Pass the Gravy

This is one of my favorite silent comedies and it's one of the Crown Jewels of Hal Roach Studio's silent output. The cast is wonderful, including Max Davidson, king of exasperation, Martha Sleeper and Gene Morgan supplying hysterical pantomime, and freckled-face Spec O'Donnell as Max's ne'er do well son. Direction by the underrated Fred Guiol is right on point. These days, Max Davidson has become kind of a "forgotten man" of screen comedy and he really shouldn't be. This short serves as a perfect introduction to his talent and you'll want to see more of his work after watching it. A real classic that you shouldn't miss!

Forgotten silent comic Max Davidson gets little to do other than a series of reaction shots while his screen daughter and her beau mime the actions of a chicken in this overlong comedy. It's basically one joke strung out for 24 minutes - and that freckly kid is just weird.

Max Davidson was a prolific comedian of the silent era whose work deserves to be more widely known and appreciated, but a number of factors weigh against his rediscovery. His usual characterization was a basically benign but undeniably stereotypical version of a middle-class Jewish Dad, and much of his films' humor derived from the sort of ethnic jokes that make audiences squirm today. In addition to this, Davidson's comedies often featured risqué gags, sometimes involving male nudity or female impersonation, gags which, in a sense, lend his films a strangely "modern" quality but which may nonetheless rub some viewers the wrong way. My own reaction to this material varies -- sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't -- but Max himself always strikes me as charming, though somewhat limited as a performer. Anyhow, Davidson came to prominence playing support to a number of top comedians of the 1920s, including Mabel Normand and Charley Chase, then starred in his own series of two-reel comedies for Hal Roach. The series lasted for a couple of years but for whatever reason it ended around the time talkies came in, and from then on Davidson acted in bit parts, usually without billing, while his starring work from the '20s was quickly forgotten by the public at large.

The most enjoyable of the Max Davidson comedies I've seen is Pass the Gravy, which also gives nice supporting roles to two Roach Studio stalwarts, Spec O'Donnell and Martha Sleeper, as Max's son and daughter. This two-reeler stands as a good example of how Roach's expert crew could take a simple comic situation (in this case, a rather macabre one), stretch it to last about twenty minutes or so, and squeeze every possible laugh out of it along the way.

Here's the situation: Max lives next door to a man named Schultz who raises chickens, and is especially proud of his prize-winning rooster, Brigham. Schultz' son is engaged to Max's daughter, so an engagement party is held at Max's house to celebrate their betrothal. Max sends his son Ignatz (Spec O'Donnell) to buy a chicken for the feast, but Ignatz decides to save money by simply swiping one of Schultz' birds and butchering it -- mercifully, off-camera. Ignatz unwittingly takes Brigham the prize-winner, however, and the unfortunate rooster is still wearing a metal "First Prize" tag around his leg when he is served up for dinner to the unsuspecting guests. The comedy, for those who aren't too squeamish to appreciate it, is based on the sequence of events which follows: 1) How long will it take for Ignatz to realize what he's done? 2) How soon will his father find out? And, most significantly, 3) What will Schultz do when HE finds out? As it happens, the boy, his sister, and her fiancée become aware of the problem pretty quickly, so much of the humor is based on their efforts to communicate the bad news to Max without communicating it to Schultz. Spec O'Donnell has a nice pantomime bit acting out the sequence of events for his sister, Martha Sleeper (an adorable actress, by the way, and one of the great unsung comediennes of the silent era). Martha, in turn, gets to perform several hilarious bits after she and her boyfriend escape from the dinner table and flee to the next room, then frantically attempt to signal Max. He looks on in bewilderment as Martha and her beau enact the courtship of hen and rooster, and even portray the Execution of Brigham in gruesome detail, but each time Schultz whips his head around they quickly turn their act into a spirited dance, or an impromptu game of football. (The boyfriend is played by a fellow named Gene Morgan I've never seen elsewhere, and he's quite good in these vignettes.) Eventually, of course, the jig is up, but it's impressive how much mileage the players are able to get out of the situation before the denouement.

Max Davidson himself is a funny little guy with bushy hair, expressive eyes and a broad range of facial expressions. As I suggested up top, he may not have been the most versatile of performers, but he surely deserves to be remembered, for much of his surviving work is quite enjoyable. Pass the Gravy is an offbeat and rather dark exercise in visual comedy that is likely to please silent comedy buffs.

Wildly funny and inventive comedy of desperation from the studio that gave us Our Gang, Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chase, Harold Lloyd and many other classic comedy film series. The hilarious attempts to retrieve the chicken leg from Schultz plate before he discovers the "1st Place" leg band degenerate into chaos and a game of football with the leg. One of the funniest movies you've never seen, this film survives only in one original print that is in less than mint condition. All other copies were made from that print, but its such a terrifically funny movie you forget the scratches and the few moments of less than perfect contrast. This film is what funny is all about!

"Pass the Gravy" is one of Max Davidson's funniest comedies, with less emphasis on the Jewish stereotypes which render so many of Davidson's films taboo today. The credits list Fred Guiol as director, and Leo McCarey merely as 'supervising director' (who he?) ... but McCarey's distinctive brand of humour is evident throughout, so I suspect that he deserves much of the credit for the direction ... whilst Guiol (an experienced gagman) deserves credit for the story. George Stevens, later a great director, does first-rate camerawork here.

There's one surprising sexual gag in this movie that would probably go right over the heads of most modern viewers. Max's neighbour Schultz (Bert Sprotte) raises chickens, and the roost is ruled by his prize cock named Brigham, who has his pick of all the hens. In 1928, audiences recognised this as a clear reference to Brigham Young, the polygamous Mormon leader who had wives in double figures.

Max's daughter (Martha Sleeper) is engaged to Schultz's son (Gene Morgan). To celebrate their engagement, Max gives his own son Ignatz (Spec O'Donnell) $2 to buy a roasting chicken. (In 1928, that was a fair price.) Ignatz pockets the $2 and snatches one of Schultz's chickens instead, not realising he's taken Brigham the prize rooster. A stereotypical black-mammy cook (smacking her lips) roasts the rooster, which turns out to have a surprisingly generous amount of meat on its bones ... more as if it were a capon, rather than a rooster. Schultz is the guest of honour, so Max carves the chicken and generously gives Schultz a drumstick. But then Ignatz notices the 'First Prize' metal band on the ankle of the drumstick that Schultz is eating. O'Donnell does some clever pantomime (worthy of Keaton) as he signals his sister, draws her attention to the tag, and tries to recruit her into his efforts to get the drumstick away from Schultz. Martha uses signals to notify George, and the three of them try to notify Max ... who of course is utterly oblivious to their efforts.

There's some hilarious pantomime here. Martha Sleeper (nice looks, unpleasant name) was one of those rare actresses who could do slapstick without becoming vulgar or undignified. At one point, trying to tip the wink to Max, she pantomimes a hen while Gene Morgan pantomimes a rooster. Nearby is an ivory sphere of no obvious purpose: it looks vaguely like a billiard ball, except it's too large. Without her knowledge, this egg-like object conveniently ends up under Martha's rump while she's doing her hen imitation. When she finishes playing hen and discovers that she has laid an 'egg', the look on Martha Sleeper's face is hilarious. Gene Morgan is good too ... why didn't his career take off?

In time-honoured Hal Roach fashion, the last shot of the film ends up with a desperate figure fleeing into the distance in long shot. 'Pass the Gravy' is hilarious. I'll rate it 9 out of 10, and I might have rated it a perfect 10 if they'd left out that Aunt Jemima cook.