In and Out

When this short begins, Monty Banks and his new bride are about to experience their first meal as husband and wife. Unfortunately, she might just be the world's worst cook. Her coffee is practically solid and her biscuits are so tough the dog won't even eat them! Monty pretends to eat this stuff but mostly spends breakfast trying to pretend to eat it.

After Monty leaves, the wife has trouble with a guy selling books door to door and he won't take no for an answer. Unfortunately, when he unexpectedly returns, the ice man thinks that he's the book seller and tosses him out repeatedly.

While none of this is 100% hilarious, it has its moments and is all in good fun. Let's just hope that one day they find the rest of this short! Either way, it's worth your time.

Monty Banks and Florence Gilbert are newlyweds in this one-reel comedy. They go through several of the standard newlyweds gags, including inedible cookery and an importunate door-to-door salesman.

It may sound as if it isn't particularly interesting, but it is. Monty Banks was a great gag technician and skilled slapstick performer. His earliest screen appearances had been for Arbuckle, substituting for a drafted Buster Keaton. By 1920 he had his own series of short comedies for Warner Brothers (this is one) and by the mid-twenties he was directing and starring in several good comedy features that failed to ignite at the box office, so he retreated behind the camera and to England, where he prospered as a director.

For many years, this had disappeared, but it turned up at the Library of Congress, where it was identified at one of their occasional showings of old films without titles. You can see it on Undercrank Productions' DVD FOUND AT MOSTLY LOST.

JUNE 14 2020 Update: some subsequent research - an old poster - has cast doubt on the movie being IN AND OUT; some people - by which I mean Steve Massa - think it may actually be the next short Monty appeared in, HIS FIRST HONEYMOON. For the moment, I'll leave the review here.