Saturday Afternoon (1926) User Reviews

very low-key Harry Langdon

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 7 July 2006]

This was a very slow and meandering silent comedy about mouse-like Harry Langdon and his attempts to assert himself. In so many ways this film is nothing like contemporary comedies because it does not rely on chases or slapstick, but on story and the slower style of Langdon. At times, I enjoy Langdon's films very much--such as with HIS MARRIAGE WOW, but in general I should point out that I am really not a fan of his work. If I want a more "cerebral" silent comedian, I prefer Charlie Chase or the early Laurel and Hardy films--so keep this in mind when you read my review. I just think that too often, Langdon relied too much on his cute little boy look and less on laughs.

The film begins with Harry's wife telling a friend that the way to a good marriage is to keep your husband under your thumb at all times. Harry is so hen-pecked that he's aching to be a bad boy (though just how bad can he be?). Throughout the film, he schemes with his buddy to chase women and have a good time, but never actually gets around to doing anything THAT bad. In the end, the wife sees him stepping out and decides maybe it's her fault for being so tough on him.

While mildly entertaining, the laughs were few and far between in the film. There were a few good moments here and there (such as the running board scene), but generally this film looks more like a drama with some comedy than a silent comedy. Not exactly my cup of tea.

Woman Rules With Iron Fist

[DKosty123 · 7/10 · 20 December 2010]

Frank Capra wrote this script which shows some touches of what he would do late. In this one Harry Langdon plays the husband who is solidly under his wife's fingernail. So solidly in fact that he calls here at home if he it going to be 2 minutes late.

Then, Mr Higgins (Langdon) meets his buddy Steve Smith on the way home and Smith (Vernon Dent) has a couple of cu ties all set to snuggle up on a date with them. All Higgins needs to do is go home & get money to pay for the date. Mrs. Higgins (Alice Ward) then catches him taking the money for his date. Surprisingly, she tells him to go ahead & gives him a peck on the cheek & some money.

Mrs. Higgins thinks he is bluffing & wouldn't step out on her. After the torture he goes through trying to step out I doubt that he will be trying it again. When Mrs. Higgins catches up she says ruefully, "I shouldn't have have given you the money." Harry, looking much worse for the wear agrees.

Generally Amusing Treatment of a Familiar Plot

[Snow Leopard · 23 January 2002]

This short Harry Langdon comedy takes a very familiar plot and uses it to pretty good effect. There are no hilarious gags, but it is generally lively and fairly amusing, with a number of good moments. The plot has Harry trying to slip away from his domineering wife so that he can enjoy an afternoon of fun with his pal (Vernon Dent) - Laurel & Hardy used the same general idea in several films, as have numerous other comics. Langdon's distinctive, boyish style doesn't always work, but at times it is quite funny, and his approach gives this a somewhat different feel from other movies of the kind. He also has a good stunt with cars towards the end. Not a great movie, but one worth watching for fans of silent comedy.

A Drive for the Married Man

[wes-connors · 4/10 · 20 May 2011]

Henpecked husband Harry Langdon (as Harry Higgins) is described as, "just a crumb from the sponge cake of life." His wife Alice Ward believes, "The first step in losing any man is letting him have his own way." After missing a ride home from the steelyard, Mr. Langdon meets runabout pal Vernon Dent (as Steve Smith) and two attractive young women. Mr. Smith wants Langdon to spend "Saturday Afternoon" with him and the women. Despite being married, Langdon endeavors to keep the date. The quartet goes for a ride and meets not only their dates' boyfriends, but also Langdon's wife. Bending over and rolling around, rotund Mr. Dent needs a fresh pair of pants. The cars and location footage are the highlights.

**** Saturday Afternoon (1/31/26) Harry Edwards ~ Harry Langdon, Vernon Dent, Alice Ward, Ruth Hiatt

A pleasant half-hour with Harry Langdon

[wmorrow59 · 9/10 · 23 December 2001]

Harry Langdon's Saturday Afternoon is sometimes ranked among the best and best-known silent comedies, at least in the short subject category, and therefore may come as a bit of a letdown for some viewers. Unlike some of the other widely recognized classics such as Keaton's Cops or Chaplin's Easy Street this film is in most respects a conventional situation comedy, certainly engaging and amusing but not chock-full of belly laughs; one might even wonder whether Langdon belongs in such rarefied company. I believe he does. Allowing for the familiarity of the premise this a perfectly charming comedy played in a minor key, and Harry is fascinating to watch.

