time), which is probably just as weird to consider as it is to write that sentence, although it is amusing. At any rate, no matter where one considers Langdon's place in terms of the noted silent comics of Hollywood, one can't deny that Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926) is a solid effort worth checking out.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Next Time: I Was Born, But... (1932)

Feet First.

Review #1621: Feet First. 

Cast:
Harold Lloyd (Harold Horne), Barbara Kent (Barbara), Robert McWade (John Quincy Tanner), Lillian Leighton (Mrs. Tanner), Henry Hall (Endicott), Noah Young (Sailor), Alec B. Francis (Mr. Carson), Arthur Housman (Drunken Clubman), and Willie Best (Janitor) Directed by Clyde Bruckman (#908 - The General and #1304 - Welcome Danger)

Review:
What is there to say that has not been said about Harold Lloyd? There were numerous stars and icons of the early years of cinema, which ranged from shorts to feature-length, and Lloyd was a pillar of both in a career that spanned three decades. He was as distinct in his persona as other icons of the era like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin with his thrill sequences and notable stunts (with a share done by Lloyd, but not all of them contrary to perception, with crewmen like Robert A. Golden doing stunts) that resulted in a fair share of triumph for silent and sound films, and it is his attention to archiving his work that means one can readily enjoy most of his short films and all of his features without trouble (incidentally, Lloyd had complied gags from films such as this one for Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy in 1962, although he edited the film to remove dated material). How one enjoys their comedic presence of yesteryear is up to debate, but Lloyd was surely consistent enough in his silent output of eleven features, with the three big highlights being Grandma's Boy (1922), Safety Last! (1923), and The Freshman (1925). Not to be forgotten in this film is director Bruckman, because he certainly left as big of an imprint on comedy as Lloyd. He worked with a variety of comic legends in regards to gags and direction/writing. He started his young years as a sports writer before moving to further writing ventures and then film in intertitle writing in 1919. He moved on to a chance to assist with writing gags for Buster Keaton (it was Bruckman that found a book about a locomative chase in the Civil War that led to one of Keaton's best features with The General). Work with others soon followed, such as directing Laurel & Hardy with The Battle of the Century (1927, short subject), or work with Monty Banks (A Perfect Gentleman, 1928) and eventual work with comedians like W. C. Fields and The Three Stooges. Of course, this was the second collaboration between Lloyd and Bruckman, with their first talking feature not exactly being a winner. In fact, Welcome Danger (1929) was actually pretty dull, a hodgepodge that exists in sound and silent versions that played too loose with itself in landing anything more than pale in nearly two hours of film.

So, if there was a problem with too many cooks in the writing room and pacing before, does this film solve those quandries? Sort of, since it runs at 93 minutes, but there were six (!) credited writers this time around: John Grey, Alfred A. Cohn, and Bruckman contributed the story, while Felix Adler & Lex Neal did the scenario and Paul Gerard Smith did the dialogue. Lloyd played the bespectacled "Glasses" kid to a T for years and years, where he usually had to prove something (whether for a girl or for courage), so here we are in what seems to be a case of trying to drain from the well for what seems like the seventh time in a decade (after all, those Lloyd masterpieces all followed the same pattern), with varying results. It can best be described with a famous line used involving change: The more things change, the more they stay the same. What we have is a comedy of dueling masquerades, since Lloyd is doing his "Glasses" schtick to try and make an impression of the shoe place he works at in terms of personality while thinking that the lady he is wooing is the daughter of his boss, which leads to stints spent with high society, a sequence with a fussy parent, a boat, and a skyscraper. It is a fairly episodic film that naturally decides to spend nearly half of its time with the ocean liner (with gags that range from trying to hide papers with his face on it to running away in a mailbag as it goes off the boat) that goes on for over thirty minutes. Interestingly, the film then goes to a trip up (and down) a building in a series of gags that seem reminiscent of Safety Last! in his hanging(s) - the aspects with Best is the most dated part of the film, adhering to stereotypes that were omitted on re-release for TV and the ensuing compilation. Best was one of the first well known African American actors/comedians, although he generally was used to play roles considered demeaning - this was his first credited role (although he is credited under the horrid nicknname "Sleep 'n' Eat") in a career of two decades. The sequence is tedious enough, playing on making Best play a clownish janitor role that is referred to as a word relating to his skin is worse. The skyscraper sequence was shot the same way as with that film, in which there was construction done to put parts of the facade of a building (in this case a gas building in Los Angeles) onto a rooftop where a camera tower would be adjacent (stark in contrast to resorting to tricks like rear projection, although that is used for one momentary shot in the end). This sequence of dangling off the building goes on for near twenty minutes, and we are talking about a movie that only goes on for basically a minute after it stops yo-yoing off the building just to wrap things up abruptly and set up one more joke. Simply put, putting sound to a scene of someone trying to not fall down a building is too lengthy to really contemplate. Lost in all this is the acting, because it basically seems like a lamp post waiting to be tripped over for some mild gags, for which Lloyd is yet again the only notable one to stick out. Thing is, he was 37 when this came out, and there are only so many times one can be a square before it becomes a flat-footed mess. This was the second of two films for Kent with Lloyd, and she was the last leading lady to star in multiple films with Lloyd, and she certainly gives off nothing of interest in terms of romance or amusement with Lloyd, where one might as well be watching two broomsticks try not to bump into the other. McWade and Leighton are there in small notes that one hopes for time to serve as a foil, and yet here we are. As a whole, the episodes of gags should work better than they do, but average Lloyd might be well enough if one wants to see the progression of Lloyd continue yet again with a sound product that would fit best when there are no less average ideas available or for a completionist. 

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.