This is a textbook example of a supporting actor stealing a film. I guarantee you people walked out of the theater thinking that Stan Laurel had a bright future.
Stan plays an uptight butler who is shy and terrified of women. (Think Gilligan of Gilligan's Island in a butler's uniform.) When he is forced to take part in a scheme to sell papers by creating a scandal, he has to overcome his shyness in an hurry and seduce the sophisticated "Countess Polasky", who, the film tell us, "would make Sappho and Salome look like two Eskimos." She gets the idea to seduce him, but the joke is on her when the shy butler discovers that, yes, it can be wonderful to hold a woman in your arms!
This delightful short is a triumph for Stan Laurel, an undervalued classic, and well worth viewing for nothing else but the early shots of glorious, undeveloped California in the late 1920s. My jaw dropped at the sight of those almost bare, lightly motored, tree-lined streets. Beautiful.
Stan plays an uptight butler who is shy and terrified of women. (Think Gilligan of Gilligan's Island in a butler's uniform.) When he is forced to take part in a scheme to sell papers by creating a scandal, he has to overcome his shyness in an hurry and seduce the sophisticated "Countess Polasky", who, the film tell us, "would make Sappho and Salome look like two Eskimos." She gets the idea to seduce him, but the joke is on her when the shy butler discovers that, yes, it can be wonderful to hold a woman in your arms!
This delightful short is a triumph for Stan Laurel, an undervalued classic, and well worth viewing for nothing else but the early shots of glorious, undeveloped California in the late 1920s. My jaw dropped at the sight of those almost bare, lightly motored, tree-lined streets. Beautiful.