For a modern viewer raised on TV sitcoms the plot of Saturday Afternoon may suggest The Honeymooners or its many spin-offs: two dim guys, one of whom is married and very much under his wife's thumb, try to sneak out with a couple of good-time girls for a fun afternoon. Inevitably everything goes wrong, and they wind up having to fight the girls' tough guy boyfriends. Does this sound familiar? Surely the premise was shopworn when this film was new, but beyond that nothing about Langdon was typical. He was odd, starting with the fact that he looked like a middle-aged baby who was half asleep. Any Freudians watching him here will have a field day with the scenes between this timid, pudgy-faced baby-man and his stern, gently domineering mommy-wife. See in particular the sequence when Harry tries to hide money under the rug, and the Missus catches him in the act and forces him to hand it over. You'd swear you're watching an interaction between a 6 year-old boy and his Mama. Maybe that's why Harry Langdon gave some people the creeps, and why some viewers find him hard to take.

But he's a compelling screen presence, and when he's funny it's not what he does so much as the way he does it. In that scene with the money under the rug, for instance, Harry finds the coins by placing one foot before the other, carefully, like a tightrope walker, counting off his paces until he finds the right spot. His technique is hypnotic. Langdon moved like no one else. Whether or not he makes you laugh, the guy is mesmerizing, seemingly in a world of his own. Where story is concerned Harry is often strangely passive, and almost never drives the plot himself. In the finale of Saturday Afternoon, when a big fistfight is taking place, Harry's co-star Vernon Dent is in the thick of the action, but Harry is in a daze for much of the time. He winds up sort of punch-drunk between two cars, sitting on the running board of one, but with his feet on the other, while the cars race through the streets. It's a memorable image, and, as the critic Walter Kerr wrote, it encapsulates Langdon's screen persona quite perfectly: he's a passive figure who somehow finds himself in the middle of frantic action, blinking sleepily while the world rushes past. It's also worth noting that Langdon and Dent, who worked together frequently, have a rapport that suggests a blueprint Laurel & Hardy would follow when they teamed up a year or so later. Langdon's style was a likely influence on Stan Laurel, especially here.

Saturday Afternoon and its star may not be for everyone, but the film is well worth a look. This is Harry Langdon in his prime, the silent screen's most unusual and beguiling comedian.

Nothing bad, but nothing new either

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 27 July 2016]

"Saturday Afternoon" is a short film from 1926, so this one has its 90th anniversary already this year and as a consequence this is obviously black-and-white silent film. The lead actor is Harry Langdon and he is still semi-famous today just like supporting actor Vernon Dent. Occasionally the two seem like a poor man's version of Laurel and Hardy and this is maybe also Langdon's biggest problem. Back then, there was not too much space next to Charlie Chaplin and the little there was was taken by the likes of Keaton, Lloyd and Arbuckle. Physicall and in terms of his approach to comedy, Langdon resembles Chaplin a lot and this is probably why he is not too known today anymore. It's a bit of a pity as this short film has some entertaining and some good moments, but also not enough for watch the rest of this almost 30-minute long film. I give it a thumbs down. Little side not to close the review: The legendary director Frank Capra worked on the script here.

Langdon's Last Silent Short before he turned to feature films

[theowinthrop · 8/10 · 20 April 2008]

If (as I just pointed out in THE GOAT) Keaton is following the tradition of the comics finding themselves at odds with the law, this Langdon short (the last released before he did TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP) was based on another comic ploy - being married to a shrewish spouse, and trying to get away for some secret two-timing dating. Laurel & Hardy did this in several films, as did Fields, and Chaplin.

I have a problem with it - why do these characters always marry such nasty women? And there is an interesting sociological side issue - why don't you find female comics married to male counterparts to these shrews? I can't recall any, except in a Carol Burnett skit, where the two nastier members of two couples discover that they prefer having someone give it back as good as they get (a kind of mutual sado-masochism, but also reassurance that their not married to a namby-pamby type). As for the fact that the comics do marry shrews, I suppose one can imagine they get what they deserve. Or do they? Ollie really deserves a wife who throws pots and dishes at him? Yeah he went to that convention in SONS OF THE DESERT that ruined her plans, but he wanted to get some private time - there is nothing suggesting he and Stan cheated on their wives. Actually he is creamed by Mae Busch because he lied to her while Stan collapsed and told the truth to his wife.

