His New Mamma

This may have been the seventh short that Sennett released with Harry Langdon in it, but I believe it was shot earlier in their association. First, it has the construction of those Sennett two-reelers in which the first half takes place in one setting -- at home, where, according to the titles, Andy Clyde has just brought home Madeleine Hurlock to be Harry's new mother; after Madeleine vamps the son, the two men wrangle, and finally, Andy kicks Harry out -- and the second in another. In the second half, Harry is a taxi driver in sunny California, who drives the Sennett Bathing Beauties to the beach, where he runs into.... well, I'd tell you to guess, but you'd probably cheat and look it up.

What makes me think this was done early in Harry tenure at Sennett is that the idea of Miss Hurlock vamping Langdon, and his not seeming to have a clue as to what is going on is as pure a bit of Langdon as you can get. Yet there's none of it here. Instead, we get Harry doing a lot of standard Sennett stuff, and doing very well. Sennett's staff was adept, they knew how to write and shoot this stuff, the director was Roy Del Ruth, who would soon move on to greener pastures. Yet, confronted with a comic who was a once-a-decade find, and everyone knew it, they stuck him in a comedy that any of Sennett's staff could have led.

Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps Sennett said "Use Langdon in everything" and they did. If so, the result, while competent, is nothing special.

Harry Langdon is generally funny, just being his usually dead-pan self.

In "His New Mamma," there are several funny moments, but there is next to no continuity, next to no story, just a lot of dis-connected scenes.

It picks up with the Mack Sennett Bathing Beauties, but only visually, not comedically.

There are some nice photographic moments, with good camera placement, especially with the Beauties, but I'm afraid that mostly "His New Mamma" is good more for history and information than for entertainment.

"His New Mamma" has two attractive ladies in Madeline Turlock and Alice Day, some funny moments, some good stunts, and some good special effects, but the final result is rather disappointing.

Do see it, if only for the history of Hollywood and Harry Langdon, just don't expect too much.

His New Mamma (1924)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A farmboy (Harry Langdon) doesn't like that his father (Andy Clyde) is about to marry a younger woman and it turns out she's only doing so for his money. The first half of the film deals with Langdon and Clyde having to share the same bed, which leads to some good laughs since the old man has a long beard, which keeps getting in Langdon's way. The second half of the film turns a bit sour but at least we have the Mack Sennett Bathing Beauties to look at. Clyde certainly steals the film as the father but this is the best that I've seen Langdon in these early shorts.

I watched the fifteen-minute partial reconstruction of this short, available on the "Harry Langdon Collection: Lost and Found" DVD set. If you have access to the full twenty-minute-or-so version, contact a film archive as soon as you can.

This short was made earlier on in Langdon's career with Mack Sennett's studios, before the formula that characterized his best films was really found. Though it is not perfection, it is fortunately very funny. Unlike in the two Langdon films i have seen from earlier than this, "Picking Peaches" and "Smile Please," Harry is pretty much playing his fully-fledged character, though the direction and film-making style has not adopted to and is very much of typical Sennett slapstick.

Harry himself is wonderful, and his "little boy" characterization his fully here, eagerly awaiting Santa's coming at Christmas morning while his father completely distrusts him, and running innocently into the arms of his youthful, gold-digging "mamma" when he runs into her gold-digging in California. One suspects he may have been cast out of character before only because he was given scripts mean for other or generic comedians.

While this childlike, bewildered style isn't really best suited to the fast, wild Sennett style, it doesn't conflict with it so much that it jars. We go from a wonderful, funny, understated sequence sequence of Harry menaced at night by a floating balloon in a hat, to a fast, rough-and-tumble sequence with Harry chased through the snow by his father (Andy Clyde in a huge false beard), in which they both seem to be wearing real nightshirts in real snow.

Of course, Sennett didn't miss too many opportunities, it seems, to include his famous Bathing Beauties in a film, and here, in a odd little meta-film touch, they play the Sennett Bathing Beauties, taking Harry's cab to the beach so they can appear in a Sennett film (and treating Harry rather badly -- not paying their fare and stealing his tires!). The plot around here isn't so tightly constructed of course, but it still engages in the humor of the uncomfortable situation revolving around Harry at the center to some degree, which would be exploited to such good effect in later movies.

If the direction would slow down enough to let Harry put his funny little character moments through (like his stunned checking of the back of his car for more passengers once his fares haven't payed), the film would be even better, but it's undeniably funny and enjoyable all the same.