The Wrong Bottle

In the early 1930s, Tom Howard made a couple dozen comedy shorts. It seems he'd made a name for himself in Vaudeville but his movie career never went much further than the shorts. Most of his comedies that I've seen are, to put it mildly, are bizarre...but funny. "The Wrong Bottle" is, in contrast, a more mundane sort of story...with a plot reminiscent of the Edgar Kennedy domestic shorts of the 1930s-40s in which Edgar had to contend with freeloading in-laws living with him.

In "The Wrong Bottle", Tom is annoyed since his freeloading brother-in-law lives with them and he's quite thoughtless. After some arguing, the brother-in-law informs Tom that his insurance policy has lapsed....and soon after this Tom thinks he's accidentally drank poison. However, when he heads to the store to buy some antidote, he's frustrated by a dopey druggist and other store employees....and there's more craziness after this.

This is a funny short...but unusual as well. The whole dying aspect is actually funny...believe it or not.

Tom Howard is the head of his family -- sort of. His brother-in-law, George Shelton, has been mooching of him since time out of mind. So when Howard drinks from the wrong bottle in his medicine cabinet, he thinks he is poisoned. While Shelton goes out and buys a car with the forthcoming insurance money, Howard runs frantically for the drug store for an antidote.

This is the funniest scene in the short, as this drug store seems to sell everything but drugs; the manager tries to sell him an electric fan, but can't recall where the drug counter is.

Howard was a stage comedian who never rose particularly high in the movie business: a few supporting roles in features, a series of short subject for the faltering Educational Pictures. This is the best I have seen.