Here Harry's wife (Alice Ward) is shown at the start talking to her mother about how she keeps him under strict control. We see Harry at his job (it is Saturday morning, and the job ends at noon for the rest of the weekend - this was before the idea of a five - day a week, 40 hour a week job in industry). He works in a foundry where he hits red hot metal into shape (an early joke about Langdon - he is a small, light man, not the muscular type to swing a sledge hammer). He just misses his streetcar trying to give a man a light. He calls home to explain things and gets an earful from the missus for being two minutes late.

On the way home Harry meets his pal Steve (Vernon Dent) who has met two nice, sweet girls who would just love to have a date. Harry is hesitant but agrees to it after talking to the girl (he agrees to pay for the hot-dogs for the foursome - he has a 1926 silver half dollar in his pocket). But his plans seem derailed when his wife discovers his hidden "cache" of coins. He keeps it hidden under the living room rug, and finds it by walking along the edge of the rug. But his wife spies on him, and confiscates all of it. Later she overhears him talking to himself and berating her. In contempt she gives him back a dime and says he can treat his date to a soda.

But Harry has a second cache of coins, and dresses up for the date - and goes out. He and Dent are apparently late, and Dent blames Harry, but Harry tries to make it up to him: he produces two prostitutes. They get into a quarrel when Dent (wisely) says they are not the type of girls he'd term as "nice". Eventually the girls do show up and the date begins. But soon Harry is hiding in the rumble seat, as his wife drives past in her roadster, and the girls boy friends turn up - angry at their two rivals.

The short works well and is amusing, and gives one a better idea of the persona that Harry Langdon developed in his brief stardom as a comic master. He is constantly put upon by others. He misses his streetcar because some stranger keeps asking for a smoke and a light, and in the end the stranger gets his own. The nice girl who is Harry's date has a little dog who chases him away. He rests between two cars that both start driving away and he ends up wrapped around a pole. It certainly demonstrates that Langdon had his screen persona down pat by the time that he made his features. If only he could have kept the complex whole together beyond those three first features.

Watch it any day of the week

[hte-trasme · 10/10 · 6 December 2009]

"Saturday Afternoon" is one of Harry Langdon's best-known short subjects, and with good reason. It is one of his funniest and best films. The plot -- such as it is -- is an old staple: a hen-pecked husband sneaks away for a night out with a his pal and a couple of other girls. It's a solid and well-used comedy plot, but the difference here is Harry Langdon himself. His slow, ineffectual, befuddled, innocent character has somehow floundered his way into a marriage with a woman who feels that he of all people must be ruled with an iron fist, and he is only thrust into cheating on her because he can't say "no" to the exhortations of the chummy Vernon Dent and the cute eyelash-fluttering of the girl.

It's a very adult problem to be thrust onto such a helpless, childlike character. Harry doesn't want to cheat, but he can't do anything about it. In a wonderful bit of comic business, he can't bring himself to blow the new girlfriend kiss goodbye: he slyly pushes the kiss at her underhand and ashamedly wipes off his hand as if to chastise it. The film is a three-reel comedy, ten minutes longer than the two-reelers Harry Langdon had previously been starring in for Mack Sennett, with no more plot. Perhaps it was even designed to be a two-reeler. This works beautifully, since it gives him as much time as he needs to inject the slow reactions and bewildered glimpses and half-actions where so much of his comedy lives.

He's at his best here, and the show is really Harry Langdon's curious magic and ability to spin comedy out of almost nothing. His little half- smiles, his look while handling the money he has hidden under the rug, childlike attempts to enter the fight at the end. I think his comedy makes us recognize something fundamentally innocent and confused in ourselves that makes us feel like the whole world is too much for us, yet at the same time, by allowing us to understand what Harry does not (such as the fact that the women he good-heartedly brings to his friend to cheer him after he thinks the date has been blown are in fact whores) he forces his to realize with a little bit of sadness that we are not that innocent anymore. His comedy is just as capable of making us audibly say "Awwww" as it is making us laugh, often at once.

