That's My Daddy

"Next time, I hope it's twins!"

This is such a cute film, and it was a treat to see it on a double bill at the historic Stanford Theater in Palo Alto on the occasion of its 100 year anniversary. Little Jane La Verne is adorable as "Pudge," and Reginald Denny is funny with his subtle reactions. While Denny didn't get a director's credit, he is believed to have taken over directing and to have written the intertitles, which are quite humorous. One example is when Pudge asks him to play with her and he says "Sure, how would you like to play a round of golf?" The film gets great mileage out of this wealthy bachelor's inexperience around kids, and without going into details, he's only taken this one in to get out of a speeding ticket. Not unexpectedly, his heart soon softens, but there's still tension because he's also engaged to be married, so Pudge must be kept a secret or gotten rid of.

While where this is going is predictable, the film has good pace and is peppered with amusing moments. Some that stand out are when Denny swings his hips back and forth to conceal Pudge who's on the other side of the door, the flashback to a tall tale of "goofer hunting" in African to explain how he came to adopt Pudge ("twelve years ago" lol), and Pudge going overboard off the yacht while calling out to "daddy." It was a tad contrived how the love interest shifted from the gold-digger (Lillian Rich) to suddenly the woman he brings into the house to take care of Pudge (Barbara Kent), but that's who we were all pulling for, and have them circle back to revisit the orphanage at the end was nice touch.

As a postscript, here is a paraphrasing of the 'one upping' a couple of orphans are engaged in early on: "My dad has electricity in his hair" "Oh yeah, well my dad has gas in his stomach!" "Oh yeah, well my dad once went to a hanging." "Oh yeah, well my uncle was the one being hung!"

Reginald Denny plays a clueless rich playboy who, through a series of convoluted events, inadvertently convinces an orphaned little girl that he's her daddy. Farcical complications ensue, since he's about to be married, to a woman who's out for his money, and a nosy cop has imposed a rather attractive nanny on Denny's household...

Out of the seven Denny comedies I've seen this is the third best, coming in behind "What Happened to Jones" and "Skinner's Dress Suit." There's some dispute about the direction; Denny says Fred C. Newmeyer wasn't up to scratch, so he had to take over.

If so, I wish Denny had been allowed to direct himself more often. The film is a finely crafted comedy machine that perfectly shows off Denny's gifts as a subtle farceur who can say volumes with the slightest lift of an eyebrow. I assume Denny also supervised the editing, which is just as adroit in its comic timing.

As "Pudge" the orphan girl, little Jane La Verne gives natural performance; she's adorable without being cloying (kudos again to Denny's direction). The film avoids excessive sentiment by acknowledging how comedically inconvenient her irresistible emotional neediness is. Droll intertitles and a fantasy sequence also mock the sappier conventions of melodrama. I would have liked to have seen a little more of Barbara Kent as the nanny, and the film could have done more with its shipboard climax, but "That's My Daddy" pulls of the trick of being sweet instead of sappy, and funny too.

For me the highlight of this silent film was Jane La Verne, the young girl who played "Pudge". This cute little girl was quite a good actress for her age(about 5 or 6). She looked like she could cry convincingly on demand. Reginald Denny's character really took a liking to her and it was all quite believable.

The plot is a bit odd and apparently was partially written by Reginald Denny himself. It is hardly believable that a policeman (played by Tom O'Brien) could take such an interest in the daughter of a young man that he practically invades their household with the babe in arms.

It was all designed to put Reginald Denny's character in some difficult to explain situations and is the basis for most of the comedy.

A young Barbara Kent has a nice roll assessing Denny's odd comedic behaviors and she has some nice close ups.

This is lighthearted entertainment in a 1927 setting. Fun to watch.