The Cheerful Fraud

A year after they had a hit with the social comedy SKINNER'S DRESS SUIT, director Seiter and actor Reginald Denny teamed up again in this sharply-turned farce. reminiscent of the sort that Clarence Badger was doing with Raymond Griffith over at Paramount.

There are the usual complications that lead to the situations in this farce: an adventuress -- Gertrude Astor -- with incriminating letters, a young couple in love -- that's Denny and Gertrude Olmstead -- and a crook pretending to be Reginald Denny's character. The timing is brisk, the situations comical, the pratfalls well taken and if dialogue instead of titles might sharpen it a tad, the silent version we have is quite funny without them.

"The Cheerful Fraud" (1926) is another proof that Reginald Denny was one of the great farceurs of the early twentieth century. The story is actually quite impossible, and it begins on a note that borders the ridiculous, but if the viewer sits atop the pole that has no seat for a few minutes and endures the eye-popping silliness, then, for no reason at all, there's a euphoria cum numbness that overcomes and begins to make you laugh. It's so silly and impossible, yet so inviting, everyone will get so involved in the adventure - oh, and that's what it has become - that for the seventy minutes or so you're bagged like a fish in a trammel net. The acting is better than first rate. Frankly, all is first rate but the story. It's stale and over-the-top. What it lacks to make this thing a classic's classic is cleverness. It isn't subtle in any way. It's not slapstick, but it wants to be.

Denny's facial expressions are priceless. But the person who everyway equals Denny in this thing is Gertrude Astor. She's a pip! And, in case you didn't know, Denny was over six feet tall. In her high heels, Astor is often taller than Denny. No short lady. Another in the cast equally tall or taller is Emily Fitzroy. She plays the wife of funnyman and shrimp in height, Otis Harlan. Denny's amour in the piece is Gertrude Olmstead. She's the meek, but self-determined foil to the ridiculous happenings of all the others. Did I mention Charles K. Gerrard? He plays the nasty who impersonates the character Denny IS in the show. Confused? Good. Watch this. Stick with it: it's crazy at the beginning: you'll think, "Wait a minute! No one does that! That's ridiculous!" As I said: stick with it. You'll find it hilarious. One of the title cards actually made me laugh out loud. Trust me, that's not a common thing.

Unfortunately, my print's from Alpha. You get what you get. Picture quality never reaches the good level. Always just under or less. Still, it's watchable. That music that accompanies it is something you can always turn down to a very low level. Then all is well.