Here Harry wants to refuse to cheat on his wife, he wants to tell his wife whose boss and take some power back in his relationship, he wants to fight back against the two violent men at the end of the film, but he just can't affect his surroundings that much, and sometimes we all feel like that.

The film is perfectly directed by frequent Langdon director Harry Edwards; it moves at a quick pace and never stalls while at the same time making time for and presenting to best effect Harry Langdon's still, reactive comedy. Vernon Dent, a frequent foil to Langdon, plays one of the roles here where he becomes almost a comedy partner in his very effective pairing with Harry. The gags spaced out in a way that gives maximum effect too, and Harry gets his own version of a Lloyd or Keaton style stunt at the end. Here the comedy is not in Harry's big reactions to the danger of sitting perched between two moving cars, but in his slowness to take it in.

This is a hilarious film, and a perfect example of the comedy of one of the most unique an talented humorists that I know ever to have existed.

Routine Langdon Short

[Michael_Elliott · 14 November 2012]

Saturday Afternoon (1926)

** (out of 4)

Fair 28-minute short has Harry Langdon playing Harry Higgins, a weak little man who is constantly being pushed around by his wife (Alice Ward) who believes the only place for a man is under her thumb. A buddy (Vernon Dent) talks Harry into coming out with him and a couple girls but it doesn't take long for everything to go wrong. Saturday AFTERNOON was co-written by Frank Capra but none of the magic he's known for managed to make its way onto the actual film. Overall this is a fairly amusing film that will at least keep you entertained from start to finish but there's still no question that it runs on way too long and for a comedy there just aren't enough laughs. In fact, I'd say after the opening sequence there aren't any laughs that follow and this here is certainly something that kills the film. I mean, how can you have a comedy with no laughs and it still work? I thought the early sequence of Langdon having to call home to the wife because he's going to be two-minutes late was pretty funny. After this we basically get scenes where not much is going on except for Langdon's sad face looking at the camera. I'll admit that I'm not the biggest Langdon fan as I'm usually hit and miss so perhaps those who love him will find more entertainment here than I did.

One of Harry Langdon's funniest outings!

[JohnHowardReid · 10/10 · 30 November 2017]

Harry Langdon (Harry Higgins), Alice Ward (his wife), Vernon Dent (his best friend, Steve Smith), Ruth Hiatt (Hyatt) (Pearl, a real hot number), Peggy Montgomery (another real hot number).

Director: HARRY EDWARDS. Screenplay: Arthur Ripley, Frank Capra. Titles: A. H. Giebler. Photography: William Williams. Film editor: William Hornbeck. Special photography: Ernie Crockett. Production supervisor: John A. Waldron. Producer: Mack Sennett.

Copyright 23 January 1926 by Pathé Exchange, Inc. 30 minutes.

SYNOPSIS: Harry Higgins is a factory worker, completely under the thumb of his wife to whom he hands all his wages with the exception of loose change which he hides under the living-room carpet. His friend, Steve, induces him to come along on a double date with a couple of sexy young heart-breakers.

COMMENT: One of Harry Langdon's funniest outings, Saturday Afternoon is very typical of his style of baby-faced comedy. True, one has the feeling that more could have been done with this theme than is actually delivered. The script is clever enough, but the director seems unable to milk it for all that it's worth. For instance, the spectacle of Harry riding along in the rumble seat of Steve's coupé is absolutely delicious. And when Harry drives off the road and Harry gets bumped around, it's even funnier. But when Harry is eventually recovered from the car's interior, the scene is rather flatly presented in long shot. I would have thought a close-up of Harry coughing up various nuts, bolts and springs would have been far more pointed and much funnier.

Still it's good to see Vernon Dent acquitting himself so ably in a major role. I love the way he hustles Harry around. At many points, he's actually more amusing than Harry himself. Alice Ward, who played mostly bit roles, here proves very effective as Harry's stand-and-deliver wife. But it's Ruth Hyatt and Peggy Montgomery who almost steal the picture.

Two nice inside jokes involving Frank Capra also add to the fun. (Frank is the last man attempting to board the streetcar and is later joined by fellow writer Arthur Ripley to disentangle Harry from the pole).

AVAILABLE on DVD through Facets. Quality rating: 10 out of 10.