Jimmy Aubrey lets the kids in the alley shoot arrows at him. After he grows tired of this, he treats them like satchels to get them out of his way. A policeman shows up and he is terrified; later, disguised as a policeman, he encounters Oliver Hardy, who is in brutal mode here.
The last sequence makes some sense, but the rest of it makes me wonder how much of this picture is missing. I often feel that way about Jimmy Aubrey's starring shorts and it's not because I think large chunks are missing. I think of Aubrey as a competent performer, but more of a white-face clown than a screen comedian, someone who did funny things because they made the audience laugh, with little in the way of rhyme or reason to hook them together. He should have done better; he came out of the Karno troupe, like Chaplin and Stan Laurel (who gave him small parts in many of his movies). Later he became a bit player in hundreds of features.
The copy I saw on the National Film Preservation site had a good score by the indefatigable Ben Model and was tinted bright cherry red for the outdoor scenes and cyan for the indoor ones.
The last sequence makes some sense, but the rest of it makes me wonder how much of this picture is missing. I often feel that way about Jimmy Aubrey's starring shorts and it's not because I think large chunks are missing. I think of Aubrey as a competent performer, but more of a white-face clown than a screen comedian, someone who did funny things because they made the audience laugh, with little in the way of rhyme or reason to hook them together. He should have done better; he came out of the Karno troupe, like Chaplin and Stan Laurel (who gave him small parts in many of his movies). Later he became a bit player in hundreds of features.
The copy I saw on the National Film Preservation site had a good score by the indefatigable Ben Model and was tinted bright cherry red for the outdoor scenes and cyan for the indoor ones.
